Month: October 2022

Galactic Style Guide – Design

Welcome to another installment of our ‘Galactic Style Guide counterpoint’ subseries, where we help you strengthen your ‘Star Wars eye’ by highlighting and remedying common costuming faux pas that can make an outfit look Not Star Warsy. As part of the GSG, the ultimate goal is still to help you create a more accurate ‘outer persona’ – but we approach the goal from the opposite direction!

Our last two Style Guide entries on jackets concluded with a bit of homework. I wanted us to look at our source examples and pay special attention to the design elements of each jacket, particularly any areas that used different-colored paneling, the placement of any added details, and the overall degree of symmetry. All of these contribute to this month’s theme of “Design”.
As we’ve seen in previous posts, there are several aspects which are commonly seen in GFFA upper-body outerwear and—taken as a whole—contribute to ‘the Star Wars ‘look”’. In addition to a muted color palette, these include:

-plenty of pockets (typically with flaps)
striped, ribbed, or pleated sections down sleeves
many more examples within!

Diamonds in the Rough: Buck

Welcome back to our monthly spotlight series! In this feature, we talk with Star Wars costumers who help illustrate what high-quality, in-universe costuming looks like, and provide some insights into their character creations!
This time around, we’re looking at ‘Buck’ and his excellent custom Mandalorian kit!

Buck told me that his original inspiration for this outfit were the blue tones of Jango Fett and the Death Watch, with the hooded poncho coming from Bo Katan and the Nite Owls’ appearance in Season 7 of The Clone Wars.

When designing this kit, Buck referred to the excellent work of Brian Matyas (concept artist for The Mandalorian) to get the general aesthetic. As Matyas has a rock-solid grasp on what authentic Star Wars looks like, you’ll see no garish colors or high-contrast custom Mandos here!

Continue reading “Diamonds in the Rough: Buck”

HOW TO: DIY shemagh scarf

As we’ve seen before, scarves and headwraps are absolutely legitimate pieces of in-universe headwear, but if I had to make a list of commonly-seen ‘reenactorisms’ which have the power to derail my appreciation of an otherwise-solid GFFA outfit, an off-the-shelf, Earth-y, two-tone shemagh/keffiyeh headscarf would have to be near the top. (Also up there? Those zipper-covered, holster-wannabe, drop-leg fanny packs.)
These items are super useful for all sorts of authentic adventuring uses besides looking cool and keeping the sun off one’s head (improvised gathering container, level-one water prefilter, bandage/sling, last-ditch cordage source, etc); however, your standard two-color shemagh has some issues.


–Visually, prints or busy motifs are rarely seen in GFFA ‘soft kit’ – solids are by far the rule. (Especially in the Classic Trilogy period; in the Prequels, more variation is seen, but this is typically accomplished by embroidered details, not the actual weaving.)
–Thematically, there’s nothing wrong with channeling an ethnic fashion sense for SW purposes…a good scarf or headwrap can make you feel like a romantic desert rebel (Lawrence of Arabia, the Fremen of Arrakis, etc) which is a perfectly valid GFFA character type! However, in the 21st century, mass-produced shemaghs have a tendency to feel more ‘tacticool prepper bro’ than ‘exotic native insurgent’.
–Politically (because of their association as a ‘tactical’ accessory), the shemagh has been embraced by various anti-democratic groups…and we absolutely want to distance ourselves from that kind of sithspit.

BUT what if I told you that for about the same price as an Amazon-bought shemagh, you could make your own headscarf that’s even better? If you want to easily level up your Star Wars costuming and gain some DIY XP, read on!

get started on an Easy afternoon project