Galactic Style Guide – Colored Lenses & Visors

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!
In past entries, we’ve looked at things that aren’t really part of the typical ‘galactic aesthetic’: bright colors, visible fasteners, overly-designed patchwork clothing, etc. This month, we’re going to focus on an element of character design which is present in the visual record, but which has a very specific pattern of usage and which is far overrepresented in the fan-costuming community.

Good reenacting—fictional or historical—typically deals less with the elites of a given culture/period/setting, and more with accurately representing the experience of its common people. Since the current paradigm of Star Wars ‘Original Character’ costuming seems to entirely revolve around 3D printing, armor, and helmets, if you want to create an armored or helmeted ‘OC’ that will faithfully represent a typical galactic inhabitant, then listen up and read on!

There’s one easy way to tell at a glance if an armored Star Wars character is somehow SPECIAL: just look at their helmet! If the lenses or visor are anything other than plain black*, you can bet money that they’re some sort of elite. Some examples from the good old EU:

Notice anything?

While only a few are named, every one of these is some manner of ELITE! These are not your average grunts, or paycheck-to-paycheck mercenaries- these are characters or classes with specialization. The green clones from Ep III are even from a unit with ‘elite’ in their name—the 41^st Elite Corps!
How about some more recent examples?

In both our sample sets, you’ll note that the only colors represented are red, green, yellow/gold, and blue—no sign yet of orange, purple, teal, magenta, silver, etc.

Maybe it’s the 4k nature of the present, but it feels like the modern post-Disney era has really doubled down on these kinds of characters (likely as a result of having a smaller canon with an emphasis on television as the dominant media), giving them more prominence than in the EU? As I’ve not watched it, from what I’ve gathered through Internet osmosis, the ‘Bad Batch’—clones who don’t look like clones and have superpowers and custom ‘badass’ individually-fitted armor—seem like textbook “most specialest ever” fanfic characters made up by a 12-year-old. The modern inquisitors (helicopter lightsabers, anyone?) feel similar.

I share this observation not to say that GFFA reenactors should not build kits with colored lenses or visors, but to say that if you want to be special, be intentional about it! Don’t just pop a green visor in your Phase Two clonetrooper helmet ‘so it will look badass’, do it because you’re interested in the 41st Elite Corps’ deployment to Kashyyyk and want to interpret their campaign accurately! Want to put a mirrored red visor in your custom Mandalorian helmet? Fine, but be prepared to explain what makes your persona oh-so-extraordinary!
Colored visors—especially gold or orange ones—can often give a helmet more of a HALO feel. Many times, an already-solid kit can be given an easy authenticity upgrade by swapping a colored visor for a plain black one, with the added benefit of helping to draw the viewer’s attention!

Footnote 1:

Obviously, various ‘good guy’ pilot helmets feature colored visors too, but this post is specifically concerned with fully-helmeted, faceless characters (who, I hope you’ll notice, are by-and-large ‘bad guy’ characters.) Only the ‘Ninth Sister’ above doesn’t have a full helmet, but she’s also a nonhuman with a plenty intimidating face!

Footnote 2:
I’ve seen some folks online claim that phase one clonetroopers have mirrored silver or gold visors. It’s very hard to tell what exactly is going on with their helmets, but considering the clones are 100% CGI, I don’t put too much stock in them….at the very least, the visors of all the rank-and-file privates are definitely plain black!:

Footnote 3:
As pointed out by one of our SWLH facebook group members, the ‘stunt’ TK helmets in SW’77 used dark green acetate lenses. This is a lot more apparent if you look at pictures of screen-used props – I can’t think of a scene in the film where it’s very noticeable onscreen? I imagine this was a safety-related decision, giving the suited performers better visibility than black lenses while still having a very similar appearance. Overall however, they are quite restrained compared to the reflective/illuminated colored lenses this entry is mostly concerned with.

I feel like I’m still forgetting some examples though – if there’s someone I’ve overlooked, please leave a comment below and let me know!

Special thanks to this month’s supporters P.D., R.F., M.A., and A.L.! Researching, writing, and compiling this site takes a lot of time and energy. If you’ve enjoyed reading, have learned something from this post, or will use it to inform a kit of your own, please consider supporting my work via ko-fi, or with a small donation below! Thank you!