Galactic Style Guide – Capes and Cloaks I

Welcome back to another installment of the Galactic Style Guide, the series where we break down the ‘Star Wars aesthetic’ in order to help you create a more authentic ‘outer persona’! In this entry, we’re examining examples of capes and cloaks. (Robes—like those worn by the Jedi or Emperor Palpatine—have sleeves and will be covered in a future post!) Traditionally, a Cape will be shorter in length and made of more fashionable materials compared to the longer, more utilitarian Cloak, but I use them fairly interchangeably here.

Star Wars’ costume designs have always been a unique mixture of Spaghetti Western, 20th century militaria, Eastern/’exotic’, and medieval styles, and the use of capes/cloaks are largely responsible for the latter. With many cosplayers eager to add a little ‘swish’ to their outfits, I hope these posts will be of some use: because when inspiration is needed, it is best to go right to the source instead of to what others have done!

Let’s dive right in with the only guy (IMHO) who can compete with Han Solo in terms of style!

Biggs Darklighter shows up to his desert hometown rocking a solid black knee-length wool cape with a short standing collar (and no visible fasteners, naturally!). It doesn’t appear to be lined, so that great drape is due to it being a really solid weight of fabric. If it is lined, it’s in a pretty similar color or material (note also that this is a rare example of a ‘good guy’ character wearing a ‘bad guy’ color).
However, with the Anchorhead scenes on the cutting room floor, we have few major characters wearing these kinds of garments in the rest of the film.
The only one who really comes to mind is the Mos Eisley spy Garindan who wears a most interesting hooded cloak:

Unlike the rest of our examples, old Long-snoot’s hooded cloak is a one-piece, and I’d love to see what the overall shape of it is! Visually, we can deduce that he’s an antagonist (because the cloak is black!), and as we will come to expect, it’s made of wool in a nice weight, is a solid color, and unadorned.
Aside from Garindan, It’s not until we make it to Cloud City in the next installment that we find another cape in the foreground:

Of course, when everyone thinks ‘cape’, the first person who comes to mind is Lando Calrissian. His Episode V cape is a dense blue-gray wool (Alinger actually calls it felt!), with a black leather fall collar (matching his shirt’s leather collar details), and a gorgeous silk brocade lining – actually sewn inside out to add detail and texture without being recognizable (apparently the pattern is dragons!) (SWCOT, p109)

First honorable mention goes to Episode V Boba Fett, who covers one shoulder with a weird little half-cape thing. Here we see more than one color in a garment, which is nothing more than a single wide stripe down the middle! I believe the shape is just a rectangle.

As we’ll see next, the final installment of the Classic Trilogy gets pretty cape- and cloak-heavy, a trend which kicks off when Luke Skywalker shows up to Jabba’s palace in a floor-length hooded cloak of brown wool twill (Prequel-Jedi style, just no sleeves!)

Standing behind him, we see the Quarren Tessek wearing a floor-length cloak over his tunic; from this production photo it appears to be made of lined velvet:

Another honorable mention: when Leia shows up to rescue Han, her bounty hunter disguise includes another weird sort of half-cape. One’s an anomaly, but two’s a trend, so I guess bounty hunters wearing half-capes is an established visual motif! Note however that there’s not very much to either of these garments as they mostly just hang off one shoulder. Leia’s material drapes almost like it’s knit, but if we look closely it appears to be a chunky twill, possibly a 2*1 weave?:

After making their escape on a skiff, the gang was supposed to meet up at their parked ships before leaving Tatooine – but the scene was deleted and the dialogue incorporated into the next scene. The fun part for us is that this interaction was meant to take place during a sandstorm, and so the characters would have donned extra layers of protection (extra important for Leia, who was practically naked!):

Many yards of material in rustic weaves and fringed hems gives an appropriately exotic desert-nomad appearance. Lando’s cloak is hooded and appears to have a section which wraps around his shoulders, similar to a ruana-type cloak. It’s also technically multiple colors, but this gradient look is achieved by dyeing and not construction; Leia’s wrap also incorporates some different colors for visual interest, but the stripes appear to be woven into the material. I would LOVE to visit the Lucas Archives to check these pieces out and unwrap them from their mannequins and see just how they are constructed!

With the seedy-underworld denizens of Act I behind, we meet up with the assembled Alliance only to encounter several more examples of capes and cloaks!

After joining the Rebellion as a general (probably because he heard he’d get a new cape?) Lando shows up in this lilac-gray floor-length number. The waffle-weave material looks fairly lightweight but makes up for this by having excellent texture, as does the simple braided closure at the neck. To give it some structure and weight, we see the edges have been hemmed:

Among the Rebels also present in the Home One briefing room are a trio of Dressellian ‘pruneface’ commandos…only two of whom have managed to receive names in the last 41 years 😦

All three wear knee-length hooded cloaks (one dark, one light, and one in mottled camouflage), which Alinger notes are ‘two-thirds’ cut, as each was made from a full circle with one third removed for the front opening (SWCOT, p185). Speaking of front openings, the hoods at least are unhemmed:

These fellows also serve as an ultra-rare example of clothing with hardware, in the form of these cylindrical ‘grenade’ loops, which nonetheless still match the cloak material:

Addendum: as pointed out in our facebook group (thanks, Colin!), I’ve made a major oversight up to this point, as I’ve forgotten about the GFFA’s most iconic cape-wearer!

While the farthest thing from the ‘common man’ perspective we deal with here, Vader IS a very useful datapoint! We can note—yet again!—that this cape is a solid color (black, naturally, as befitting a villain), made of medium-weight wool, and appears to be of a similar pattern to Lando’s general cape. I’ve read that in the classic Trilogy, this was a 3/4 circle, while in Episode III it was only a semicircle. It has a facing on the front edge, though I’ve not been able to tell if this was wool or satin. It appears to have been hemmed with reinforcing leather at the neckline, where it is closed with a simple metal chain.

If you’d like to add a cape or cloak to your own outfit but the idea of making one is overwhelming, there’s an easy solution! Remember at the beginning how we said that capes and cloaks bring ‘medieval’ style to the GFFA aesthetic? As long as it follows the general rules of the setting…

• Natural fabric (most commonly wool) with decent weight/drape
• Muted colors (shades of brown, gray, blue, etc.)
• One single color (it’s hard to be iconic if the eye is overwhelmed by detail)
• Limited hardware/decoration (or none at all!)

…you can use capes and cloaks from historic reenacting outfitters in your GFFA kit! As they’re usually made for more rigorous use than convention hall photoshoots, these will look the part much better than those made just to be a costume.
Like what you’ve seen here? In our next entry, we’ll continue to add to our sample set with examples of capes and cloaks seen in the Prequel Trilogy! While these kind of garments are similarly represented, it is typically among totally different character types. If you’re up to making your own cape or cloak, you’ll want to stick around for our list of suggested suppliers – see you then!

A big thank you to my supporters! Researching, compiling, and writing this series takes a lot of time and energy. If you’ve learned something from this series, or if this post has inspired you to add some in-universe swish to your own outfit, please consider supporting my work via ko-fi, or with a small donation below! Thank you!