Month: July 2025

Galactic Style Guide – Materials I

Welcome back to 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’ for your denizen or OC! For my northern hemisphere readers it’s the middle of high summer and probably plenty hot. One key factor that helps determine how comfortable an in-universe outfit will be is the materials it’s made from, so in this month’s entry, we’re starting a close look at onscreen fabrics! (If you’re interested in the general characteristics of these materials beyond aesthetics, check out Step 5 from the First Steps section^!)

Compared to synthetics like polyester, natural fabrics are far more breathable, and thankfully for galactic costumers’ sake, natural fibers are a major reason the GFFA looks the way it does! We must remember that when SW’77 first came out, “science fiction” had been lousy with cheesy “quasi-futuristic” tinfoil-looking costumes and skintight bodysuits for decades; Lucas and Mollo’s desire to treat the Galaxy as an historical setting meant that they would have to use historical fabrics for its costumes as well.
As a result, generally speaking woven, natural-fiber fabrics are the rule – knits are the exception (and especially jersey/t-shirt or hoodie/sweatshirt materials). Thankfully synthetic knits like modern athleisure/activewear are an even tinier minority.
In addition to making an outfit look ‘real’ or ‘fake’, the materials an outfit is made from also play a major role in the wearers’ comfort.

In our modern times, cotton is probably the fabric most people are most familiar with, and in all honesty, if it’s a lighterweight piece with fairly low texture and no need for a lot of ‘drape’, a good percentage of onscreen Star Wars costumes are probably made of cotton as well. Likely among these:

While cotton is a short staple (fiber length) that generally equates to lower strength, one particular type of cotton fabric, denim, has a reputation for toughness which is most closely associated with blue jeans. Of this material in-universe I’ve only been able to come up with three clear examples:

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Project – Belt Bottle

As is becoming my usual tendency, this project began as a quick burst of creative energy, only to be followed by months of hiatus until some right material is found, and then another hiatus until my craft docket or mental bandwidth could catch up.
This project in particular is also the result of a curious local quirk: the area of town where I live has a very strong culture of ‘curb crawling’, in that neighbors frequently put unwanted items on their curbs free for the taking! One day last summer I was biking around town when I came upon one of these treasure caches and pulled over to take a look. Among the knick-knacks and a cool bell beaker-shaped glass vase was a plain stainless water bottle (of the sort I had spotted onscreen in Episode II several years back), so I took it home and cleaned it up. The size was actually smaller than the onscreen one – holding only a pint or so – but I thought it might be a useful bit of hydration kit. Since I already have some great in-universe canteens, and this bottle was too small to be a proper canteen, I thought it might be useful for holding some other fluid (electrolyte concentrate? Corellian whisky?), and began brainstorming how I might carry it in a pack or on my person. One way the Star Wars galaxy has always felt like a real setting is the use of repeated visual elements which give a sense of cultural continuity and cohesion. Among my favorite of these is the ubiquitous cylinder carried at the rear of the wearer’s belt:

Let’s get crafting!