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:

While the wearing of off-the-rack blue jeans by a Star Wars character would be far too familiar and immediately pull the viewer out of the galactic setting, Han’s trousers (made of brushed denim) manage to be just unfamiliar enough to not disrupt our suspension of disbelief – for several reasons:
-They don’t have pockets, let alone Levi Strauss-style rivets.
-They don’t have a zipper (fly front instead)
-They don’t have any holes.
-They’re dark blue, not faded or stone-washed, let alone (shudder) acid-washed.
-They have red “bloodstripe” tuxedo stripes down the sides.
-They have a pintuck running down the front.

While blue jeans should never be considered for one’s SW kit, as a fabric, denim itself can come in many colors which would be appropriate to use. (I myself was saved by this fact years ago when I showed up to lead a workshop and started to change into my Jedi kit, only to find that I had forgotten to pack my brown linen pants! Thankfully, the nondescript dark gray denim pants I was wearing at the time (pretty similar to Woody Harrellson’s jumpsuit above) still looked the part and nobody noticed. This would not have been the case if I were wearing blue jeans.)

As we would expect from a historically-inspired setting, wool (typically made from the hairs of sheep, but also goats, camelids, or rabbits) is heavily represented in the costumes onscreen:

The durable worsted wool twill gabardine was also used for a number of costumes (and likely many other besides these), including Luke’s Episode V fatigues (according to WEG, actually a pilot’s ground uniform), Leia’s Endor pants (and based on the shared style, probably Lando’s as well), and the Rebel comm technicians uniforms:

According to Alinger’s SWCOT (2014), the supremely-breathable linen (fibers from the flax plant) was used to construct trousers for many of the skiff guards in Episode VI, which makes sense considering the filming location in the middle of the California desert – and I would not be surprised if many of their longsleeved pirate-like shirts were sewn from linen as well. I’ve not come across many other specific references to this material, but the Henley-style top Jango Fett wears on Kamino looks fairly close:

Aside from young Anakin’s slave tunic and Woody Harrison’s duster and holster in SOLOASWS, I have found few concrete examples of hemp (made from fibers of low-THC cannabis) used onscreen, though I am sure there have to be more (drop a comment if you know of others!) The fabric itself has a well-earned reputation for being extremely durable (the word canvas comes from cannabis), making it a perfect candidate for elements of a GFFA reenactor’s kit.

I think that’s a good start for now, and there’s more in store for next month! Have you found any examples of these fabrics I haven’t included here? Drop a line in the comments below, or come join in the discussion with us in the SWLH facebook community!

Thanks to my readers! Researching, writing, and editing a post like this takes a lot of time and energy (no ChatGPT here!), so if you’ve enjoyed reading, learned something, or have been inspired to reconsider the materials of your own outfit, please consider supporting my work via ko-fi, or with a small donation below! If you can’t give, please share this post or site with your friends! Thank you!