Month: March 2026

Galactic Style Guide – Buttons II

Welcome to another installment of our ‘Galactic Style Guide counterpoint’ subseries, where we help you strengthen your ‘Star Wars eye’ by highlighting and addressing commonly-made costuming faux pas. As part of the GSG, the ultimate goal is still to help you create a more accurate ‘outer persona’ for an ‘OC’ or ‘galactic denizen’ – but we approach the goal from the opposite direction!
This revisit of the topic of visible buttons started when one of our SWLH facebook community members (with a collection of Naboo costume references more extensive than even my own!) revealed that several of Padme’s outfits included numerous buttons, which sent me to comb my Prequel library with extra scrutiny – and what I found was incredible!

As we said last time, one of the main signifiers of the galactic aesthetic is an absence of visible fasteners—and this rule holds up for something like 99% of the outfits seen onscreen in the OT, where our very few examples of visible buttons break down as follows:

  • costume rented/reused from other productions (Pons Limbic in the cantina)
  • seen in very low light (the cantina band – no buttons are actually visible in the film, but only in the well-lit DK OT Visual Dictionary)
  • far-background, budget-constrained, outfitted en masse with rented off-the-shelf uniforms extras (rebels at the Yavin ceremony)
  • a much later, 2-second insert shot (two Cloud City gals from the Special Edition)

However, when it came time to return to the director’s chair for his Prequel Trilogy, it seems that Lucas’ rule was not as strictly applied, and began to be bent in creative ways, as the Prequel characters wearing buttons are in the foreground with names, lines, and plenty of screentime!

Note that these are all pretty much relegated to the cuffs and shoulders (versus straight down the front), and they’re all achieved using matching fabric-covered buttons and/or loops – and hence they stick out far less than typical modern buttoned garments. But does anyone else in the Prequels have costume with visible buttons (or button-like elements)? The answers may surprise you!

more surprising examples of visible buttons in the prequels

Now available – complete kit breakdowns!

SOMEHOW, it’s rapidly approaching a decade since I first entertained the idea of using the Galaxy Far, Far Away as a setting for first-person ‘reenacting’, and because progressive reenacting involves constant tinkering and improvement, a fair amount of these various personas has changed since their creation. (Of course, I’m a perfectionist who likes to wait until something is ‘finished’ before sharing – hence why I rarely share full-kit updates! – see the problem here?)
Though I haven’t had the time, energy, or opportunities to do anything with them in much-too-long, while I am making incremental progress towards my ‘functional workshop and sewing space’ goals, I wanted to use this Spring to overcome inertia, get some pieces out of my drafts folder, and check in with the state of my galactic impressions!

To accomplish this, I’ve been detailing each of these in their most up-to-date form, as well as summarizing the background research and justifications for choices that I’ve made to create each impression – all intended to serve as an example of what solid, research-based, fictional living history can look like.

Instead of publishing these as Posts (which will inevitably get pushed down the site’s front page), these breakdowns can now be found collected at the more permanent Personas and Impressions page ^above^! Check them out, and let me know your thoughts!

Project: B1 battle droid arm (2022-26 redux!)

It’s back! Credit for this renovation goes to eagle-eyed site reader S.C., whose critique (back in October 2020 when I first unveiled this project!) that my droid arm looked more bone white than the onscreen droids was absolutely valid! Since the onscreen droids appeared different colors in various scenes, and I was using as my primary reference a physical prop (apparently) from the film, I chalked the discrepancy up to onscreen lighting. However, looking at the auctioned arm and making-of photos, it’s clear that the physical droids created for Episode I were an entirely different color from the CGI droids in the final product – presumably, they were meant as lighting references for the CG artists:

Regardless, a big factor that kept this project from better screen fidelity in the first place is the color inconsistency between the various B1s in Episode I – or at least (as usual), the color grading differences between various editions of the film playing havoc with our perceptions!
Just compare these two shots of the same scene, and the effect that the slightly cooler lighting of the first has on the droids’ color:

the quest for the right battle droid color