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!

As pointed out by one of our SWLH facebook members, Amidala’s handmaidens ‘victory parade’ robes have outer layers with button-like details down the arms:

Sio Bibble (Episode I): the front of our Theed governor’s waistcoat features a row of what I wouldn’t quite call buttons per se, but they definitely seem to be button-analogous. I’d love to see these up close to get an idea of what’s really going on here:

Continuing what seems like a trend of Naboo politicians in 32BBY, Senator Palpatine’s waistcoat is embellished with a double row of five-sided knotwork ‘buttons’:

Padme’s niece Ryoo Naberrie (Episode II): again, these aren’t quite buttons, but a bodice-lacing system that uses a double row of button-like things – instead of something like eyelets, which would be more Earth-y and visually stick out more.

The outfit worn by Ryoo’s grandpa Ruwee (aka Padme’s dad) also includes some sort of button-like device to keep his outer sleeves hitched up – from other views they look like toggles made from knotted fabric. And while not buttons, his tunic also looks like it has buttonholes, part of his curious ribbon-based fastening system:

Even Naboo’s military is not immune to visible fasteners – the Security Guards’ vambraces and greaves both feature protruding, twist-locking studs that act as a sort of ‘hardware button’ (the best pictures can seen at KayDee’s gallery), and as seen in this Episode 1 featurette, buttons somehow featured in what looks like the leather parts of the Security Officers’ outfits as well!

Please note, however, that our Naboo folks aren’t going around with shiny, plastic, 2- or 4-hole Earth buttons closing up their chef jackets or vests, but that they’re using tasteful cloth-covered buttons or button-surrogates (at least for the pre-Clone War period), and I can definitely imagine this local fashion becoming closer to the fastener-free galactic standard as the timeline moves into the Galactic Civil War period (which is why I use velcro in my Naboo partizan kit)

Moving on from Naboo examples, Anakin’s buddy Wald’s tunic has the closest thing to a holed button that we’ve seen yet. Materials-wise it looks pretty crude (are we seeing a slice of wood or antler with a leather thong?) which makes sense socially (he’s extreme downstrata), but also practically: even with that scoop neckline it’s probably tricky to get his Rodian head through, so I imagine this offset collar would give just a little extra room – but you wouldn’t want it flapping around once it was on!)

The example of actual Prequel Buttons everyone always brings up is of course Jango Fett, who has both speaking lines and a well-lit closeup in his cozy linen(?) buttoned Henley (which appears to use matching blue shank buttons?):

Another Episode II character with lines and a buttoned garment is Balosaur deathstick dealer Elan Sleazebaggano; although the scene is so dark you have to really squint to see the buttons in the film, like the cantina band they’re most visible in posed publicity/reference photos used for the DK Visual Dictionary (where they look suspiciously like the same swirly plastic four-holers found on any random, off-the-rack, modern button-down):

Although you’d never know it from the film (see below right), it seems Senator Orn Free Taa actually had big gaudy marbled buttons down the front of his robe-coat in Episode II!

These are really only visible in behind-the-scenes pictures (see above left), but they get a glamor shot in Trisha Biggar’s Dressing a Galaxy book where they are used as the frontispiece:

The similarly upstrata Waks Trode covers up in a cloak closed by these funky braid-and-button combos – which remind me of a simplified version of the kinds of decoration used by Napoleonic-era military uniforms like the Hussars of Hungary. (One of the background extras seen in Mos Eisley also wears a coat that closes up with a similar set of fasteners).

Finally, another member of the Galactic upstrata which really blew my mind when I spotted them: Mon Mothma in Episode III! From the FIDM exhibit, these look to be glass spheres that are (based on what I can see of the overlapping layers) used to fasten her felt mantle’s collar (perhaps just on one side, and they are on both sides for symmetry?)

So there we have it! – quite the larger sample size than the Classic Trilogy, wouldn’t you say?
I can’t say for sure why a larger (though still very small overall!) percentage of Prequel characters have costumes with visible buttons and fastenings, but in light of the evidence at hand, there’s really only one explanation for them that I can think of (since Lucas had a hand in approving costume designs individually, ‘lax QC’ is obviously not an option!): did Lucas mean for them to very subtly visually differentiate the period from the OT era? In other words, could buttons be another way of showing us “a more civilized age”??? What do you think?

When buttons or other onscreen visible fasteners come up in costuming discussions online, they’re often held up by folks trying to justify disregarding the GFFA’s other visual fundamentals (i.e. folks who want an excuse to cut corners). There’s usually someone saying, ‘Yeah, my outfit has buttons and I know they’re supposed to be forbidden, but Jango Fett had them on his shirt!‘ While that may be true, when the general rule is still ‘fasteners shouldn’t be seen’, then the answer for a reenactor is simple: Fasteners. Generally. Shouldn’t. Be. Seen. (If the idea of actually hiding your outfit’s buttons or zippers is a little overwhelming, check out some of our how-to tutorials!)

As we’ve said, despite their higher prevalence in the Prequels, visible buttons are still the exception to the rule – so if you insist on including buttons in your kit, let it not be because hiding them is too much work – use them as a way to help differentiate your kit and better ground it in a specific era: the pre-Imperial period! At the very least, use some sort of more traditional cloth-covered (garment-matching) or ‘shank button’, versus a modern holed style:

So there we go. Like the rest of the ‘GSG counterpoint’ entries, our goal here is not to excuse lazy costuming, but to illustrate the importance of critical thinking in authentic, high-quality GFFA costuming. As we saw last time, not every creator of licensed Star Wars content is as dialed into the rules of the setting (a big reason why I’ve largely stopped referring to non-live action sources over the years!), and buttons, zippers, shoelaces, etc. will sneak in here and there. It’s okay to call them out when you see them, but that doesn’t make their presence okay. Once you know the rules of the setting, follow them!, encourage others to do so too, and do your best to present the idealized Galaxy where these elements are very rarely seen. Of course there are bound to be outliers and eccentrics in every setting, but just as in recreating costume of actual history, when doing Star Wars costuming it is simply Best Practices to follow the most-represented example or style, and turn a critical eye to that which diverges (especially in the Original Trilogy period!). As one of our community members put it: “Just as in all things SW, don’t seek out the one tiny exception…seek out the flavor of the world and fit into it.” And when one of the things that sets that world apart from others is ‘no visible fasteners’, then cover up your darn buttons.

Have you come across any Prequel-era button examples I’ve left out? Drop them in the comments, or come discuss with us at the SWLH group on facebook, and I’ll see you next time!

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