A.H. – Page 7 – Living History in the Star Wars Galaxy

Galactic Style Guide – Design

Welcome to another installment of our ‘Galactic Style Guide counterpoint’ subseries, where we help you strengthen your ‘Star Wars eye’ by highlighting and remedying common costuming faux pas that can make an outfit look Not Star Warsy. As part of the GSG, the ultimate goal is still to help you create a more accurate ‘outer persona’ – but we approach the goal from the opposite direction!

Our last two Style Guide entries on jackets concluded with a bit of homework. I wanted us to look at our source examples and pay special attention to the design elements of each jacket, particularly any areas that used different-colored paneling, the placement of any added details, and the overall degree of symmetry. All of these contribute to this month’s theme of “Design”.
As we’ve seen in previous posts, there are several aspects which are commonly seen in GFFA upper-body outerwear and—taken as a whole—contribute to ‘the Star Wars ‘look”’. In addition to a muted color palette, these include:

-plenty of pockets (typically with flaps)

striped, ribbed, or pleated sections down sleeves

many more examples within!

Diamonds in the Rough: Buck

Welcome back to our monthly spotlight series! In this feature, we talk with Star Wars costumers who help illustrate what high-quality, in-universe costuming looks like, and provide some insights into their character creations!
This time around, we’re looking at ‘Buck’ and his excellent custom Mandalorian kit!

Buck told me that his original inspiration for this outfit were the blue tones of Jango Fett and the Death Watch, with the hooded poncho coming from Bo Katan and the Nite Owls’ appearance in Season 7 of The Clone Wars.

When designing this kit, Buck referred to the excellent work of Brian Matyas (concept artist for The Mandalorian) to get the general aesthetic. As Matyas has a rock-solid grasp on what authentic Star Wars looks like, you’ll see no garish colors or high-contrast custom Mandos here!

HOW TO: DIY shemagh scarf

As we’ve seen before, scarves and headwraps are absolutely legitimate pieces of in-universe headwear, but if I had to make a list of commonly-seen ‘reenactorisms’ which have the power to derail my appreciation of an otherwise-solid GFFA outfit, an off-the-shelf, Earth-y, two-tone shemagh/keffiyeh headscarf would have to be near the top. _{(Also up there? Those zipper-covered, holster-wannabe, drop-leg fanny packs.)}
These items are super useful for all sorts of authentic adventuring uses besides looking cool and keeping the sun off one’s head (improvised gathering container, level-one water prefilter, bandage/sling, last-ditch cordage source, etc); however, your standard two-color shemagh has some issues.

–Visually, prints or busy motifs are rarely seen in GFFA ‘soft kit’ – solids are by far the rule. (Especially in the Classic Trilogy period; in the Prequels, more variation is seen, but this is typically accomplished by embroidered details, not the actual weaving.)
–Thematically, there’s nothing wrong with channeling an ethnic fashion sense for SW purposes…a good scarf or headwrap can make you feel like a romantic desert rebel (Lawrence of Arabia, the Fremen of Arrakis, etc) which is a perfectly valid GFFA character type! However, in the 21st century, mass-produced shemaghs have a tendency to feel more ‘tacticool prepper bro’ than ‘exotic native insurgent’.
–Politically (because of their association as a ‘tactical’ accessory), the shemagh has been embraced by various anti-democratic groups…and we absolutely want to distance ourselves from that kind of sithspit.

BUT what if I told you that for about the same price as an Amazon-bought shemagh, you could make your own headscarf that’s even better? If you want to easily level up your Star Wars costuming and gain some DIY XP, read on!

get started on an Easy afternoon project

Galactic Style Guide – Jackets II

Welcome back to another installment of the Galactic Style Guide, the monthly series where we break down the ‘Star Wars aesthetic’ to help you create a more authentic ‘outer persona’! As I promised last month, this entry is devoted to examples of in-universe jackets drawn from the various sources of the Expanded Universe and ancillary materials. Let’s get started with the two jacket-wearers seen in the New Essential Guide to Alien Species:

Human and Rodian wearing puffy racing-type jackets (by Chris Trevas) – just mentally ignore the Rodian’s zipper.

see more examples from comics, games, reference books, and rpgs!

Diamonds in the Rough: Max

Special shout-outs this month to Doremy and Renee for their generous donations to help out the site – you all rock! 🙂 If you like this series and would like to support my work as well, consider contributing below!

While I personally avoid the divergent creative and aesthetic decisions of the post-Disney era, these outfits are still quite representative of the general galactic style and worth showing off!

read the full interview!

Galactic Style Guide – Buttons

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’ – but we approach the goal from the opposite direction!

Since the earliest designs of Star Wars ’77, one of the main signifiers of GFFA fashion is the absence of visible fasteners—as chief costume designer John Mollo said, “George didn’t want any fastenings to show, he didn’t want to see buttons, he didn’t want to see zips, so we used stuff like Velcro, and things were just wrapped over and tied with a belt…” – The Making of Star Wars (J.W. Rinzler), p. 125.
Since this is one of the chief ‘rules’ of Star Wars fashion and comes straight from the top, something like 99% of the outfits seen onscreen abide by this rule. When visible fastenings do show up on screen, eagle-eyed costume-minded folks (or those who really want to cut corners) tend to make a big deal of it….although they really shouldn’t.

onscreen buttons in the OT: Pons Limbic, Figrin D’an (and the rest of the Modal Nodes?), Rebel honor guard, Yavin ceremony backgrounders, Tian Chyler

more visible fasteners after the jump

Diamonds in the Rough: Kristen Jones

Welcome back to our monthly spotlight series! In this feature, I interview Star Wars costumers who have ‘gone the distance’ and put in the effort to create solid, in-universe outfits or personas. This month we’re talking with Kristen Jones, co-founder of J&K Props, about the creation of her incredible desert nomad/bounty hunter impression:

read the full interview and see this kit’s evolution!

Galactic Style Guide – Jackets I

Welcome back to another installment of the Galactic Style Guide, the monthly series where we break down the ‘Star Wars aesthetic’ to help you create a more authentic ‘outer persona’!
Folks have been asking me to do a post on in-universe jackets for a long time, so I figured the best time is Now! In fact, I dug up so many examples that this is going to be a two-parter (it feels like we haven’t had one of those in a while)! This month, we’re looking exclusively at examples from live-action sources.
For our purposes, when we say ‘jackets’ we are talking about sleeved, (typically open-front) roughly waist-length outer garments; longer garments along these lines would be considered coats (and will be discussed in a later entry!).
As we’ll see, these garments have been a big part of the GFFA style since day one:

it’s never been quite clear if Cpt. Antilles is a Rebel wearing an Alderaanian jacket, or an Alderaanian wearing an Alliance-issued jacket. Any ideas?

*Episode IV* jackets: Rebel leadership, Fixer Loneozner, Beru Lars, a Mos Eisley Lutrillian

plenty more examples below!

Diamonds in the Rough: Phil Howard

Welcome back to our monthly spotlight series! In this feature, I interview Star Wars costumers who have ‘gone the distance’ and put in the effort to create solid, in-universe outfits or personas. This month we’re talking with the UK’s Phil Howard, who had an absolutely stellar Mandalorian pilot kit:

sadly, I have to use the past tense as he has since sold this kit. 😥

Color-wise, this ensemble is rock-solid. Much like Boba Fett’s classic Episode V/VI look, Phil uses a neutral-toned flightsuit with armor in limited complementary colors: mustard, deep red, OD green, and khaki. Much like WW2 airmen, he is armed only with a pistol, though it is clearly not the focus of the outfit. Like Rebel pilots of the Classic Trilogy, his use of flak vest, parachute webbing, and chest box provide character-appropriate layering, which give believable visual interest.

Phil told me that he was initially inspired to create this outfit while being in the MMCC [Mandalorian Mercs Costume Club] for a few years, where he had seen several others with ‘Mando Pilot’ kits and decided to simply “give it a go!”.

more details and full kit breakdown below

Programming Announcement – 2022

Hello there, readers! As I did last summer, I want to give a heads-up that the next several months will see a change in the pace of material being published here at the Star Wars Living History blog. While I kind of wish this announcement was coming at the start of another long-distance backpacking adventure, the actual reasons for it are still exciting!

Somewhere around the middle of Virginia last fall I decided that when I returned from the Trail I wanted to get into the (small) business of galactic clothing, and this spring launched my Offworld Outfitters brand. At present my product line is limited to in-universe-styled spacer/adventurer’s vests, with plans for other offerings possible down the line. I trust that the previous five years’ worth of posts at this blog will sufficiently demonstrate my commitment to quality and the authentic GFFA style 😉 For those interested in a vest of your own, you can find my vest commission form and more information at the OFFWORLD.OUTFITTERS link above!

So: in order to better divide my time between this venture and some intensive projects for the Middle-earth Reenactment Society, plus for my own mental health (you can experience ‘burnout’ on hobbies, too!), over the next few months you will see me stepping back from publishing this blog on a weekly basis. What this means for you, reader: my recurring series the Galactic Style Guide will continue to drop on the last Saturday of each month, while future entries in our new Diamonds in the Rough interview series will come out on the second Saturday of each month. In between those, I may release other posts on an individual basis as time allows; in other words, as a rule you should expect two posts per month instead of four (or five).
I’m also open to the idea of reader-submitted guest articles, so if you have a fictional-reenacting or GFFA-living-history-related topic you would like to research and report on, please don’t hesitate to click the CONTACT button above and get in touch!

Thank you for reading, and may the Force be with you!