Welcome back to another installment of the Galactic Style Guide (where we break down the ‘Star Wars aesthetic’ in order to help you create a more authentic ‘outer persona’) and the end of Aurebesh Month! In last week’s installment we showed how before the Disney buyout, Aurebesh words on clothing were incredibly rare. This week, we’re taking a look at some places where using in-universe lettering IS appropriate!:
Tattoos or scarification: Force Hounds (26,000 BBY), Morlish Veed (Legacy), Kaddak (Cry of Shadows), Enviro-suit (FFG), Sketch, Kix (The Clone Wars)
Note that while there are plenty of tattoos in-universe, these were the Only examples of letters-as-body-art I could find in the rather complete listing of Aurebesh appearances.
Welcome back to Aurebesh Month and our first of two installments of the Galactic Style Guide (where we break down the ‘Star Wars aesthetic’ in order to help you create a more authentic ‘outer persona’) taking a look at something that’s become really popular among the Batuu-bounding community in recent years: using in-universe Galactic Basic lettering—the Aurebesh—on kit items.
I see folks incorporate Aurebesh words into their clothing so often, it inspired me to do some digging and see how many examples I could find from the various visual media sources. The first instances I found are all a certain segment of the galactic populace that I don’t think I’ve ever seen re-created before, but which would make for an excellent living history impression:
PRISONERS: from Agent of the Empire—Hard Targets and Empire: The Wrong Side of the War
I was a little disappointed that these guys are just wearing yellow/orange jumpsuits, and that there wasn’t a little more consistency between them and the more interesting prisoner uniform of the Imperial Remnant in 12 ABY (Jedi Outcast):
Welcome back to Aurebesh Month! You can read last week’s entry HERE! When the subject of backwards Aurebesh comes up, oftentimes people like to point to LucasArts games as a source of the flipping confusion. I will admit that there have been many times in LucasArts games where Aurebesh (or another in-universe script) has been seen in a horizontally-flipped orientation. However, this is different from the ‘flipped capitals’ reenactorism…because in these cases the letters aren’t flipped… the entire word is, and there’s an easy explanation.
In a post earlier this year, I brought up the idea of ‘reenactorisms’—the spread and perpetuation of an inaccuracy being unknowingly (or knowingly) passed around because somebody didn’t do their research. After that initial post, I realized one of the biggest reenactorisms in Star Wars costuming was my most infuriating pet peeve: the phenomenon of backwards Aurebesh letters. Having spent probably-too-much-time thinking about the issue, I thought I’d try something new and devote an entire month to the topic of writing in the Galaxy Far, Far Away. That’s right, folks: welcome to Aurebesh Month!
A quick search of Etsy for the term will easily reveal the problem we are facing: an annoying lack of consistency in how the letters are to be written. A number of these items are geared towards the Batuu-bounding crowd—patches, ID tags, Aurebesh ‘translators’, luggage tags, etc.—and I suspect it is the popularity of the Disney parks (coupled with the recent rise of Cricut-type machines that make cranking out crispy stickers so easy) that has caused the proliferation.
At the heart of the issue is the erroneous idea that Aurebesh has capital letters at all, let alone that it indicates them by horizontally flipping the letters. None of the Aurebesh texts seen at the Galaxy’s Edge park—the writing system’s most high-profile manifestation—includes these backwards capitals, so where did this idea originate???
Welcome back to another installment of 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’! While this series is normally geared at pointing out style elements that are widely and commonly represented in the galaxy, this month we’re taking a look at a ‘style’ which is comparatively un-common. Or perhaps I should say, while we have many examples of revealing outfits, after examining the complete sample, we will see that this style should really only be worn by a limited set of character types. (For our purposes here, I’m considering an outfit ‘revealing’ if it exposes some combination of arms, legs, or torso).
I’ve explored the idea of Reenactorisms—the acceptance and perpetuation of an innaccuracy—several times before, but it is worth pointing out that these are not limited to fan creations: official resources can still fall into the pit. Work on this month’s Style Guide post got me thinking about a key confusion in the depiction of the Twi’lek species: males have ears, but what do females have? The past 20+ years of visual sources suggest they all have cones where their ears should be, but prior to the release of The Phantom Menace in 1999, Twi’lek females most definitely had ears! We can trace the source of this confusing inconsistency by noting the examples of ‘cone’ or ‘ear’ as they appeared in order of release.
1983: Oola—the first depiction of a female Twi’lek—is green. The cones on Oola’s headdress are clearly white, and are also clearly part of the headdress, not protruding from within it.
January 1995: art development/pre-production begins on Episode I
Welcome back to another installment of the Galactic Style Guide, where we break down the ‘Star Wars aesthetic’ in order to help you create a more Galaxy-accurate ‘outer persona’! For this month’s installment, now that midsummer is here (for us in the Northern Hemisphere at least), I wanted to take a look at examples of T-shirts and other short-sleeved or sleeveless tops. What more can you say about them? On modern Earth these are among our most casual clothing, which puts them at odds with the galaxy’s overall space-fantasy aesthetic, but as we’ll see, they do occasionally show up in the EU as everyday clothing.
Short-sleeved T-shirts: Luke (Splinter of the Mind’s Eye), Dass Jennir (Blue Harvest, Out of the Wilderness), Aegis crewman*(Razor’s Edge), Dexter Jettster; NEGtAS Besalisk, Janks, Bandomeer prisoner (Dark Times #15), Duro in the big city (Langdon Foss), Ruusan lookout (Jedi Knight). Voren Na’alContinue reading “Galactic Style Guide – T-shirts and tank tops”
Welcome back to another installment of the Galactic Style Guide, where we break down the ‘Star Wars aesthetic’ in order to help you create a more authentic ‘outer persona’! This month we’re wrapping up our look at in-universe lower-body garments, both long and short.
When the subject of non-cargo kinds of pockets comes up in costuming circles, I’ve seen some people try to argue that hip/slash pockets don’t exist in-universe. Based on our sources I can say that slash pockets do exist in the GFFA, but they aren’t appropriate for all impressions. Rebel soldiers, agents, or operatives frequently wear pants with familiar pockets.:
Pants with hip or rear pockets: Rebel specialist (Battlefront2!2017, Dresselian (NEGtAS), ‘Cassian Andor’, human male Jaden Korr (14 ABY), Kyle Katarn (12 ABY).
It is worth noting that the distinctive hip pockets-and-belt-loops of the Specialist appear to be inspired by surplus Austrian M75 pants (though those also have thigh cargo pockets).
It’s been a while since our last Artifact ID post, but early May always makes me think of the Prequels, and in a bit of serendipity I was able to identify an obscure Episode I artifact while exploring an awesome plant nursery last weekend. Browsing through a display of seed packets, I noticed this gourd looked subconsciously familiar:
If you’re a Prequel aficionado like me—and have spent way too much time poring over DK’s Episode I Visual Dictionary — you might know where this is going.
Welcome back to the Galactic Style Guide, where we break down the ‘Star Wars aesthetic’ in order to help you create a more authentic ‘outer persona’! In this month’s installment we’re starting our look at lower-body garments.
While most humanoids in the Galaxy Far Far Away dress practically and wear long trousers of some sort, because layering is such a large part of the general galactic aesthetic we usually don’t get a good look at most characters’ legwear. If you plan to wear a longer outer garment like a tunic, there’s no need to be picky about your pants—as long as they’re solidly made and able to stand up to authentic use: for example, Luke’s farmboy trousers were just bleached Levis! As a rule of thumb, most in-universe trousers are nondescript but as we will see below, there are a few ways to dress them up for more visual interest.
Han Solo (Episode IV-VI), Luke Skywalker (medal ceremony), Mos Eisley extras, Jarin Flast (WEG SWRPG 2nd Edition)/generic Human (New Essential Guide to Alien Species)Continue reading “Galactic Style Guide – Pants I”
Living History in the Star Wars Galaxy 