Tag: Andor

Galactic Style Guide – Patterns

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! In this month’s ‘GSG Counterpoint’ entry, we’re looking at an element of visual character design that tends to fall by the wayside when we think about the foundations of galactic style. While the vast majority of characters in the Original Trilogy wear clothing made of solid-color material, there are a few rare places where patterned fabrics are used. As we’ll see, the Prequels introduce a statistically higher number of examples, though they are still the minority. The highest-quality post-Disney title includes several, but in a very specific context!
Note that in this entry, we are primarily dealing with ‘prints’, as opposed to textured fabrics (in which the apparent pattern is caused by the actual dimensional quality of the fabric itself).

In all three films of the OT, I think we can count the number of characters wearing (non-camouflage) patterned clothing on one hand. The first is pre-skeleton Beru Lars, whose innermost layer (of three!) is a collared shirt with a repeated design in a square pattern:

Next up, one of the patrons at the Mos Eisley Cantina sports a long tunic with a surprising pattern – but you’d never know it from onscreen:

keep reading to learn more!

Galactic Style Guide – Coats & Robes

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’! Somehow it’s been about a year since we’ve had a Style Guide entry dealing with soft kit, so this time around we’re diving into another category of somewhat ‘swishy’ garments – coats and robes!
As we ran into a similar semantic issue when we looked at capes and cloaks (distinct from today’s subject due to their lack of sleeves), before we get ahead of ourselves we should probably try to nail down the differences between these two.
So, how exactly does a coat differ from a robe? To be honest, it’s a blurred line. After collecting and scrutinizing the references for this entry, the answer seems to be a combination of 1) the amount of tailoring the garment has, 2) the wearer’s activity level, and 3) perhaps the degree of closure: thus Robes tend to be longer and flowier (less tailored), worn closed, and folks who wear them tend to do more standing around. Coats tend to be somewhat shorter, more tailored, worn open, and those wearing them do more while wearing them. Or perhaps robes are less utilitarian, while coats serve more functional purposes, like protecting the wearer (from cold, dirt, etc.)? As I say, it’s a complicated spectrum to navigate, and the boundaries are more than a little unclear, but I’ve done my best to group them here, hopefully to show the differences.

First up we have what I’m calling ‘true robes’:

continue reading

Galactic Style Guide – Binoculars

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’! It’s been a while since we’ve looked at any in-universe hardware, but in this installment, we’re digging deep into a specific type of gear used in the field across the galaxy: space binoculars!
A good set of binocs (whether macro- or electro-) are a great accessory to help add depth to an appropriate character impression, filling in for the collapsible brass telescope or ‘field glasses’ frequently carried by characters in various SW-influencing historical genres – whether that be swashbuckling pirates, Old West cowboys, or World War soldiers.
Let’s get started with our ur-example: the Lydree MB450 macrobinoculars carried by Luke back in SW’77:

keep reading to see TONS more examples!