clothing – Page 4 – Living History in the Star Wars Galaxy

Diamonds in the Rough – the ‘Normandy Quarren’

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 very fortunate to bring you a look inside the French organization Transfert à Ord Mantell. The group is made up of several traditional (historic) reenactors who have applied their skills at reenacting to the galactic setting. When the photoset from their recent Normandy beach shoot hit the interwebs last month, it made quite a splash, and I knew I just HAD to pick their brains and learn more!

While there was obviously a lot of high-standard work on display, as the majority were existing character types (Imperial officer, stormtroopers, mudtrooper, scout trooper, a lowly rebel technician) or a known character (Boba Fett), the one that really caught my eye was their original Quarren character design:

what is it that makes this design WORK so well?

Galactic Style Guide – Footwear I

Welcome back to another installment of the Galactic Style Guide, the monthly series where we break down the ‘Star Wars aesthetic’ in order to help you create a more authentic ‘outer persona’! It’s taken us a few years to get here, but in this entry, we’re finally taking a look at the one element a good costume literally stands upon – shoes! There’s a lot to unpack here, so our first two entries will look at live-action sources, and the third will cover visual examples from EU sources.

I’ve done my best to break these down by category, but my research library is far from exhaustive!; these are mostly drawn from the Complete Visual Dictionary (DK) and Alinger’s SWCOT. (Even if I could afford a copy, Trisha Biggar’s Dressing a Galaxy is not as useful for those of us interested in ‘common’ galactic folk…plus, the prevalence of characters wearing long robes means we don’t often see any footwear anyway!).
Let’s get started by looking at what it seems just about everybody wears in the Galactic Civil War era:

**Riding boots**: Biggs Darklighter, Ben Kenobi, Dannik Jerriko, the Tonnika sisters, Han Solo;
Rebel pilots (0 BBY), Luke Skywalker (medal ceremony), Bespin wing guard, Alliance generals, Luke (4 ABY), Bib Fortuna

I didn’t include them here (because…y’know, space-fascism), but I should note that most ranking Imperials wear similar boots. If you’re portraying a character in the Civil War period, you really can’t go wrong with something tall, black, and shiny!

Plenty more examples within!

Diamonds in the Rough – Scott Bowen

As you might imagine, Scott’s initial inspiration for this character design was the ur-Rodian example, GREEDO! His goal had a challenge embedded, however: not only to create an original Rodian character, but also to try and stick to Greedo’s iconic orange/teal/yellow colorscheme. As we will see, he definitely succeeds!

read the complete interview!

Diamonds in the Rough: Sean S

read the full interview!

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!

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 OT: Pons Limbic, Figrin D’an (and the rest of the Modal Nodes), ‘The Prophetess’, Rebel honor guard, Yavin ceremony backgrounders, Tian Chyler & unknown(?) Cloud City woman

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!