Upgrading the Rebel persona: flak vest

As the name of the game in rigorous reenacting is ‘continual improvement’, I’m always on the lookout for things to help add some depth or otherwise level-up my impressions. While Rebel characters typically steer away from the plastoid armor side of things, I realized that the ribbed vests worn by various characters were probably meant to protect the vital organs and so would be perfect for a partisan persona as well!

Rebel pilots, BoShek, Bossk; 1313 mercenaries, Ruusan rebel (Dave Dorman)


A few months ago, my buddy Anders (of DT Blasterworks) sent me a link to a lower-priced rebel pilot-style flak vest he was thinking about buying. Since my initial impetus for building a SectorForces partisan/guerilla kit was to pair Alliance-issued materiel with local planetary style, I had initially considered including one of these vests. The only one I had looked into was produced by Wampa Wear; at $125, while it’s probably—if anything like their flightsuits—extremely well-made and screen-accurate, I couldn’t justify paying that much for a purely costume piece…so the idea returned to the back burner.

However, Anders’ link (and his report that it was decent quality) renewed my interest, so at about 1/3rd the price of a Wampa Wear vest, I pulled the trigger. Out of the package, I could tell the vest fell in the category of “close enough”, about which I’ve written before: presumably, there are variations on the flak vest throughout the galaxy, and they’re not all produced identically. All the same, I still wanted to try my hand at ‘accuratizing’ the cheapo vest to see if I couldn’t get it a little closer to Alliance specs, as a few things stood out to me that could use tweaking:

The to-do list:
-fix the diameter and spacing of the sewn channels
-bind the curved edges with twill tape
-replace the rear buckle
-replace the large side clasps (down the line)
continue reading

Galactic Style Guide – Identification

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’! In this entry, we’re taking a look at examples of a rarely-seen category of ‘pocket trash’ which can really help to ground an impression in the Galaxy Far Far Away – we’re talking ID cards!
To show the evolution over time, I’ve chosen to present these in real-world chronological order, starting with examples from the West End Games era.

MerenData IPI-1000 (Galladinium’s Fantastic Technology sourcebook, 1995)
New Republic historian Voren Na’al wears his ID clipped to his tunic and on his belt (SWRPG 2nd Edition Revised & Expanded, 1996)
many more examples within!

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!

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

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 two Halcyon cruisers, Max and his wife, about the creation of their excellent smuggler/civilian outfits!

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 98% 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.

buttons onscreen in OT and PT: Pons Limbic, Figrin D’an (and the rest of the Modal Nodes), Rebel honor guard, Yavin ceremony backgrounders, Tian Chyler, Jango Fett, Elan Sleazebaggano
more visible fasteners after the jump

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!

Galactic Style Guide – Color II

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 mistakes that can make an outfit look Not Star Warsy. As part of the Galactic Style Guide, the ultimate goal is still to help you create a more accurate ‘outer persona’ – but we approach the goal from the opposite direction!
As I teased last time, we’re going to be working with at an excellent tool for helping us see the ‘Star Wars look’ in action: Mando Creator . This handy bit of coding lets users create their own two-dimensional Mandalorian outfit by customizing every element in terms of design, color, and decoration. If you’ve used Bitmoji, HeroCreator, or similar avatar-making tools, it’s pretty easy to get the hang of. I’d never played with it before, and in 20 minutes I had made up my own hypothetical Mandalorian kit!:

when you know the rules, it’s really not that hard to make something that looks passably in-universe

One of the coolest parts—at least for the purposes of training our ‘Star Wars Eye’—is the Armor Gallery feature, where we find (in addition to a few novelty designs and face characters like Din Djarin and the Fetts) a wide variety of completed assemblages submitted by other users.

two easy tweaks to boost your in-universe style accuracy!

Diamonds in the Rough: G. Palmer

Over the years, I’ve seen easily thousands of Star Wars costumers come across my various feeds. While there are plenty of folks with screen-accurate face character outfits in the Legions, the ‘OC’ section of the community can be a little more…hit-or-miss. In this recurring feature, I’ll be sharing my interviews with several stand-out examples of the foundation of what we aspire to do here – accurately portraying the common galactic citizen. I hope that these individuals can help illustrate what Star Wars ‘reenacting’—or at the very least, high-quality in-universe costuming—looks like, and provide some insights into their character creations.

In our first entry, we’re spotlighting G. Palmer, who has put together a first-rate impression of a common droid mechanic:

SWLH: What was your initial inspiration for this character design?
GP: I was inspired by the kinds of background characters that are seen for a few seconds and then disappear around a corner or through a doorway.

Interview continues in-depth within