Living History in the Star Wars Galaxy
applying the methods of progressive historic reenacting to the Galaxy Far, Far Away
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:
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!
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.
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:
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:
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:
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 belowHello 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!
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!:
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!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.
Whenever I come across someone online showing off an original Star Wars costume, few things can make it feel out-of-universe faster than visible Earthly fasteners. This should come as no surprise, as the lack of visible fasteners (zippers, buttons, etc) was one of Lucas’ chief design points when creating the original film’s visual style (see Alinger’s SWCOT). While working on a future installment of Galactic Style Guide, I realized I should probably lead by example and make sure none of my own kit pieces broke this rule…and if any did, to fix them ASAP!
Since a lot of my gear has been purpose-built for GFFA living history, most of it is fastener-free. However, some of the milsurp pieces I use would need tweaking; the first of these was my satchel, originally an M9A1 gas mask bag:
Living History in the Star Wars Galaxy 