Tag: costume

In defense of ‘close enough’

Let’s talk about fish-lady sweaters for a second.
When a Mon Calamari showed up in The Mandalorian Chapter 11 wearing an off-the-rack fisherman’s sweater, the community lost no time in memeifying it before hopping on Amazon to snatch up one or two for themselves. I find it encouraging that people are interested in costuming a common civilian for once (instead of the rare-in-universe but over-represented-in-cosplay Jedi/Sith/Mando/bounty hunter ‘player classes’)…but if I was looking to put together a GFFA dockworker impression, I definitely wouldn’t go out and buy the exact onscreen sweater—and not just because they’re probably now very scarce! Here’s why.

Continue reading “In defense of ‘close enough’”

Thoughts on ‘The Heiress’

Welcome back to my breakdown of The Mandalorian Season 2 episodes, this time Chapter 11 ‘The Heiress’. I guess I should start disclaiming at the top:
YAR, HERE THERE BE SPOILERS. READERS, YE BE WARNED.
When I watched the episode the first time, I was definitely subconsciously picking up on the Apollo 13 reentry sequence vibes…that film is too imprinted on my brain for me to not notice, but I didn’t make the connection for the reason behind it – this chapter was directed by Ron Howard’s daughter. Well then, of course it makes sense she would pay homage to her father’s masterpiece!   Some of my friends have also picked up on the Firefly/Serenity vibe of a falling-apart spaceship slowly shedding parts. Seeing as we’ll never get more Firefly, having Firefly stuff in other properties works fine for me.
As the ship is trying to set down on the landing pad, I noticed the sound of the Razor Crest’s engines ‘coughing’ and trying to turn over is the same as Anakin’s podracer in Episode I doing the same thing, which is some nice continuity.

In general, I really like the nautical feeling of this whole chapter. The synopsis was something like “Mando braves danger on the high seas” so I wasn’t sure what to expect, but when he arrived at what was essentially a seaport town, it started to make sense, and the latter half of the episode is essentially ‘Mando turns pirate!’ I love all the Mon Calamari and Quarren dock workers, with their waders and knit fisherman’s sweaters! It’s so refreshing to include a location so geared towards the ‘common’, especially as it creates a great opportunity for a ‘GFFA living historian’ to interpret some seaside skills (rope splicing? lobster pot baiting?) in an authentic manner.

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Finding Your Place in the Galaxy

I was recently sent this video of the ‘Mando march’ parade held at Star Wars Celebration ’17. Since social gatherings are now few and far between in these days of COVID, I wanted to share it with you here, not only as a visual aid for my points in this essay, but also just for a vicarious dose (albeit virtual) of the con experience for which many are currently in withdrawal.
After watching, I had two (okay, three) reactions:

1) Man, the Mando costuming community is bloody Inclusive. There are folks of ALL ages, abilities, body types, and (I’m guessing, since they’re all helmeted) races, genders, and sexual orientations on display in that parade, all with their love of all things Klingon Mandalorian proudly on display. Good on them! With that said, though… Continue reading “Finding Your Place in the Galaxy”

Galactic Style Guide – Comm badges

Welcome back to the Galactic Style Guide, the monthly series where we take a close look at the elements that make up the ‘Star Wars aesthetic’ to help you build a more accurate ‘outer persona’!
In this installment, we’re focusing on the little doodads that everyone seems to have on their vests and jackets nowadays. Official sources can’t agree on what they are—the Complete Visual Dictionary refers to them as a ‘rank plaque’, ‘rank insignia’, ‘communications badge’, or ‘command insignia’, while I believe the RougeOne reference guide calls them ‘personal transponders’, so who knows? Despite not appearing in the original Star Wars ’77, these devices have gained in popularity (especially among the ‘Batuu-bounding’ crowd) after frequent inclusion in many post-Disney materials. Since 9 times out of 10 they’re worn by Rebel Alliance characters, we didn’t see Any in the Prequel era (I could be wrong, though; leave a comment below if you know otherwise!)

Only two styles of badge are seen in Episode V. These use easily-castable or vacuformable shapes and components with brightly colored buttons. The first (we’ll call it Hoth #1) is worn by our three lead characters and the hangar technicians, suggesting they are transponders and not related to rank.

Hoth #1: worn around Echo Base by Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Leia Organa, and hangar technicians

Continue reading “Galactic Style Guide – Comm badges”

Galactic Style Guide – Belts of the Galaxy

Welcome to the first installment of the Galactic Style Guide, a monthly series in which I will be collecting and curating many visual examples of a single type of in-universe item. Why am I doing this, you ask? Besides having a lot of time on my hands in quarantine, too often when we think of ‘Star Wars’, we limit ourselves to thinking only of the main cast of characters, with secondary or background characters falling by the wayside. In this series, I hope to turn an analytical eye towards the incredible variety that collectively creates the larger ‘galactic aesthetic’. To my knowledge, this sort of project has never been done before, and I suspect will likely prove very useful to those of you heading (once they reopen, post-pandemic) to Disney’s Galaxy’s Edge parks, which are becoming very accommodating of GFFA-style outfits (provided they don’t stray too close to those of main characters). By shining a spotlight on previously-overlooked designs, I hope OC cosplayers and potential ‘Batuu bounders’ will see that there are many more options for Star Wars style beyond copying Han, Luke, Leia, Lando, etc.
With that out of the way, for our first installment, we’re looking at BELTS. Let’s get started!

Rectangular plates:Ben Kenobi, Shaak Ti (22 BBY); Luke Skywalker, ‘Galen Erso’; Dannik Jerriko
Continue reading “Galactic Style Guide – Belts of the Galaxy”

Thoughts on Disney Galaxy’s Edge Cast Costumes

Last week, images were released which revealed the costumes to be worn by ‘cast members’ at the forthcoming ‘Star Wars land’ attractions at Disney parks. I don’t actively follow post-Disney developments, but what I’ve gathered via geek-internet-osmosis is that these cast members will essentially be playing the role of NPCs (non-player characters) who visitors can interact with and who will provide in-universe ‘atmosphere’ for the public, plus manning restaurants (food+beverage) and vending?
While I’m not concerned with ‘NewCanon’, I have spent the last three+ years breaking down the conventions of Galaxy Far Far Away fashion and subtly integrating them into my civilian wardrobe…so when I heard that these Disney park costumes would be ‘everyday’ clothing, I had to see how they lined up with my observations.
Continue reading “Thoughts on Disney Galaxy’s Edge Cast Costumes”

Revisiting the winter hat

(Apologies for my delay in postings of late…with winter holidays arrived I now have a few weeks’ reprieve from school-matters, which I intend to use to finish up some posts and projects for this site).

Last winter, as I reskinned my Swedish milsurp hat, I was left with a few quibbles. (I find it’s helpful to write down these thoughts for just this very reason, so that I know what needs tweaking should I decide to revisit the project down the road):

“Were I to undertake this project again, I would’ve done a few things differently:
-using a heavier khaki material–like the plentiful scraps I had leftover from my donut helmet (uncovered only after I had finished this project!)
-only using two layers of wool for the flaps, instead of three.
-better copying the shape of the curvy panels that are added to the flaps.
-making the rear ribbed panel shorter (to better match the original artwork), while extending the neck coverage and shortening up the flaps a bit.”

As the weather has been getting cooler, I’ve been having to wear my flap hat more often, and as I’ve also been integrating more and more Star Wars style into my daily wardrobe, I finally felt that the vaguely-close-enough-ness of my hat just wasn’t accurate (or hardcore) enough.
And so, after pondering on what would be involved, I decided to go ahead and tackle the Pfilbee Jhorn Hat, Mark II.PfilbeeJhorn1

^ The look we’re going for^

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Ode to the Side-Release Buckle

 

 

While I currently have several projects on the proverbial back burner–waiting on, among other things, a modeler, a printer, and a blacksmith–I am doing my best to keep the blog from lapsing into content-hiatus. This week, I offer a simple collection of images, centered around the humble side-release buckle. This piece of costume hardware was apparently commonplace throughout the Galaxy, and so would be an appropriate item to include in one’s GFFA kit.
Continue reading “Ode to the Side-Release Buckle”

Searching for civilian style on Naboo

When I first started toying with the idea of portraying a Rebel ‘partisan’, I knew I wanted to integrate elements of the local planetary fashion, but also include enough elements of the larger galactic style so that the impression would still be recognizably Star Wars.
Finding the right ratio between the two would be the real trick, since a) Naboo’s nobles in the late Republic period tended to dress in an impractical, distinct Renaissance style, b) we don’t really know what Naboo fashion was like during the Imperial period, and as I’ve written before, it’s hard to be taken seriously as a guerilla fighter when you’re dressed like Catherine de Medici. If I wanted to pull this off, I was going to have to do some detective work.
 Continue reading “Searching for civilian style on Naboo”

Step 2.5 – What Will You Do?

Before continuing, you should first decide what you are going to do when you are doing GFFA living-history. In other words, what form will it take?, and how involved will you be? When people are involved in these pursuits for non-fictional settings, we can usually group them in two types: ‘reenactors’, and ‘historical interpreters’. What’s the difference between these? As Master Townsend explains,

“A reenactor, in the truest sense of the word, is like a bit-role actor in a movie. They help fill out the set. Reenactors typically have no speaking role. They usually have limited direct public interaction.
Reenacting is a great entry point into Living History for beginners. You don’t have to develop a specific individual persona to reenact. While it can be the easiest method of Living History, it can be an expensive direction to go*, depending on the persona type one chooses to portray.”

*See the 501st for walking examples of this—a set of stormtrooper armor will set you back several paychecks, but once you assemble and put it on, all you have to do is walk around and you’re in business.

The analogy to background characters in a movie is especially apt in this case, as the background characters in Star Wars films are excellent inspirational examples. These extras don’t interact with the ‘public’—the film audience—but they really help sell the illusion that the Galaxy is a living, breathing, vibrant setting (now there’s a good homework assignment: pick a SW movie and pay attention only to the background characters! I’ve found this is easier with a foreign audio track turned on – if you’re not focused on the dialogue, you can use more ‘brain bandwidth’ for looking at details!).

Townsend’s explanation of a reenactor sounds very close to what a costumed fan already does at a convention—they are an appropriately-costumed warm body that stands around and gets photographed, and the depth of public interaction is shallow. When was the last time you asked a cosplayer what planet they were born on, or asked them what they’re carrying in their utility-belt pouches? Continue reading “Step 2.5 – What Will You Do?”