reenacting – Page 3 – Living History in the Star Wars Galaxy

Diamonds in the Rough – ‘Kryos’

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 learning from T.H., who has taken skills he honed as a historic reenactor and applied them to the GFFA setting, to great success with his excellent Mandalorian kit, ‘Kryos’:

When asked about his initial inspiration for this character design, TH says he was born in winter and has always felt a connection to snow, so creating a snow-based kit was only logical! As we would expect, the snowtroopers of Episode V were a big influence.
TH began the creation of this outfit by looking to “many influences”, not only the aforementioned snowtroopers, but also Echo Base rebels, other ‘arctic Mandalorian’ fan costumes, and real-world cultures from harsh climates, like historic Scandinavians. While he admitted that many of these inspirations didn’t end up in the final costume, as he says, “the research helps in getting on the right path.”

more insights in the full interview

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?

An Introduction to Galactic Glamping: laid-back camping in a galaxy far far away

Hello there! Instead of a fresh entry in the Diamonds in the Rough series, this week I’m happy to present a guest post, courtesy of Anders of DT Blasterworks. Be sure to read to the end to learn about an exciting upcoming Star Wars reenacting event!

The intent of “Galactic Glamping” is to have a fun, relaxed, car-camping experience while enjoying the Star Wars aesthetic: it’s another way to enjoy cosplay outside of the confines of a hotel or convention center and really get in touch with the way the characters interact with their environment. In this primer, we’ll go over the look of the gear and equipment you should be using, some good in-universe food and snack ideas, and general recommendations. The most important thing about this is comfort and convenience—by not having to carry everything in on your back, and instead letting your “speeder” carry your gear, you aren’t limited to lightweight, small items. You can bring that heavy tent, use hard-sided containers like footlockers and coolers to transport your stuff, and cook a good meal out there!

Luke may have been “roughing it”, but his campsite is a great example of what this activity can look like!

Learn more about galactic glamping within!

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 1/3^rd 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)

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 – Tents and Shelters

Welcome back to another installment of the Galactic Style Guide, where we break down the ‘Star Wars aesthetic’ in order to help you create a more authentic ‘outer persona’! While the Style Guide has traditionally been concerned with topics of clothing and personal adornment, one’s outer persona can also include GEAR. Well, summer has arrived and after spending half of last year in a tent with my wife on the Appalachian Trail, I had two questions on my mind:
1) what kinds of shelters might adventurers in the Galaxy Far, Far Away use to protect themselves from the elements? And 2) are there any tents readily available in 2022 that might approximate these galactic styles?
The answer may surprise you!
While this topic might not be much use to readers planning a visit to the Galactic Starcruiser or their local fan convention, it’s important to remember that ‘doing (in the reenacting/living history sense) Star Wars‘ can (and probably should) take more authentic forms, and that if you want to venture into the outlands or create an in-universe encampment—like say, for an upcoming GFFA airsoft event?—having a good shelter can really come in handy.

While tents seen in earlier Star Wars materials (or only described in text) tend towards the unrealistic (at least by current capabilities)*, many shelters from visual media are actually fairly mundane, which is great for those wishing to create a reenacting encampment, or undertake an in-universe backpacking trip! _{*for a perfect example of this, see Mace Windu’s “wallet tent” in the novel Shatterpoint, which packed down to the size of a pocket yet could automatically unfold into a two-person shelter}

**Military command tents:** *Jedi Vs. Sith*; *To the Vanishing Point*.

Readily-available Star Wars tents after the jump

Coming soon: a new way to exercise your ‘Star Wars eye’

Whenever I go to the thrift store, I usually cruise the racks on the lookout for certain materials—chiefly linen, wool, and silk—to be cannibalized into items for my various reenacting kits. After years and years of doing this, I can often identify a piece’s fiber content just by walking or thumbing past it, with no need to check the tag. When I go thrift-shopping with my wife, she will often remark and wonder on how I’m able to do this, and the answer is simple: trial and error, reinforced by years of practice. It’s a kind of exercise, and I’ve simply trained my ‘fabric eye’ to recognize one cloth from another.

(This is the same type of practiced skillset that allows me to go into the woods with the Middle-earth Reenactment Society and confidently pick a stalk of nettle or milkweed out of a thicket of other dead, gray plant stalks when we’re in need of some wild cordage on a trek).

What does this have to do with star wars, you ask?

Attention! Your input is needed!

Hello there, folks! We don’t have a regular post for you this week, but believe me that next week will more than make up for it (a triple-header, in fact)!

As I was reflecting recently, I’ve been a maker of Star Wars clothing, costumes, props, and gear for over 20 years! After building and growing my skills for so long, I’ve been thinking it might be time to try and turn my hobby into a small business. So…

To help identify my market and see what potential products people might be interested in, I’ve created a short, anonymous survey, which you can find HERE. Your participation will be greatly appreciated – thank you!

Galactic Style Guide – Children

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’! This time we’re looking at a segment of the galactic population which we don’t tend to see much of: ~~children~~ younglings!
As it sounds like a major target market for Disney’s Galactic Starcruiser hotel is families with children—and because I’ve seen many would-be guests express uncertainty about how to dress their children in GFFA style—I thought it would be especially helpful to collect and share some examples of in-universe clothing worn by children. I’ve attempted to present them chronologically and grouped by planet.

We begin in the distant past, on Ruusan during the New Sith Wars c. 1,000 BBY. Here we see the first appearance of a general trend of children wearing shorts and/or short sleeves (or no sleeves!):

It’s worth noting that pretty much every youth we see on Tatooine is a slave, so I’m not sure how much their style of dress is indicative of childhood under the twin suns versus social status (would young Luke have worn something similar as a farmhand?). One thing is for sure, while the garments themselves are simple construction, the cloth they’re constructed from has a lot of texture! However, we know (Dressing a Galaxy, p11) that Anakin’s tunic was made of a silk/linen/hemp blend (presumably the others were something similar), which sounds pretty comfortable (well, except for all the sand).

**the Mos Espa junkyard gang:** Anakin, Amee, Melee, Wald, Seek.

Click here for examples from Naboo, Dantooine, Alderaan, and more!

Doing right by (fictional) History

In historic reenacting circles online, rarely do I see anyone say, ‘Thinking about starting on a Fallschirmjager kit. Show me some FJ impressions for inspiration!’. The best and most authentic ‘inspo’ is not other reenactors’ kits, it’s the primary sources themselves!: wartime photography or film, military manuals, soldiers’ diaries, etc.
Reenacting/living history in the Star Wars setting is no different – if you want to build an authentic impression of x, you don’t look for what others have done (that’s how reenactorisms get spread), you look at the media where that impression comes from – the film, TV, book, video game, or comic book.

If one takes a quick scroll-through of facebook’s largest general reenacting group, Living History~ show your impressions (currently 19,000+ members), a pattern quickly emerges:
“Roman auxiliary, Teutoberg, Germania, Autumn 9 CE”
“Loyalist rat catcher, Philadelphia summer of 1781”
“Confederate widow in mourning, Richmond Virginia, early 1865”
“LIFE Magazine photographer attached to C Troop, 82nd Armored Reconnaissance Battalion, 2nd Armored Division in Autumn 1944.”
“Cpl Bradshaw, Automatic Rifleman of Dog Company, 2nd Battalion, 5th Marines, 1st Provisional Marine Brigade, Pusan, Republic of Korea, August 3rd, 1950”