With a number of Star Wars TV projects nominated at the Emmy Awards, Obi-Wan Kenobi costume designer Suttirat Larlarb takes a look at some of the costumes of the hit Disney Plus series, focusing on how important the clothing is to layering in elements that will be seen later in the timeline.
The colors of Queen Breha’s gown are intentionally related: The ivory of the dress recalls Princess Leia’s iconic gown from Lucas’ 1977 “Star Wars” while the blue, Larlarb says, is a nod to “the established colors of [their planet of Alderaan]” yet elevated for the royal event. The motif on the blue lining of her cape also has special significance. “I asked Lucasfilm’s Pablo Hidalgo if there were certain flowers associated with Alderaan, as I wanted to employ this notion that [family] symbols on royal clothing throughout history are often derived from the flora and fauna of the royal realm, and that the queens often express a connection to their homeland by wearing clothes whose textiles incorporate the use of those symbols through embellishment.”
A “Star Wars” manga mentions an Alderaanian flower called the “struggling pearl blossom,” so she pulled from that. She built the dress from a heavy ivory four-ply crepe to control the silhouette and keep it soft and fit, is in her play clothes and climbing trees with her droid. “The scene where the queen stops everything to retrieve her disobedient, playsuit-clad daughter while she is dressed very formally needed to express the distance Leia still has to traverse to become the icon in that white gown we eventually know,” says Larlarb. “I wanted to make sure the references to the future, iconic Princess Leia we meet in ‘A New Hope’ were clear.”
