May the fashion be with you

Today is D-day for every Star Wars fan. It’s Darth Day, when we finally get to find out how Anakin Skywalker turns into Darth Vader, and how he manages to get it on with Queen Amidala to sire Skywalker scions Luke and Leia.

Today marks the culmination of the saga that started 28 years ago with the original Star Wars, or Episode IV: A New Hope, as it is now known. If you were to ask me what my Top 10 films of all time are, the first Star Wars would surely rank in the top five. It was where I got a crush on – not Mark Hamill – but Harrison Ford, even if he was over 20 years older than I was.

George Lucas has said that people over 25 (the age group I belong to) are more loyal to the first trilogy, while youngsters under 25 like Episodes 1 and 2 better. All I can say is, he’s right. The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones, with their wooden acting, terrible scripts (with dialogue so bad that Leo DiCaprio reportedly passed on playing Anakin, leaving the field open for Hayden Christensen), and unconvincingly cartoonish CGI effects (JarJar: ugh), seem tailor-made for kids, even if all that political blather in the senate is sure to: a) go over their heads, or b) put them to sleep.

Part of the reason the first trilogy appeals more to my generation is that it had an extremely convincing look – what director Ridley Scott calls a "used future" look (a look that Scott himself used to great effect in his films Alien and Blade Runner). Alien cities like Mos Isley, the spacecraft and the clothes were so well-designed that they looked futuristic, yet had enough caked-in dirt and grime to actually make them look lived in, as opposed to the super-clean, smooth, two-dimensional effects we get today.

Credit goes to the young, hungry George Lucas, and to his brilliant costume designer, John Mollo, who actually won an Oscar for A New Hope. Most Star Wars diehards know that for the look of the original trilogy, he was heavily influenced by Akira Kurosawa’s films Hidden Fortress and Yojimbo. Those who know their Kurosawa also know that Lucas was more than influenced – the hero of Hidden Fortress is a samurai who guards a princess on her dangerous journey to another kingdom; on the way they pick up two sidekicks (one tall, one small) who provide much of the story’s comic relief.

No, the princess didn’t sport cinnamon buns on her head, but one look at Toshiro Mifune’s samurai robes, or the warriors’ helmets and armor in Kagemusha, and you experience an overwhelming sense of deja vu: Mollo somehow managed to make Mark Hamill and Alec Guinness look like convincing Jedi knights in Japanese judo gear, while Darth Vader’s snazzy black ensemble is ripped straight from the backs of ancient Japanese generals.

For the second trilogy, Lucas is collaborating with a new costume designer, Trisha Biggar, who’s doing a bang-up job of following in Mollo’s footsteps. Now that Anakin, Ben and the rest of the Jedi are swathed in uniform earth tones, Biggar’s biggest job is draping Padme Amidala of Naboo in stunning costumes fit for a queen.

In Phantom Menace, Amidala had on Eastern-flavored robes of royal red, and that far-out headgear that proclaimed "Yes, I am the future mother of Princess Leia."

In Attack of the Clones, she wore these filmy, plunging numbers that made her fatally attractive to Anakin Skywalker. One of the funnier ironies in the movie is that while in most of their scenes together she’s saying no, her clothes are blatantly saying yes.

For Revenge of the Sith, Biggar is really breaking out the big guns – or gowns, in this case. We all know there’s bound to be a seduction scene, for which Amidala is clad in a fetching lavender nightie. Later in the movie, when Amidala is pregnant, Biggar does her royal version of A Pea in the Pod with flowing aqua georgette gowns and brocaded maternity robes.

According to reports, bearing Jedi-empowered twins Luke and Leia did not take a toll on Natalie Portman, but she did have a few sympathy pains for her expectant Star Wars character.

"It was funny, because having the pregnancy hat on, it does make you go home, you get a little back pain in the evening, you get hungry for three," Portman said at the Cannes Film Festival, where the film screened last Sunday.

"But it actually made the costumes a lot more comfortable, because they were a lot more flowy and large for the belly, to account for the belly, as well. So it was a blessing in disguise."

Portman’s hair is also twisted into the famous buns in this last installment. Those wondering where this exotic coif came from should know that Lucas was actually inspired by a Hopi Indian hairdo.

Hayden Christensen, meanwhile, sports a windswept, ’70s hairdo designed to make him look like Mark Hamill did in Episode 4. As he goes over to the dark side, look for Biggar to inject a lot more menacing black into his wardrobe.

Meanwhile, at the premieres worldwide, fans are turning out in their favorite Star Wars costumes, and the most popular are the first-trilogy Imperial Stormtroopers and Jedi knights. Which just goes to show you that good design never goes out of fashion.