Jedi apparel

Jedi apparel is the term given to the attire of members of both the Old Jedi Order and New Jedi Order. Traditionally, Jedi wore clothes that befitted their monastic and attachment-free lifestyle, but variations on the theme were common, particularly after the rebirth of the order after the Galactic Civil War.

Traditional Robes
Sworn to a life of modesty and humility, Jedi were raised their entire life without possessions. Given what they needed and their desires controlled, most Jedi wore the traditional yet simple Jedi robes and did not feel the need for fancy and outstanding outfits. The simplicity of the Jedi apparel was in many ways symbolic of the selfless compassion that characterized the Jedi order.

Jedi robes were simple and comfortable, long, flowing robes, including tunics, pants, and a cloak, of which each generally varied in tones and shades of white, beige and brown. However, there were some Jedi that wore Jedi robes in other colors. Vandar Tokare and Zhar Lestin, for instance, would wear blue robes around the time of the Jedi Civil War, while their contemporary Vrook Lamar wore red robes. Four thousand years later, towards the fall of the Old Republic, Anakin Skywalker wore robes ranging from dark brown to black. The Jedi also wore utility belts, where they carried specialized field gear for their missions, and leather boots.

Whilst the exact appearance of the Jedi robes varied from individual to individual and from era to era, the basic concept of simplicity and functionality was present up to the time of the Great Jedi Purge.

Cultural influences
As they progress throughout their career and learn more of the heritage they left behind as children, some Jedi would customize their given costume into a reflection of pride and gratitude of their homeworlds, while others would wear traditional costumes of their homeworlds altogether but kept in the traditional color scheme of the Jedi apparel. Aayla Secura, like so many other Twi'lek Jedi, would wear garments approximating the traditional Twi'lek costumes, but kept in the characteristic brown colors of the Jedi apparel. Mirialan Jedi Luminara Unduli and Barriss Offee wore traditional dark Mirialan garments and facial tattoos. In other cases, the Jedi of specific planets would have traditions of their own in terms of clothing. Many Corellian Jedi, for instance, would wear green and robes of Ottegan silk, a tradition that Corran Horn would later carry on in the New Jedi Order.

Armor


During times of great conflict Jedi would sometimes require the use of battle armor. However useful battle armors were, they would often be a hindrance to the Jedi, as they might diminish the effect of many Force abilities, and also block out a few completely, such as Force speed for instance. Armor-clad Jedi were a common sight on the battlefields of the New Sith Wars, while the ancient Jedi of the era of the Old Sith Wars would often wear parts of armor to protect certain areas of their bodies, as would many Jedi of the New Sith Wars era. Shoulder guards were especially common among the ranks of the ancient Jedi.

Jedi armor was designed to be light and comfortable, giving the wearer as much freedom of movement and ability to use the Force as possible. However, the freedoms provided by Jedi armor were very limited compared to those provided by traditional Jedi robes. In the ancient wars between the Jedi and the Sith, the battlefields were often so packed with combatants that using the Force abilities blocked by armor and moving about freely on the battlefield would be difficult even without armor. This would result in immobile and poorly protected combatants, which may be why the Jedi of those eras chose to prioritise armor to mobility.

Throughout the New Sith Wars, Jedi would customize and modify their armors, while some preferred no to wear any armor at all. Towards the end of the New Sith Wars, as the Sith ranks were thinning, the Jedi reduced their armor to a helmet and a shoulder guard which provided protection against melee weapons strikes to those areas. After the Ruusan Reformation, the Jedi disposed of using battle armor altogether.



Around one thousand years later, the Clone Wars broke out. On certain occassions, Jedi, fighting side by side with clone troopers, would wear modified clone trooper armor. General Obi-Wan Kenobi wore clone trooper armor in the Battle of Muunilinst to protect himself from the lances of Durge and his army of swoop-riding assassin droids. Had it not been for the armor, Kenobi would probably have been killed by Durge, as he did get hit so hard by Durge's lance that his helmet flew off and was thrusted through the air.

After the Clone Wars, those few Jedi that survived Order 66 went into hiding so as not to fall victim to the Great Jedi Purge. Some of those ceased to wear traditional Jedi garments and would start wearing battle armor so as not to give themselves away as Jedi. Bultar Swan, for instance, started wearing battle armor, but eventually fell victim to the Jedi Purge. Other Jedi, like Drake Lo'gaan, would supplement their robes with bits and pieces of clone trooper armor.

Specialized garments
Certain missions or certain occupations within the Jedi Order would demand very specialized garments and equipment.

For instance, Jedi fighter aces would spend most of their time in a starfighter and would often wear pilot's jumpsuits, while Jedi healers, working in medical centers and on medical frigates, would wear specialized garments functionally suiting their sterile environment. Saesee Tiin owned a specialized space suit designed for combat in the vacuum of space, which he would wear when boarding enemy capital ships. Kit Fisto who was an amphibian did not have any use for diving gear while on underwater missions and would thus wear a pair of trunks only to provided him with a maximal capacity for moving under water.

Also, certain occupations within the Jedi Order were associated with specific variations on the traditional apparel. It was traditional for Jedi librarians to wear a variant of the traditional Jedi robes with elaborate embroidered patterns on it. Both Atris and Jocasta Nu wore such attirements.

Atypical Jedi outfits
Some Jedi of the old order did not wear the traditional Jedi robes, but preferred other types of attirements for various different reasons.

Some, like Thon, Ooroo and Ikrit did not wear eny form of garments at all, because they did not have the physionomy for it.

Others like Dark Woman and Dorn Tavers had worldviews that were different from that of the mainstream Jedi which would be reflected in their atypical choice of garments. Ancient Jedi Shaela Nuur who died during the Great Hunt wore a black and red full-body battle suit during the hunt, unlike her compagnions Guun Han Saresh and Duron Qel-Droma, who wore traditional Jedi robes. Her contemporaries Sylvar and Oss Willum were atypical in that they, perhaps in conjunction with their cultural backgrounds but more likely to achieve maximal comfortability and freedom of movement, wore the sparsest of clothings. An extreme opposite to Sylvar and Willum was Revan who both as a Jedi and a Sith wore a black battle armor, a black cloak and a black face-concealing mask. Later, after he was redeemed and reaccepted into the ranks of the Jedi Order, he would wear a variety of clothings ranging from civilian clothings over battle suits and armors to traditional Jedi Robes. His compagnion on the quest for the Star Forge, Bastila, prefered wearing a tight and flexible full-body suit, kept in the color scheme of the traditional Jedi robes, while another compagnion the Jedi outcast Jolee Bindo were clothes that approximated the traditional Jedi robes.

Ancient Jedi Knight Andur Sunrider, who was married to Nomi Sunrider and the father of Vima Sunrider until he was murdered, preferred wearing civilian clothings of his era. While of a very different design than the traditional Jedi robes, Andur's clothes, which typically consisted of grey shirt underneath a brown leather jacket and a pair of practical utility trousers, did nevertheless fit in with the color pattern of the Jedi dress code. Widowed, Nomi Sunrider, who was herself a Force-sensitive reluctantly took up Jedi training under various Masters, including Thon and Odan-Urr. Like her deceased husband, Nomi wore civilian clothings rather than Jedi robes, her preferred color appearing to be green. The reason could be that she started her Jedi training as an adult and thus already had developed preferences for apparel, or maybe she wore them to honor Andur. Given that she despised violence and refrained from using lightsabers, her wearing civilian clothes might have been her way of expressing her dislike of violence and warfare.

The New Jedi Order
In Luke Skywalker's New Jedi Order, Jedi would wear various clothings including simple every-day clothes, elaborate traditional clothings as well as militarily based clothings and pilot's jumpsuits.

Variety of the New Jedi Order
While individual Jedi who did not adhere to the "dress codes" of the Old Order were few enough to make variety a rarity, the Jedi of Luke Skywalker's New order would display much more variety. One reason was probably that most members the first generation of New Jedi were already adults when they were first introduced to the way of the Jedi and had already developed tastes and preferences for clothing in terms of both aesthetics and functionality. However the New Jedi would wear traditional robes for formal occasions, or Jedi gatherings, such as the Conclave on Ossus.

While some swore to the traditional apparel of the Old Order or the culturally based variations of it, many would wear whatever clothes they felt more confortable in. Ganner Rhysode and Corran Horn, for instance, would wear more traditional garments, the latter often wearing the traditional robes of past Corellian Jedi knights to honor his Jedi ancestors. Kyle Katarn would wear the same outfits as in his mercenary days, while Mara Jade preferred whatever gave her the most freedom of movement, often wearing tight-fitting flexible black garments. Lowbacca preferred wearing as little garments as possible as was typical of Wookiee culture. Raynar Thul wore the colors of the Alderaanian noble Thul family.

Some Jedi, such as Kyp Durron of the New Order sometimes wore so-called Jedi Cloaks with a New Republic emblem on them. These cloaks were frequently seen during the Leviathan crisis and might possible have been water repellent, protecting the Jedi from rain and similar weather conditions.

Jumpsuits
During the era of Luke Skywalker's New Jedi Order most Jedi were accomplished pilots and this required them to complete missions in their jumpsuits. Because of this, Jedi became known not only from their Jedi robes but also their jumpsuits which they found to be flexible enough to accommodate their unique fighting styles. However, not all Jedi wore jumpsuits. Jaden Korr, for instance, while traveling primarily in a Z-95 Headhunter, did not wear jumpsuits on his missions.

While the fighter aces of the Old Jedi Order would often wear jumpsuits on missions, it probably did not have any connection to the preference for jumpsuits by many of the New Order Jedi. It is more likely that the use of jumpsuits was introduced into the New Order by Luke Skywalker, who himself would often wear jumpsuits on missions back in his days as a Rebel starfighter pilot days before he became a Jedi.

Jumpsuits did carry on the notion of simplicity and functionality associated with the Jedi robes of the Old order in the sense that jumpsuits were not unnecessarily elaborate or fancy, and the provided maximal mobility on ground-based missions in addition to their obvious advantages for starfighter piloting. Moreover, jumpsuits were often provided with a number of pockets, making it easier for the jedi to carry various objects and tools.

Behind the scenes
In an interview Dan Thorsland, editor of the Tales of the Jedi comicbooks argues that wearing armor is not consistent with the way of the Jedi:

"You won't see Jedi wearing a lot of armor, and there's a reason for that. So we make sure no one's running around looking like King Arthur from Excalibur. That's not the way of a Jedi."

- Dan Thorsland

This is in contrast with the way that the Jedi are depicted in Jedi vs. Sith&mdash;set in the New Sith Wars&mdash;where most of the Jedi are armor clad. The Knights of the Old Republic games on the other hand preserve consistency with the typical Jedi appparel in that, even though the player may wear battle armor, doing so blocks the use of many Force powers, such as Force speed.