From A New Hope (1977). Image via Lucasfilm/Disney/20th Century Fox.
6. Luke Skywalker
Dressing a Galaxy, in its mini entry on Luke Skywalker’s Tatooine costume, quotes designer John Mollo as saying that George Lucas didn’t want people to notice the costumes in Star Wars (136).
One supposes that Lucas just had to content himself with people noticing the costumes enough to write a project like this, almost forty years after the first release of ANH.
When we first meet him, he’s wearing white and cream and is bored out of his mind on Tatooine, wanting to go join the Imperial academy, and his clothes suggest this. He’s young, untested, basically a teenager who really wants to pick up some more power converters and think about leaving the farm and getting some adventure in his life.
Luke’s light, airy clothes ended up influencing the shapes of other Tatooine residents like Shmi Skywalker and Owen Lars for the prequel trilogy (136). However, the whites and creams do make him stand out from the bland brown deserts of his home planet. The tunic he wears also calls in terms of shape to both Obi-Wan Kenobi and Owen Lars, but Luke’s whites bring him closer to his new mentor, Obi-Wan.
Incidentally, they also visually tie him to Leia and Han, although Han, as per usual, stands out more.