A History of Cool Jackets in the Star Wars Universe
Han had the good looks. He always had the good looks. He was cool, he was suave, he got the chicks, and he most definitely shot first. Another thing about Han was that he was always stylish. Our introduction into the Star Wars Universe wasn’t one with the flashiness of Flash Gordon or the clean look of Star Trek. Star Wars was dirty and that’s what made it so good. Han first appeared in a dingy old bar. The kind that I liked to go to before I was married with a little one. Han was a bit of a womanizer too. While we may not have seen much of it in the film verse, the Expanded Universe was all too quick to tell us about his many relationships with the other sex. Who can blame the ladies for falling for the ruffian when you couple his over-flowing charisma with his cool style?
When The Empire Strikes Back exploded onto screen, launching the now-famous members of the Star Wars cast into mega-super-stardom, the standard of wearing cool jackets in a far away galaxy continued. Han Solo, Luke Skywalker, and Leia Organa all found themselves on a frozen planet called Hoth. They thought they were going to be able to just hang out a while but it wasn’t long before the trio of heroes had to evacuate the planet before Darth Vader unleashed a galactic ass whooping on them. Even though they spent most of the first two movies on the run, Luke, Han, and Leia looked damned cool doing it. So cool, in fact, that Columbia Sportswear has begun making their versions of the jackets worn by the heroes on Hoth.
Before the Star Wars films went into hibernation for an extended amount of time we were given one last look at the cool jacket-wearing ability of Han Solo. The Rebel Alliance had finally learned that a second Death Star was under construction and was sending an elite group of men and women to take out the shield generator on the nearby moon of Endor. Most of the team ended up wearing a camouflage poncho getup but Han had made a career out of bucking the trends. He pulled off what is probably the only cool camo trench coat in movie history.
When we first meet this tan and striped-red leather jacket in The Force Awakens, awesome pilot Poe Dameron is wearing it and getting captured by The First Order and that emo kid dressed all in black. Poe loses the jacket and Finn “acquires” it like it’s some Starter jacket on a drive-by victim in 1993. Finn was nice enough to at least off Poe his jacket back when they run into each other after the big battle but Poe had already replaced the jacket with a more comfortable one he found in an old antique store. I don’t know where these guys get so much time to shop when they’re always out warring in the stars?
