Star Wars Episode I: Production Notes

A variety of antique pieces of beaded lace decorate the underdress. The costume's middle robe is made of red and green short velvet, embroidered in bronze. A special technique added texture and depth to the material. The robe's collar and cuffs are decorated with metallic gold braid, using a stitching method called trapunto, in which small tubes are stitched in a design into which thread is injected to give a small padded effect. This, too, was a time-consuming process, taking one person a week to do the embroidery and trapunto. Over the robe is a faux fur cape with heavily padded peaked shoulders that were built in the shape of a pyramid. The cape was then lined with red silk.

This costume, like the others, has an elaborate headdress. The Queen's Senate appearance headdress, which has a Mongolian feel, was the heaviest. The piece was plated in gold to get the right quality of color, then decorated with little jewels. "We felt this headdress was worth the effort, weight and expense of having real gold," says Biggar.

Another headdress was made from an antique piece of beading from an exotic dancer's skirt, circa 1920. Part of the headdress comes down onto Portman's forehead; the beads are then draped up over the rest of the headdress, which results in a bangs-like look. The accompanying dress was based on a Japanese kimono look, with Biggar adding unique designs of her own. She accentuated the sleeves quite a bit, calling them "penguin sleeves" because they were so rounded they looked somewhat like a penguin. Machine and hand embroideries were used for this complex creation.

The costumes presented several unique challenges not only to Biggar and her team, but to Natalie Portman as well. For each headdress, a cast of Portman's head was taken, from which this and all of the Queen's headdresses were built.

In addition, putting on the Queen's elaborate and weighty costumes required both creative and practical thinking. So the filmmakers came up with in ingenious way of getting the actress ready with minimal time and effort: they dressed her in "pieces." The undergarments were put on in the dressing room; Portman then traveled to the soundstage where she would be fitted with the rest of the costume. In addition to making it easier for Portman to movie around between shots, this process helped to prevent wear and tear on the outfit.

The retinue of handmaidens who follow the Queen on her adventures also had to have different outfits to attend to their leader. Their costumes were always designed with the Queen's outfits in mind, receiving the same attention to detail and style. "We tried," says Biggar, "to keep the handmaidens in vertical costumes, with the Queen wearing all kinds of big diagonals and drapery to make her seem bigger than life -- and her handmaidens small and petite."

The Handmaiden Travel costume was made in part by a special dyeing technique. The costume's color palette shifts from pale yellow at the bottom to a strong orange at the top. In order to ensure the dress would have the same level of dye throughout, it was dyed in small pieces.

The Handmaiden's Senate costume is made up of several panels; if the dress had to be taken in, the number of panels would have to be altered. The costume's undergarment is made out of a canvas-like material and steel, making it very rigid and difficult to walk in. The shape is formed so there is no movement in the outer fabric. The costume also has a hood with panels that were cut to fit the individual actresses who wore them.

Another special fashion opportunity came from the costumes that were intended for non-human characters. Here, too, Biggar and her team spent considerable time designing and manufacturing the costumes. For one particular costume, Biggar and company meticulously placed actual stones, collected from a beach, into the outfit's rubber body. But the Tunisian desert heat caused the rubber to expand -- and the stones to start popping out. Much time was spent reinserting the critical accessory.

Designing the costumes of the Jedi Knights offered different challenges to McCaig and Biggar. The Jedi "look" was already familiar to countless Star Wars fans. In addition, a principal location in the new film is the desert planet Tatooine, which was last seen in Star Wars. These familiar characters and locales provided McCaig and Biggar with the opportunity to maintain fashion continuity from the first three films, while adding some of their own special touches.

To link these previous looks through to Episode I, Biggar visited the Lucasfilm archives, where she studied some of the past costumes in detail. Nevertheless, Episode I's story required some new fabrics or design modifications. In a departure from the previous films, all Jedi costumes are made of silk, linen or very fine wool. Some changes were also made in the undergarments to the original costumes; they were now more suitable and wearer-friendly for the new film's acrobatic fight and stunt scenes and lightsaber battles.

While young Anakin Skywalker is a complex character, his costume was one of the simplest. McCaig and Biggar came up with a slave costume that was virtually identical to the one worn by Anakin's future son, Luke Skywalker, in the first film's Tatooine scenes. For the lightning-paced Podrace, Anakin dons a special helmet and World War I-style goggles. The Podrace headgear was based on a surprisingly terrestrial and everyday source -- a child's bicycle helmet. Of course, some new accouterments were placed on top of the helmet to give it a unique look.