Han Solo Costume

I've been a long time Star Wars fan and one day realized that I didn't have to only cosplay as female characters. Why not do a male character? So I decided to create a female version of Han Solo. 

In my opinion, the key to a good Han Solo shirt is finding the right material. Remember that Star Wars was made in 1977 so there were a lot more polyester shirts back then. Han Solo wears an off-white, almost beige, 3/4 sleeve loose v-neck shirt with a half-collar. I initially checked eBay and some thrift stores, and even tried to make my own. I ended up getting pretty lucky and found a vintage polyester shirt with puffy sleeves and a crazy '70s collar. I took that shirt and modified the sleeves and tucked in the collar to be more "normal". This is what I ended up with.

I knew that the key to a convincing vest was finding the right type of material. I decided to hit up some thrift shops and just see what was out there. Specifically, I was looking for something in a stiff black fabric that would give it the rugged and outdoorsy look – maybe something like canvas or khaki. I ended up finding a great peacoat and decided to reconstruct that as a vest.

Once removing all the buttons, cutting off the collar and the sleeves, I then proceeded to slim it down to look more like a vest. Since the peacoat was originally flared out at the waist and was double-breasted in front, I had to pin everything to look more straight. 

I used all of the leftover fabric from the sleeves of the peacoat to strategically plan out the rest of the pockets. I started with the front pockets by roughly cutting some rectangles, tucking in the edges and sewing them down 3 sides at a time. I created the flaps by also just sewing the seams and then pinning them above the pockets and sewing the top edge down. Han’s vest has 3 cargo style pockets and one curved patch pocket on his top right.

By the time I got around to the pockets in the back of the vest, I was pretty low on fabric so  I had to make his back lower pocket slightly smaller than it probably should have been. And as you can see, I only have 3 slots in the upper back instead of 4.

For the pants, I shopped around for the perfect pair of navy pants. I ended up buying some uniform pants since they had a very simple design. I knew I didn’t have the right machine to embroider red bloodstripes all the way down the leg so I decided to buy some red seam binding (about 3/4″ wide) and draw the stripes on the strip. I marked about every half inch down the red strip allowing about 1/16″ room for the thickness of the lines. This was pretty tedious, but I’m sure it beats embroidering! I decided to use a blue permanent marker (not a Sharpie because it runs funny). Make sure to test this out first to see if the ink will run!

And since I was wearing long boots, I knew I didn’t have to do the entire pant leg. In fact, I decided to cut the pants up to my calves just to keep my legs cooler and prevent having to stuff my pants in the boots.

And I really hate glue-gunning fabric, but there was no way I was going to take apart all the seams and sew this on. If you can find the iron-on version of this seam tape, definitely buy that one! Otherwise, you’ll have to glue gun everything like I did here.

For the boots, I shopped around for a while to find the perfect pair. When looking for boots, make sure they are:

-black
-simple in style
-pull up style if you can (no zipper)

Some suggestions here.

Stay tuned... I will be posting a tutorial on Han Solo accessories (belt, holster, gun) soon!