How Mongolian art inspired Star Wars

This article is a personal view based on my own experience, so it in no way claims to be the last word on the relationship between the costumes and sets of Star Wars.

The year was 1977 when the film that would turn George Lucas into a legend, and that would go far beyond anything imaginable, hit the screens. It was simply a space opera, but it gave its fans much more, and they built a whole mythology around its main characters and a few secondary ones like the lovable Ewoks. Years later history did not repeat itself, and the flop Lucas took echoed through every reel of celluloid. Because The Phantom Menace turned out to be a fiasco, with a Jar Jar Binks who fell a long way short of the endearing R2D2 and the perky C3PO. But one thing did catch the eye: the costumes and the sets. Where did Queen Amidala's headdresses come from? And all those suits, dresses and the rest? Well, there is nothing in this life like travelling to understand that some designers are true excavators of trends in the clothing of the past of cultures as far from us as Mongolia.

La actriz Natalie Portman como Reina Amidala

A visit to Bogd Khan's Winter Palace and how the queen's clothes resemble Queen Amidala's

It wasn't a particularly hot day for August. Nor was there as much pollution as the Western papers had made a fuss about years earlier. The truth is that Ulaanbaatar is a fairly pleasant city in the summer months and I wanted to make the most of it. Bogd Kahn's summer and winter palaces were out on the outskirts, so I walked. When I went into Bogd Kahn's Winter Palace I was stunned, not so much by the impressive decoration, perfectly looked after, which reminded me of the Palace of Sintra near Lisbon, but because I was also shaken by the glimpse of a discovery: Queen Amidala's headdresses had to be, inevitably, Mongolian in inspiration.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/yeowatzup/, CC BY 2.0, (vía Wikimedia Commons)

Dondogulan, for that was her name, was a curvy woman who also wore expensive garments I was looking at a genuine 11th century fashion, one that had carried over into art to now reach the big screen without us even noticing. At that moment I found myself thinking, "What other elements of Mongolian culture have been hidden from me all this time? Only time will tell, but comparisons here are certainly nothing to resent, rather we are looking at the preservation of ephemeral art through popular culture. Of course this is no more than a personal opinion. And you? What do you think?