Sometimes you’re watching a lot of Clone Wars, and sometimes your brain points out little innocuous things to you… like the fact that Jedi never seem to have luggage.
So, during the Clone Wars, Jedi are dispatched across the galaxy constantly to handle various galactic disputes, battles, and diplomatic messes. Often, they take Jedi starfighters and land them on big Republic cruisers, giving them flexibility to come and go as they need to. When they sleep, it’s typically on planets during missions, or it’s in quarters on the bigger ships. Sometimes there’s a chance to get back to the Jedi Temple and sleep in quarters there, but generally, they’re on the go all the time.
Yet you’ll never find them slinging a weekender over their shoulder, or dragging a little rolly carry-on bag behind them.
Here’s the thing about Jedi uniforms: They’re all different. And that’s not just in terms of shades of brown and beige, and layering options, but because the Jedi themselves are all different. Some of them have similar garments, but they are clearly permitted to go outside the usual color schemes, styles, and fit as they prefer. Anakin Skywalker likes his leather. Ahsoka Tano likes wine colors and muscle tees. Barriss Offee goes for a full-length dress and a cloak of midnight blue. Regardless of whatever personal flare they may impart, however, the Jedi are expected to live their lives like monks—they don’t get whole wardrobes and they’re not meant to hang on to personal possessions, with the exception of their lightsabers. So how many changes of clothes are they likely to have, even back at the Jedi Temple on Coruscant?
When it comes to uniformed officers of the Republic, we can assume that they have many duplicates clothing-wise because that’s how uniforms are meant to work—you have a slew on hand, they get washed in sequence as you wear them. Also, many of those officers are assigned to specific ships that they don’t leave, and as part of a carefully tracked military operation, their needs are seen to in regard to food, clothing, and lodging. This is important because an army has systems in place for these sorts of things. There are probably clones—or more likely droids—who collect dirty garments and get them sorted and tended to. The cruisers and barracks come equipped with what the clones need because they are the primary occupants of those craft during wartime.
But, and I’ll point this out again, Jedi don’t have luggage. And they’re constantly on the move.
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It’s significant because we can make easier assumptions elsewhere. Some people have droid attachés who take care of these things. When Padmé is traveling with Anakin in Attack of the Clones, we actually see her luggage. (Anakin is helping to carry most of it, in fact.) Other groups have caravans or ships to house their clothes on. When Lando owned the Falcon, there was a giant walk-in closet full of couture looks to chose from. But here are the Jedi, in tiny starfighters, hopping from place to place with no sneaky compartments, no executive assistants arriving ahead of them carting crates of necessities, and no garment bags.
If you’re going to keep your clothes even slightly clean in that situation, they’d have to be washed every several days. More frequently if you’re doing a lot of fighting and working up a sweat, which the Jedi were often doing as the leading generals of the clone army. And the only time that laundry load would be convenient would be whenever you were sleeping on board a giant cruiser getting some much needed shut eye between one call and the next.
Which means that Jedi sleep naked.
Are there other possibilities in this scenario? Of course there are. But most of them are unduly complicated or have no evidence to back them up:
- You step into freshers—those are the shower units in Star Wars—and they clean your clothes while they clean your body somehow. Then again, there is no given indication that freshers could work that way.
- The astromech droids attached to the starfighters are always carrying around a suitcase-worth of clothing. But there’s not a lot of room in R2-D2’s can for anything other than his own equipment and the occasional Death Star plan or hidden lightsaber, so that seems unlikely.
- There’s a Jedi “handler” aboard most Republic ships who makes sure that each individual Jedi’s needs are seen to. While that would be fascinating, we’ve never seen a person like that aboard any Republic ship ever.
- They 3D print new robes. …We’ve never seen that tech anywhere in Star Wars, oddly.
As we can see, there are plenty of possibilities, even if none of them quite fit what we’ve been shown. So sure, maybe there’s another explanation.
And then there are the practical real-world considerations for these issues, namely that most characters—both cartoons and live-action figures—in Star Wars change their clothes very rarely. This is mostly just a worldbuilding and budget issue—it’s cheaper to animate and clothe characters if they always wear the same stuff (*cough* Din Djarin’s Mandalorian armor that he can never ever take off because “This is the way” *cough*) and plenty of pop culture narratives don’t bother to focus on things like bathrooms and common colds and how people wash their undergarments. It’s unfortunate because the weird, gross minutiae of life can be even more interesting in narratives like Star Wars, where you can come up with any manner of strange sci-fi mechanisms to make these problems a little smoother—or a little more disgusting, depending on your angle. If you wanted to create a special machine that the Jedi walk through to clean their clothes—you can do that! If you want the Jedi to smell awful and give each other flak during the Clone Wars for not being able to shower for weeks at a time—you can do that too! The options are endless, because that’s what science fiction and fantasy are good for.
Within the Star Wars universe, you can come up with reasons behind the lack of costume changes to ease your own mind. For example, people probably run around with a lot of duplicate clothing for the sake of ease and simplicity, or it’s simply all they can get their hands on—the majority of the Star Wars galaxy doesn’t have much by way of money and resources, so most clothing is probably bought cheap, in bulk, and infrequently with the exception of specialty pieces like coats and boots. But then again, characters in that position often seem to have excuses for a lack of vestment diversity; they’re never getting breaks and are probably walking around a little bit rank most of the time (starfighter pilots and mechanics and musicians who entertain Hutts), or they live somewhere they can easily keep a small wardrobe and wash their clothes with some frequency (easy if you’ve got your own ship and use it as a home, or you’re a farmer, or you’re one of the few folx in this galaxy with an actual day job that only takes a third of your life). When you take into account the massive power imbalances throughout Star Wars, not having a Lando Calrissian amount of clothing makes sense. How many people have the ability to dedicate that much time to thinking about what they’re throwing onto their bodies before heading out the door?
But even taking all of that into account, this Jedi thing is still kind of weird, if for no other reason than the fact that it’s not even casually addressed. Do they get standard issue Jedi sleep clothes? We never see the younglings walking around the temple in cute onesies, that’s for sure. We never see Mace Windu in a spa day look. We only ever see Yoda shed a layer or two, but that hardly counts. Obi-Wan Kenobi is never out of uniform, and even knowing how much he cares about presentation, that doesn’t do much to make sense of things. Ahsoka Tano changes clothes, but not day to day—her vestments change as she gets older, growing out of one set of clothes and into another.
Anakin is the one outlier in this. Sort of. He wears some flowy garments on Naboo when hiding out during Episode II, but they read more like clothes that Padmé provided him. Nabooian pajamas are definitely a thing, right? And when Anakin is sleeping in their shared quarters in Revenge of the Sith, he sleeps shirtless—but that’s a place he’s living in part-time, so it stands to reason that he’d have some more clothes there. (Which could, again, be provided by his wife, who is something of a clothes horse from a planet that is big on costume drama. And also has suitcases.)
While they’re all on missions, though? While the Clone War rages, and they’re hopping from place to place without so much as a hat box?
It’s just a simpler explanation. Jedi sleep naked.
I’m sorry to break this to you, but it’s the only thing that makes sense.
Emmet Asher-Perrin needed everyone to think about this. It’s only fair You can bug them on Twitter, and read more of their work here and elsewhere.
A little know force power takes all dirt from one own body and clothes and push it away creating a little cloud of dirt that promptly fall to the ground.
You’ve to know well your clothes to avoid pushing away the clothes itself.
Also Jedi do not smell because midichlorians once activated eats all body waste products.
And thanks to their no-anger training they’ve minimized testosterone production.
:-p
And now I’m thinking about a naked Yoda.
Thanks for the sour persimmons, cousin.
I’ve always assumed that the clothes were some sort of high tech no-stain/no-wash cloth. Otherwise, yeah they’re going to smell a lot and be really dirty.
Since we don’t see them getting dirty even in really dirty places, I think this makes sense.
I love this, lol.
And I will never see the scene in the picture the same way, lol. Anakin’s def sleeping naked there.
But in all seriousness, I have kind of wondered this before about X-wing pilots, etc. Those uniforms have to get kinda rank affter awhile. Or Rey’s Jakku garb (I always wondered where she got that nice grey outfit she wears to Ahch-To). It’s one of those things while writing fan fic you start to think about once you start getting into logistics, etc.
The other possibility may jus be that they always sleep in their robes for weeks on end, so they can be able to quickly leap into action
Not to mention that Obi-Wan goes through a bunch of cloaks throughout the prequels!
Speaking of clothes, they also seem to dry off fairly quickly as they don’t seem to really be too wet after their swim in the Naboo lake.
You practically hit it on the head already. Advanced fabrics, and a unit attached to the refresher that cleans your clothes. Ten minute shower (or whatever) and your clothes got the same treatment. Especially handy for uniforms you want to wear right away. Also, I’m betting that most Jedi don’t sleep full commando, they just have the right to requisition some t-shirts and gym shorts from the base thrift store for strolling around. Unless … those are awfully voluminous robes. Maybe they just keep a handy backpack strapped under the big robe when traveling. After all, it’s only a little discomfort. Jedi can handle it.
Most starfighters (even the laughably tiny Eta-2 models seen in RotS) have a small cargo compartment, about the size of a backpack, usually built into the padding in the back of the pilot’s seat (meant to hold survival gear). A single change of clothes (enough to wear while your other set is being cleaned/drying) doesn’t take much space if you pack it well.
WWII planes (the real-world ancestors of Star Wars starfighters) had the same thing, as I researched a few years ago; their survival gear typically included a shaving kit, sewing kit, bandages, a few rations, an inflatable raft, and possibly even a sidearm, all of it specially designed to take up as little space as possible (often by packing things inside of other things; anything that can be hollow is used to store something else). Notably, the inflatable raft was actually the seat cushion itself.
One of Karen Traviss’ Republic Commando novels has one of the clones washing his one set of (non-armour) clothes in a river, then wringing them out (which is all it took to dry them, because sci-fi materials) and rolling them up to fit into a pack built into his armour.
When Luke took his X Wing to Dagobah, he had a ton of gear stashed in that thing. There’s no reason a Jedi couldn’t have a bin or two of supplies stored in the compartment under their astromech droid. Luke’s clothing on Dagobah also may shed some light on the subject – he got filthy on a daily basis, yet that jacket hanging on the tree branch was always clean. I suspect self-cleaning clothing is in play. That would also explain how Leia’s dress stayed white after the incident with the trash compactor. :)
Asgardians? Definitely naked. Jedi? Inconclusive.
Anakin was sleeping with his wife whom he hadn’t seen for a while…
At the other end of the spectrum you have Padme, who wore, what, two or three entirely different outfits just during her & Anakin’s visit to the Lars moisture farm.
Reminds me of a bad joke I made up. Why is Legolas always clean? A T-elf-lon spell, the dirt won’t stick. (My nephews loved it almost as much as my Gandolf joke. Why won’t kids take Gandolf’s class at wizard school? He starts with first class with “You shall not pass.” )
@10
You need to read Bored of the Rings. Although if you’re under 55 or so you won’t catch more than a fraction of the jokes and puns.
@12 You got that straight! Twodor and Fordor and Sorehead and Schlob are universal but references to Dickey Dragon, Hojo Hominygrits and Serutan are likely to be lost…
Thank you for this, it gave me the laugh I needed today. I love we take the premise with all the seriousness and analysis I expect from this site and from fandom. And that picture!
Jedi sleep naked. So what?
I don’t understand what’s the big deal here. Maybe it’s a cultural thing (I’m European).
Personally, I love the feeling of sleeping naked in a clean bed after having taken a shower – it’s super relaxing! (I guess, there won’t necessarily always be showers for the Jedi before the go to sleep, though.)
Truly, this is the quality nerd content I follow Tor.com for! (-;
Of course, If we’re treating this as a serious discussion then the logical answer would be “That must depend on the Jedi in question” (It’s difficult to imagine Master Windu or Master Kenobi being careless enough to be caught out in the event of some midnight mayhem – on the other hand it’s startlingly easy to imagine Master Yoda snoozing in the buff, a mental image for which I may someday find it in my heart to forgive you, Ms. Asher-Perrin).
On a less serious note, OF COURSE every single Jedi sleeps naked, given that we are ALL naked at all times beneath our clothes … or not.
I assumed it was a religious thing, like when Jesus sent his disciples out, he told them to bring no bag or extra clothes or possessions. Or it could just be the tendency of Hollywood to avoid displaying warriors along with their logistical support, the way you never saw an Unsullied in Game of Thrones with a pack on their back or a wagon behind them.
OK sure. But does Darth Vader still sleep nude? That pod doesn’t look very comfy, and that armor must get pretty ripe.
@18. Colin R: Does Lord Vader even sleep? or does he simply float brooding in a bacta tank, awaiting the opportunity to trample all over some fools?
@18/19
We see Vader in his, umm, sleep pod I guess you’d call it, briefly during RotJ. Just before the helmet is lowered.
Nice article. I’m just watching Rebels after re-watching clone wars and there was one episode in which we were following agent Kallus on an Imperial destroyer, he wakes up in his cabin and he looks at his reflection in a mirror hanging over A SINK!!!! First sink I’ve seen in Star Wars, I was super impressed. It looked pretty generic though…
@21 – having not seen the episode, I conclude it’s there for splashing his face or cutting himself shaving. Those are the only reasons that sinks exist in screen fiction. (Though, Mal DID wash his hands in that episode of Firefly … hmm.)
@@@@@#4;
Lisamarie: That’s not what happens, though, because immediately after the screen-capture above, Anakin sits up and throws the covers aside… and he’s wearing pants.
Din Djarin’s states that “no living being” is allowed to see him without armour… not that he is not allowed to take it off
If we start at the original Star Wars we know that Leia wears a white outfit that looks pristine both before and after she’s been in garbage. And it’s not just the elite. Jawas, who live in sand and dust, have robes that are tattered but not, dusty, mechanics’ outfits are always clean, and, of course, the armor of the Empire is always clean.
Clearly this galaxy has developed clothing tech which never needs cleaning. Besides, if there was laundry surely the “sneak into a facility in a laundry basket” trope would have been used.
As for sleeping naked, of course they do. We know that Leia did not wear underwear because Lucas declared that there was “no underwear in space” and I assume the concept applies to males as well.
@23, ah, details, details ;)
You’re half right.
Jedi are always naked.
And Jabba and Watto are the only ones who know.
We see Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan pull underwater breathing gizmos out of their belts, presumably another pocket could hold a set of ultra compressed space boxers and tee. Historically on Earth, people wore multiple layers so you would own a few shirts/shifts/chemises that were worn next to the skin and absorbed most of the sweat and oil from the body, and thus be laundered more frequently than outer layers that just needed spot cleaning or dust brushed off. The Jedi may do something similar, because on the most common style robes you can see them wearing at least an undershirt and outer tunic under their tabards.
Larger starships could just keep some extra Jedi tunics on hand. I always assumed that while some chose to wear culture specific clothes like Ahsoka, the more common style Obi-Wan wears are just produced in large batches and somewhere in the temple there’s a store room where they can be requisitioned. Most Jedi are human or human shaped, so it doesn’t seem inconceivable to have a variety of standard sizes on hand, especially if you are a ship in a war zone where Jedi might be coming back with blaster holes and lightsaber burns on their clothes.
The Last Jedi had a scene (when they’re infiltrating Snoke’s flagship) in a highly automated laundry facility.