The poise of Padmé Amidala, the faith of Leia Organa, and the strength of Rey have been drawn together for a new Inkkas design that celebrates some of the most courageous heroes in the Star Wars saga.
“We want to celebrate the complete saga,” says Tatiana Salaverria, Lucasfilm’s senior designer who worked with the unisex footwear company to create the print, “The Future is Female,” which will appear on two pairs of shoes in their new Rebel Collection.
What started as a simple sketch of Princess Leia from A New Hope drawn by Christine Lynn Johansen, the lead designer for Inkkas, evolved into a cohesive print, with all paths coming together in an elegant celebration of the original trilogy, the prequels, and the sequels. Each character flows into the next, with Rey’s simple signature arm bands blending into Queen Amidala’s elaborate headdress.
But simplifying these Star Wars icons into a line drawing came with its own challenges. “The most important thing was for us to get their likeness, even though it’s a little bit stylized,” says Salaverria.
With the shoes available for pre-order starting today, StarWars.com goes behind the scenes into the making of a saga-spanning print celebrating three generations of Star Wars women.
The fire of a queen
“Padmé, I think, was the hardest,”says Salaverria. “At first, she was a little too sweet. Padmé, she’s young, but she also has fire behind her.”
“She was looking a bit too young,” agrees Johansen, who tried to concentrate on capturing the emotion of the queen’s face. “It was a challenge going into it. That’s pretty much what we concentrated on getting exactly right. She has that stripe on the lip. We didn’t want it to look too heavy because since it’s all line work we tried to make to look feminine and pretty.”
To me, she's royalty
For Leia, Johansen’s lines were too thick initially, with the detail on the character’s signature double hair buns giving her hair a little too much weight. “On this print, for sure, less is more,” she says. “It started with too much of a heavy hand. With the eyes, we needed it a little bit more realistic and the lips…we made them a little more subtle.
“We wanted to keep it classic, so with Leia it was a no-brainer to go with her gown,” adds Salaverria.
The next generation
For Rey, Johansen toyed with recreating the outfit that takes the character from the Resistance base to the feet of Luke Skywalker on Ahch-To. “We actually went back and forth quite a bit in terms of what costume to use,” says Salaverria. But ultimately the ensemble the character wore for most of The Force Awakens made the most sense.
