got pissed today unable to find nice clothes on swtor so! it's time for more Eight/Echani clothing hcs and a little fashion lesson!

As an echani duelist, I liked the idea that warriors and commoners wear the same everyday outfit with different additions, so of course I had to default to what is worn in kendo/iaido/most japanese martial arts: the gi and hakama. Besides being known as a uniform, it was worn everyday in the Edo period by everyone-- if you were more formal, you would wear more layers over it like the Haori (outer jacket).

The skirt here is the hakama, with 7 pleats that are said to represent the foundation of bushido, or the warrior code. For lorebuilding purposes, and since it aligns neatly with the 10 echani martial art tiers, we can say echani hakama have 10 pleats instead. As for what word we'd call hakama in star wars/swtor...well, let's think of that later. Besides being a comfy piece of legwear, it connects your upper half with your lower with its built in belts and is the place where one puts their scabbard through. Contrary to star wars, swords do not just clip onto any belt and hang vertically down.

The naga juban here is the cotton undershirt worn beneath your kimono to wick your sweat and keep it clean; depending on the martial art, some wear it by itself, and some wear it beneath a gi. As shown in the picture, it is worn regularly with fashion as well. Something to note is that men wear hakama lower on their waist than women, who wear hakama much closer to their chest just like their obi.

As the Echani are matriarchal, I imagine the popular style would be reversed, or that one can choose how to wear their hakama based on gender presentation. For Eight, he would wear it a little higher up to show he retains the femininity of his teachers as an act of respect.

This is a very basic way of tying hakama, women's style: since the side slits here are long, this is a priestess' garb.

Now we come back to the question of adapting this to SWTOR and having a more "sci-fi" feel: while there are countless robes and ways to wear hakama-haori in real life history and SW itself, perhaps for Eight it would be something like a juban woven out of sheer synth-material with a plastic-y shine to it that goes over the top of his revealing bodysuit undergarments and protects from the rain like those clear ponchos, while the hakama is made out of whatever signature black cloth sith lords seem to favor with sharper pleats for an Imperial feel. Hakama in the Taisho period were mixed with military uniform in wartime, so standard military boots won't feel out of place for Eight's as well. Maybe the sheer synth-material juban even turns clear only when hit with moisture as a way of spreading it evenly...

Alas, admin's ideas are impossible to draw, and slightly finicky to describe.