Why Andor Went 'Primitive' With The Star Wars Clothing Design For Kenari

The Disney+ series "Andor" has finished the first of its two seasons, giving us the backstory of Cassian Andor (Diego Luna), the rebel pilot who helps steal the Death Star plans in "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story." In the 2016 film, Cassian says he's been in the fight since he was six years old, though we didn't get a lot of his backstory until now, when early episodes of the series take us to his home planet of Kenari, a lush green place that has been destroyed by an Imperial mining operation. 

A mining disaster leaves the children alone to fend for themselves. And though the series gives us no subtitles, we get the gist of what's going on in the flashback scenes. The children are clustered together, planning to scavenge an Imperial ship that has gone down. It's clear that there are no adults there to help out, and the clothing they're all wearing appears to be pieced together from old uniforms, along with handmade jewelry and facial camouflage paint for the mission. 

In an interview with StarWars.com, "Andor" costume designer Michael Wilkinson discussed how the situation had similarities to "Lord of the Flies" and why he chose to give their clothing a "primitive" feel. 

"It's your classic 'Lord of the Flies' scenario, so they have this wild, primitive, feral kind of feel to it," Wilkinson said of the costumes. "And maybe that explains a little bit of older Cassian's innate wildness and rebellion." 

If you rewatch the scenes on Kenari, you can see that some of the clothing was clearly made for older people, and some of it is cut and belted on. It also appears that the children have been left alone for a long time. Cassian, who was called Kassa back then (played by Antonio Viña), appears to be around nine years old, so he (and the other children) have likely been living with no adult supervision for quite a while when the ship crashes and he's adopted by Maarva and Clem Andor (Fiona Shaw and Gary Beadle, respectively).

The StarWars.com article went on to explain that Wilkinson imagined that the children developed their clothing based on the remnants of what was around them, including things from their previous lives. "We figured the kids would've used the uniforms of the adults to sort of chop up and repurpose," Wilkinson said. "It had this primitive mix with work wear that they'd customized with feathers and beads and trinkets and stolen or foraged elements from the urban world that they used to live in, a mixture of modern industrial mixed with organic jungle textures."

Since Cassian began the series by searching for the little sister he left behind on Kenari when Maarva and Clem found him, it's possible that we'll see more flashbacks to Kenari in the second season of the series.

Season 1 of "Andor" is currently streaming on Disney+.