Queen Amidala/Padmé Naberrie Costume Information

Padmé Amidala's costumes had to encompass the many different aspects of her character's journey: from outfits befitting her royal station, through her elaborate, but more sedate Senatorial attire, to unstructured maternity wear. As Queen Amidala in The Phantom Menace, Natalie wears nearly a dozen outfits; far fewer were originally planned, but by the time the script was finalized George's desire to expand the fashion universe had lead to and almost threefold increase. She wears a different outfit in nearly every scene.

We tried to reflect the confines and constraints of protocol and ceremonial customs in the highly detailed costumes. Often due to their scale and, in some cases, weight, these had to be put on in specially constructed dressing areas (usually off to the side of the set).

Trisha embraced the idea of there being a dress code and a precise decorative style for ceremonial regalia, incumbent upon both Queens and their handmaidens, which symbolizes the enduring aspects of their role in Naboo society. They also suggested this custom by repeating the shapes of costumes."

In The Phantom Menace, Trisha and George were inspired by the art of the Pre-Raphaelites with their visions of heroines and female beauties; their ebullient use of color influenced the fashions of Padmé's handmaidens and citizens of Naboo. Throughout this film, the Queen's costumes befitted her royal position, with elegance and ritual formality.

As Padmé's journey continues in Episode II, George wanted Natalie's costumes to accentuate the more feminine aspects of her character and, while still maintaining a ceremonial quality befitting her position as a powerful Senator, to reflect the growing womanly feelings in her relationship with Anakin. As the story of their love unfolds, her wardrobe highlights the mood of romance and passion at the idyllic Naboo Lake Country retreat. Unlike her regal and chaste attire as Naboo's sovereign, Trisha and her team were able to show a sultry sexiness in more revealing costumes. As with Episode I, by the time the Episode II script was written, Padmé's costumes had increased from the projected four or five to eighteen, ranging from hand-smocked velvet dressing gowns and leather corsets to ombréd gossamer chiffon dresses, pilot's uniforms, and devoréd cloaks-culminating in the intricate dress for her secret wedding ceremony.

The advent of digital cameras, used in a major film for the first time in Episode II, gave Trisha and her team some unanticipated problems with fabrics. They had carried out extensive material testing on the blue-green color spectrum, which we had been advised might be problematic, and on black white fabrics to ascertain how much texture details would be seen. So, thinking they'd covered all the danger areas, Trisha selected for Amidala's Senate Costume an inky blue velvet for the overdress, using a technique known as discharge printing (where areas of original color are removed, forming a pattern, and another color painted in its place to highlight the design) to enhance the front panels with Naboo motifs. For the underdress, Trisha used vintage gold moiré fabric decorated with Victorian iridescent blue beads. The undersleeve and back-drape were fashioned from an antique-pleated satinized silk. But when camera-testing Natalie in the finished dress, Trisha and her crew discovered that in close-up shots the fabric, also know as watered silk, strobed in the collar and chest area, something that would not have happened on film. The entire area had to be concealed, using thousands of tiny vintage beads.

By Revenge of the Sith, Padmé's softer and more alluring costumes have given way, at least in public, to more structured shapes. The Clone Wars have been raging for a couple of years, and her marriage to Anakin, who has been away fighting battles on the Outer Rim for several months, is still a secret; what's more, she is, unbeknownst to him, expecting a child. For both their sakes, her quite advanced pregnancy has to be hidden in public life. Trisha and her crew therefore used a similar basic shape of undergarment for all her formal Senatorial costumes, which allowed quite a wide range of movements without revealing the shape of her "pregnancy bump," which Natalie wore throughout her scenes. We employed quilted petticoats and crinoline steels to create a rigid support for fabrics loke velet, silk grosgrains, and taffetas in darker, more muted colors, symbolizing the more solemn and serious times. They were embellished using a variety of embroideries, trimmings, and techniques.
-Dressing a Galaxy

"We were told that Queen Amidala was to be in disguise: that she could sneak out the back of her costumes and you wouldn't know she was gone, which is why she is wearing clothing up to her chin and white facepaint, like you find on geishas, Mongolians, or Elizabeth I of England."
-Iain McCaig

Headdresses:
"The Queen's elaborate headresses seen throughout the prequels were made in-house in a specially set up costume prop workroom, supervised by the extremely talented Ivo Coveney. Ivo is a consummate artist, whose ingenuity and love of detail enabled the creation of the often complex and intricate pieces fashioned for Queen Amidala. From the gold-plated filigree detail of the Episode I Senate headdress to the extremely complicated copper-plated shape for the Episode II Freighter Disguise, from the bejeweled headpiece of Episode III's Aqua Georgette Peignoir to the abalone shells set into Queen Jamillia's headdress, his endless creativity enhanced the designs-and very often made the impossible possible."
-Dressing a Galaxy