Back in February Brian and I visited family near Seattle, which is home to Starbucks, Amazon, Microsoft, grunge music, and the EMP Museum. We’d planned this trip long before the announcement of the opening of a new costume exhibit — Rebel, Jedi, Princess, Queen: Star Wars and the Power of Costume — and once we heard about it we grew even more excited to return to Brian’s home city. We’d been to the EMP once before and visited this time specifically for the exhibit. It did not disappoint!
Brian and I really enjoyed Rebel, Jedi, Princess, Queen; I especially loved seeing Luke’s Return of the Jedi costume, various handmaiden dresses, and the evolution of Palpatine. I do wish the exhibit had more Original Trilogy costumes, though, and was disappointed that some of my favorite costumes (Luke’s Dagobah outfit, Leia’s Endor and Hoth gear) weren’t included. While the focus on the prequels is understandable, at times the exhibit seemed incomplete.
That said, the exhibit had a lot of insights about how the costumes were designed and constructed, and gave me an even greater appreciation for Trisha Biggar (how that woman wasn’t even nominated for an Oscar, I’ll never understand). I consider myself pretty well-informed about the making of the saga, and the signage included lots of trivia I’d never heard before. I definitely recommend attending if you’re in the Seattle area, especially if you’re a costumer.
The exhibit is open through October 4, 2015, and your ticket includes access to the rest of the EMP galleries, so be sure not to miss out on those. Entrance to the exhibit is done via timed tickets, so it is recommended that you purchase tickets in advance in order to secure your preferred viewing date and time. It took about an hour for Brian and I to stroll through the costume exhibit, and we probably could have spent a lot more time in there!
It’s been speculated for several weeks, but Fox has finally 
Dark Force Rising was published in June 1992, an entire year after Heir to the Empire and a mere month before I first saw the Star Wars Trilogy in its entirety. As soon as I finished HttE I rushed to the bookstore and purchased my very own copy of the new Star Wars books. I was one of the lucky ones who didn’t have to wait a year to find out what happened next. (I wasn’t so lucky when it came to The Last Command, but that’s another story.) DFR might even have been the first piece of Star Wars merchandise I purchased all by myself, even before getting VHS copies of the films. (While HttE originally belonged to my father, it soon “magically” made its way onto my bookshelf.) And thus my status as a SWEU follower first and foremost was solidified early on in my fandom.