Hi! YOU ARE A GOOD EGG TO PRESENT SUCH A “OUT HERE LIVING OUR BEST LIVES” QUESTION. We all know that Obi-Wan is the absolute king of the Dramatic Jedi Disrobe and that he has taught Anakin well in this:
BUT CONSIDER HOW COOL THEY LOOK WHEN THEY KEEP THEM ON:
SWISH SWISH SWOOOOOSH LOOK HOW THE FANCY ROBES FLY AROUND GLORIOUSLY AND IT LOOKS AMAZING.
DRAMATIC ROBES THAT GO SWOOSH WHEN YOU JUMP AROUND = GOOD!!! The real answer is that Jedi Robes were part of the aesthetic they cultivated, because it reminds us of real world influence of monks in their fashion choices, and in-universe they’re useful for traveling, especially if you’re going someplace cold. They’re clearly not that heavy if just a simple twirl around is enough to send Mace’s robe whirling like that, so the problem really is just that they’re bulky and loosely fitting, that they should be hampering movement just by flapping around in the wind. But, frankly, we should be getting THIS with Darth Vader’s cape every time there’s so much as a light breeze:
VADER’S CAPE SHOULD BE RIGHT IN HIS FUCKING FACE AND YET IT ISN’T???? It’s the same with Palpatine a moment earlier in that scene, too:
We can see that his outfit is bulky enough to billow out just like Mace’s does, it spins around pretty good when he turns around! Yet here he is flipping around like crazy and it doesn’t get in his way. And we all know that it’s “Don’t expect physics in Star Wars, THAT’S NOT HOW THE FORCE WORKS.” but I like the idea that a lot of characters–at least pre-war, when these fashion trends and aesthetics would have been established–never expected life or death fights. It didn’t matter that the Jedi’s loose clothing wasn’t perfectly optimized for life and death battles, because they so rarely got into them. Therefore, they could wear clothing that was looser and more comfortable, that was about them as a culture of peace-seeking space psychics who wanted to be comfy while they communed with the energy of the very universe itself. There’s a certain amount of “they just got used to fighting with loose, flappy clothing” and a certain amount of “it’s just how they dress, it’s one thing the war hasn’t taken from them, LET THEM HAVE THEIR COMFY CLOTHES”, kind of like how Obi-Wan kept shedding armor as the war dragged on. That there’s an element of “Use the Force to keep it out of your face! That’s how you’ll really know you’re a Jedi Master, when your sleeve isn’t whapping you in the face every time you parry a lightsaber strike!” just as much as “LET THE JEDI HAVE THEIR COMFY CLOTHES IT’S THE ONE NICE THING THEY STILL HAVE, SOBS.”
