In yesterday's post we looked at inspiration from an ancient civilisation. Studying ancient history can be inspiring not just for fashion designers, but also for costume designers, especially those ones creating costumes for superhero films, such as Lindy Hemming.
Lindy Hemming has created costumes for the theatre and film industry throughout her career, designing the wardrobes for all of the James Bond films from GoldenEye (1995) to Casino Royale (2006), for Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, and Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life, as well as for Christopher Nolan's Batman films (Batman Begins, The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises). She also won the Academy Award for Costume Design for Topsy-Turvy and the Costume Designers Guild Awards Best Costume Design in a Fantasy Film for The Dark Knight.
To create the costume for the main character and for the Amazons in Patty Jenkins' Wonder Woman (2017) and Wonder Woman 1984 (2020; originally scheduled to open in June, but postponed due to Covid to 25 December in theaters and on HBO Max), Hemming researched ancient Greek armors combining them with athletic fashion trends.
The costume of Wonder Woman, played by Gal Gadot, in Jenkins' films has got a more modern and practical appeal, but the interesting thing about this costume is that, rather than being enhanced by computer graphic as it often happens in superhero films, this design was actually handcrafted.
For Wonder Woman and the Amazons' costumes, Lindy Hemming and her team opted indeed for leather armors that were dyed and gilded.
The designs were then steamed and molded onto mannequins based on body scans of the actors. In this way the armors fitted perfectly but still allowed the wearers great dynamism and freedom of movement.
Also the Golden Eagle armor was handmade (even the wings were built) with prop modellers and designers Pierre Bohanna and Steve Gail who produced also the chainmail-like textile underneath the armour and the mirror-like texture that was used for the wings and that was especially made to reflect surfaces in a sort of blurred way (to avoid reflecting the film crew).
The accessories were handcrafted too and the shoes also had some connections with ancient times: Wonder Woman wears what may look like armoured boots, but close-up shots reveal golden leather wedge court shoes on which they mounted a red leather shin guard with leather straps, so imagine a sort of higher version of the ancient Greece shoes called kothornos (or corthornus).
There are some fashion connections with this film as several brands launched capsule collections to tie in with its release, among them Lauren by Ralph Lauren, Miu Miu, Revlon, EleVen by Venus Williams and Swarovski.
Reebok also launched a range of garments and accessories, including holographic gold leather sneakers inspired by Diana’s golden eagle armor, but dedicated them to real heroines: the products were indeed launched with a campaign featuring six female health-care workers from Boston who have been fighting the Coronavirus pandemic this year, to remind us that nurses are real wonder women (View this photo).
But the film has got a more subtle connection with fashion: at a party at the museum where she works, Diana Prince wears a white gown à la Halston and an 18-karat yellow gold version of Elsa Peretti's classic Bone Cuff.
As you may remember from a previous post, Peretti designed this fluid piece - available in its small, medium and large version - moving from anatomy, the cuff incorporates indeed organic forms paying homage to the human body. While the cuff goes well with the idea of Wonder Woman who wears golden cuffs that deflect fire and other attacks, the Bone Cuff appears in the film as the director is a Peretti fan.
Jenkins owns indeed a Bone Cuff and also decided to add a final tribute to Peretti at the end of the movie: after the credits there's a cameo with Lynda Carter - who played Wonder Woman/Diana Prince in the popular TV series from the '70s - as Asteria and she wears a mesh bib necklace by Peretti and a large Bone Cuff (a sort of subtle message - she is the first Wonder Woman and wears a larger cuff as opposed to her younger counterpart Gal Gadot, who wears a medium one).
Jenkins' tribute to Peretti was timely: in October the designer celebrated a double anniversary - 50 years since she created the Bone Cuff and 45 years of working with Tiffany (for the occasion limited pieces and a new assortment of bone cuff designs, more affordable than the ones in gold and silver, were released).
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