I feel like that costume designers are caught between a rock and a hard place when it comes to making superhero costumes, perhaps there’s a demand for both comics accuracy and making it look grounded. But sometimes this comes at the expense of the actors’ comfort and how some of them get destroyed real easily, to the point where if you were to design such outfits for comfort and durability that they’d have to be made almost unrecognisable from their comics counterpart.
Something like in Smallville, where the tradeoff’s that perhaps until the last episodes, the outfits look comfortable and durable enough to take multiple beatings. Which is what superhero costumes should be made of, since superheroes tend to get into fights and do incredible stunts a lot that they need something durable to wear. In fairness, they do change their outfits. Either that or take a cue from popstars, which some costume designers likely already do on some level. But that would mean making them actually wearable.
Something somebody would actually wear while dancing and prancing around onstage and comfortably so, that popstar outfits already hit the sweet spot between flamboyance and practical comfort without even trying. The more I think about Wolverine, the more I realise that he’s a very rowdy character who really needs outfits made out of durable fabric to take every beating that even if he has a healing factor, he has to wear something that doesn’t show his weak spots and injuries. Something like canvas and duck.
Or perhaps something like ramie, but that involves realising what looks cool isn’t real what the character actually want in a outfit for themself. Somebody like Cassandra Cain needs something comfortable to wear, so a gimp mask wouldn’t be right for her though a ski mask kind of evokes it without being too uncomfortable to wear. But this is me working with fabrics from my experience as a self-employed seamstress, so this colours the way I feel what the characters should be wearing.
There’s no point for them to wear something that gets destroyed easily, or is uncomfortable in some way that they might as well ditch the tight tactical outfits altogether in favour of wearing what actual people wear and in earnest. Besides people have worn more flamboyant and ridiculous outfits than that, the late Prince Nelson has worn an outfit that showed his bare buttocks. Madonna has worn an outfit that shows off her bare chest, you could see very comic booky looks in events like Wave Gotik Treffen and the like.
People in the real world have worn racier outfits than that, if I’m not mistaken David Bowie wore a sheer shirt and Daniel Ash from Bauhaus and Love and Rockets has worn a fishnet shirt with tight trousers. There are always women who have the audacity to wear rather racy outfits in public, so it seems truth really is much stranger than fiction. A kind of weird irony to think that costume designers strive to make superhero outfits look grounded in some way.
When real life musicians have worn gaudier outfits than that, but they could also serve to inspire superhero costumes. In the sense that an actual person wore this, though this is something superhero costume designers have realised on some level. Even then, what real people wear is sometimes more flamboyant than what you see in fiction.
And sometimes what a person would want to wear for themself is really different from superhero designers’ conception of the same, especially when one does a lot of physical activity in some way.
fynm 