Irreplaceable Leather

Today super hero costumes have advanced beyond anyone’s expectation and the methods used to create them seem to be boundless.  Moving forward I believe we will discuss a whole range of topics that never seemed possible prior to the Modern age of comics.  The modern is roughly defined as the present time poorly designated between themed eighties and the present time.  As much as I believe that this is a useful marker I worry about the way this time period is defined.  Let’s face it like the Museum of Modern Art the term and time period eventually passes and then the name purely lasts as a marker for short-sightedness.  That said today resources, design influences, and logics find there way into superhero apparel that were unheard of prior to the 1980s.

Irreplaceable Leather

To contemporary audiences, fans of comic book super heroes understand the tights origins of super hero costume but today’s directors may, given the opportunity, comment on this history rather than just conform to it.  Always rebellious and transgressive leather became one of the anti-spandex tights alternatives.

Daredevil

Marvel is a character inventing company that frequently creates anti-heroes.  So making edgy statements regarding costume design is frequently a goal of the company.  When attempting to prepare for 2003’s Daredevil for a live action treatment, of course they had to consider replicating Batman’s costume.  Why should they need to consider Batman’s costume because the characters are so similar except Daredevil does have one unique super ability? In fact blind and reliant on echolocation for his sight, Daredevil was almost a better symbolic Batman than Bruce Wayne. 

Designers for the production the massive costume department wisely seized on the leather [present in the Burton/Ringwold cape.  Yet they wisely avoided the material of Batman’s cowl, which was in its most recent incarnation molded rubber.  Batman’s cowl and cape combination was very complex because there was an expectation that Batman’s cowl and cape would be joined. Daredevil’s designers and director avoided this comic defined convention that one can see in Batman’s comic incarnations.  Instead the filmmakers followed another example.  They followed Batgirl’s design form the Batman TV show, regard the suit that actress Yvonne Craig wore in the Batman TV show different than the comic. Different from the comic, on the show she wore the cowl/shirt/cape that never met. This design released this character from all of the range of motion problems complications that Bruce encountered. With an unconnected cowl Daredevil inherited all of the range of motion benefits of Batgirl’s suit.

Tailored for toned actor Ben Affleck’s body; tight and sleek Daredevil’s costume was a combination of urban attitude and action super hero simulacra. The costume may have temperature wise looked hot, but design wise it was still undeniably cool.

Though little emphasis was placed on his age, director Mark Steven Johnson helped de-age actor Nicholas Cage with the youthful and rebellious mystique of his leather costume.  Consistent with his biker charisma of the Johnny Blaze character, Ghost Rider’s leather suit was a pure reinterpretation of the comic book character.

When planning the presentation of the most popular super hero group in super hero history, director Brian Singer must have had one of the hardest jobs in entertainment.  How do you translate these characters so they will be cool to young fans yet make the character concept plausible to adult audiences.  Another unique quality of the Louise Mingenbach designed characters was they were expressed as hated minorities who were reluctant heroes rather than heroes who were driven achieve law and order as many heroes of the past were committed to.

Taking characters who were typically rendered in flamboyant colors in the comic, and placing them in varied leather designs highlighted the characters individuality yet did not diminish their volatility.  Many calling the wear “Biker suits” actually are verifying many of the anti-establishmentarian qualities that the designers hoped to express.  Usually a convention for the most fashion challenging costumes, even these costumes were muted (color wise) in preparation for a dynamic cinematic demonstration of mutant super powers.

Singer and costume designer Louise Mingenbach did right by allowing the character’s frequently violent and incendiary super powers take precedence over their leather communicated transgressive street appearances.  I think most would agree these non-spandex costumes were one of the biggest successes for this genre in recent costume history.