Supergirl is only a few weeks away! Ahead of the film’s release, I visited Warner Bros. UK’s Leavesden Studios to take in some of the sets, and of course, a staple for any superhero movie – the costume department.
While there, press guests were treated to a chat with costume designer Michael Mooney. In addition to Supergirl, Mooney has worked in the costume departments of other superhero films, including Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, Justice League, and Spider-Man: Far From Home. However, Mooney’s creative work extends beyond the superhero movie genre, with his work seen in films like No Time to Die, The Six Triple Eight, The Martian, and many more.
In the costume department at Leavesden Studios, Mooney walked us through the costumes on display, as well as his approach and process for creating the various pieces we were allowed to see, including Supergirl’s, Lobo’s and Krem’s looks.
The Inside Scoop on Supergirl’s Costume
Mooney instantly dove into the costuming for Supergirl/Kara Zor-el, knowing it was the one we were most excited to see.
Mooney: I suppose we just start off with the Supergirl costume, which is probably the one that everyone’s wanting to see, and Anna is the lead costume designer. She really wanted to have the skirt having more movement in it. So we went very close to the comic. So it is very, very close to the comic version. We took some elements from the last suit and then carried that through. But then the bell and the skirt and the cloak, it’s just got so much more movement in it. So that was the whole idea: to get as much movement as possible. It just makes the fights much more dramatic. Plus, we tried to make it as minimal as possible. So out of all the superhero suits we’ve done, this is actually quite close to the body. There’s very, very little padding, and it’s just a little bit over the shoulders.
It’s a very familiar technique, as you see in a lot of the superhero costumes with texture print on them. So actually, it looks very simple, but it takes months to do. You’d think it does look very simple. Every screen that’s on it has to have about 20 pulls, but we’ve added something else. So we use two different types of binder. So we’ve got a stretchy binder on the print there, but the lines are on another new type of binder that we have developed. So there’s a lot of stretch there. So we were trying to make it almost look like a leotard, but still have some texture on it, still have the armour.
So it’s pretty flexible apart from the glyph, which we moulded to put a little bit of shape into it because we were feeling that the glyph was a little bit too flat. Because we made the glyph a little bit bigger, it started to restrict some of the, well, it started to control the rest of the fabric, the way we didn’t want it. So it’s actually shaped so that it’s complementary. But Millie looks fantastic because she’s smaller than this stand, because I think this was done months and months and months before we started filming. And she, she’s obviously in training every day, and she’s doing so much fighting. She’s actually small on this and this. When we mill it out, it just becomes, like, two mills bigger, which doesn’t mean anything to anyone but means quite a lot to us. So she looks fantastic in it, which is the most important thing. And I think out of all the superhero costumes we’ve done before, this is definitely one of my favourites.
As we now know, since Superman was released last year, we have seen Kara in an end-credits sequence. So, Mooney shared that there had to be a connection or throughline between the two suits.
Mooney: It was connected because there is stuff that’s going on with the other film. So there was a connection. We just took it away a little bit because this is our film, so we just elevated it a little bit more. So we took what they’d done in that other film and just lifted it up. But they’re very closely connected.
Of course, there is also the matter of Kara’s “civilian” clothing. From the trailers and some stills, we know that she rocks a Blondie t-shirt.
Mooney: Oh, we went through hundreds of different bands, and then Craig [Gillespie] settled on Blondie. We went through every band that you could possibly think of, and they were all a little bit alternative. So we occasionally put up some mainstream bands, and he just went, “No, no, it’s not that. It’s not that.”
But there were lots and lots of different bands, and it was starting to get quite edgy for us because she needed 30-odd t-shirts because of all the things that happen in the action, and we needed to print them a certain size. So we had all the t-shirts ready, and then of course, depending on what was going to be the final print, you’re picking your t-shirt for that colour. So you finally came on that. And then of course, once we got that, it was how much pink there was because we had to tweak the original because you don’t want it jumping out too much.
Krem Has a Completely Different Look Than the Woman of Tomorrow Comics
What’s a superhero movie without the villains? Mooney walked us through the costumes of Krem (portrayed by Matthias Schoenaerts) and his crew for the film.
Mooney: Our baddies are just over here. Krem – when Craig was starting to look at this, he was quite obsessed with looking at the body piercings, and we were going so far down the road. And then we said, well, actually, this is a legacy thing because it was prosthetic, so it was going into the back. Then once it finished, we thought, well, we may as well mirror that. So we have mirrored all the stuff that goes on underneath.
Mooney: But this is one of our favourite costumes, there’s so much detail in it. So we kind of made it all the traditional methods. Then we scanned it in, changed it in 3D on the computer, printed it off, and copied it again because our armourer started making the shoulders and the original bits then. But this is quite far away from the comic.
Drom, one of Krem’s main bullies, you would call them. So he’s quite heavily featured as well. But the Brigands pretty much look like this. All the stunt guys who play them are really, really big. And that’s about the size of him. This isn’t actually him underneath this; it’s Jason, but we didn’t have another stand that was big enough.
Lobo’s Costume Blends Some Vintage Biker Looks
Many are excited to see Jason Momoa as Lobo in Supergirl. I have to say, the costume looked really cool in person.
Mooney: And then of course there’s Lobo, so he ends up, he’s very close to the comic as well. And we did some stuff to start off. We did some concepts which were different, but very early on, when we were talking, and we were going through different biker costumes, we had biker costumes from everywhere. And actually, this is very close to a dispatch rider’s coat, which is from maybe 1918. And it was a vintage one that we’d seen. So we kind of started going down that style of him having a big coat.
And Anna really liked the idea of when he was coming in the bike that the coat would be flying, and it’s a heavy coat that has a lot of leather in there. But then, as we started developing it, we had different things hanging off him. It went much closer to the comic. And then everyone was very much thinking about his muscles and the spikes. We went lower on the spikes in the shoulder because it’s difficult to shoot an actor with all the, with having too many big spikes.
Mooney: And we normally see Lobo in his fingerless gloves, but that was Jason’s input. He said at the last minute, “I think I should have claws.” So we made those at the last minute, and the chain was functioning so that it would go out, so the chain could unwrap. It’s quite a long chain. And then Jason also said when we had that chain around his neck, which was a pretty big chain, he said, “I’ve got bigger chains on my wallet.” So we went a lot bigger with that.
And then we added the grenade on it. We had a few different, some of the other Lobo symbols, but then Craig said, “Oh yeah, let’s put the grenade on it. So it’s pretty big, but Jason can carry this off. I don’t think many actors have got the gravitas that he can carry that off easily. And then occasionally we see him without the coat on. He fights most of the time with the coat on, and then that’s his jacket underneath with the embroidered back, which we all loved. That took a lot of embroidery.
The embroidery took about three weeks for each jacket because you can only get two people. It was mainly one person who was eventually working on it. But the whole suit, that was probably quite a quick one, and it took about three months.