Lara Croft’s costume makeover
Lara is leaner, tougher and not here to be ogled at
You could be forgiven for not immediately recognizing Lara Croft in the latest incarnation of Tomb Raider.
Gone are the massive breasts, microscopic shorts and garter-like gun holsters. In their place: the tiny but sinewy Oscar-winner Alicia Vikander in a filthy tank top, cargo pants and sensible boots. The first time we see her onscreen, she’s in the middle of losing a kick-boxing match wearing jogging shorts and a sports bra, but pretty soon she’s changing into a hoodie, black pants and sneakers so she can go to work as a London bike messenger.
The latest Lara follows in the footsteps of other recent heroines, who have turned away from the skin-baring spandex that makes fighting crime look like a wardrobe malfunction waiting to happen. She may not have the body of a Playboy centrefold, but she’s a more believable combatant. Some iterations of Lara Croft from the video game that invented her are so top heavy, it’s hard to imagine the adventuring heiress walking upright much less engaging an enemy, what with the awful back pain she must be suffering.
This Lara Croft is more in line with Gal Gadot’s muscular lead in Wonder Woman or Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) in the Hunger Games series, who proved a female action star could kick butt somehow without showing cleavage. Although the comic book always accentuated the character’s hourglass figure, the first images of the captain’s costume in the movie has all the sex appeal of a NASCAR jumpsuit.
In the current era, when we’re more attuned to power imbalances and female objectification, you might wonder if toning down the emphasis on Lara’s looks was a discussion that happened when it was time to make clothing choices.
“It wasn’t an obvious part of the conversation, but it was about Lara Croft in today’s world,” Oscarwinning costume designer Colleen Atwood said of working on Tomb Raider. “And, of course, Alicia’s take on it was a very athletic approach to the character.”
In fact, Lara’s main uniform was inspired by the video game, which was rebooted in 2013, and also features a protagonist who wears a tank top and pants. She is, however, more voluptuous than Vikander, who told Vogue, “what little I have I kind of pushed up.”
But creating the illusion of massive curves wasn’t a concern during production the way it was last time, when Angelina Jolie played Lara Croft. The actress, who was already plenty buxom, added even more with padding.
In the new Tomb Raider, there was more thought put into, say, the size of Lara’s boots. According to Atwood, Vikander had about 20 pairs, including some that had more of a platform to make her look taller for wide shots. Another pair was secretly running shoes underneath a boot-like facade so Vikander — who did many of her own stunts — could sprint through the jungle more easily.
The costume wasn’t “trying to be sexy,” Atwood said. “It was sexy because of the quality of the person wearing it as opposed to the style of the costume.”