The dos and don’ts of superhero fashion
Meet the men behind Wonder Woman’s costumes
The ground floor of the East London home of British design duo Patrick Whitaker and Keir Malem is an airy, open treasure trove of colourful sculptures and paintings — but it’s upstairs, in the pair’s studio, where the really exciting stuff is underway.
The couple founded their company Whitaker Malem in 1988 and have been working in the fashion and art worlds for 30 years, collaborating with artist Allen Jones on his sculpture work and with designer Alexander McQueen on some of his collections.
They’ve also made a career lending their talents to Hollywood, providing military outfits for the likes of Troy and Kingdom of Heaven and costumes for The Dark Knight, Captain America, Wonder Woman and the forthcoming Aquaman movie (released next year).
Their impressive list of credits is testament to the fact that Whitaker Malem are trusted when it comes to a certain type of military/fantasy movie style. Superhero costumes, especially in these comic book adaptation-obsessed times, are notoriously difficult to get right. Forget to be faithful to the source material and long-term fans will feel betrayed. Go too retro and end up in the realms of spandex silliness. Put nipples on a batsuit and people will speak of your misstep for years to come.
Indeed, in the weeks since our interview, controversy has struck again, after claims that the Amazonian battle outfits for Justice League (which Whitaker and Malem did not work on) are too impractical and revealing compared to those in Wonder Woman.
Right now, however, the fine leatherware designers are taking a break from their Hollywood work. Instead, in a new exhibition at Liverpool’s Homotopia festival, they will be exploring the idea of “Transmorphic Superheroes”. Inspirational materials, completed art works and pieces in progress are laid out across the room.
Their show, Whitaker explains, is all about male and female forms and the fascinating fluidity of the human body. It might sound like high concept stuff, but in the flesh (and flesh definitely feels like the right word) the emerging pieces speak for themselves, with powerful, arresting simplicity. Think lifesize bas-relief athletic figures, fitted with touchable, two-coloured coverings and split horizontally down the middle, so that the male and female halves can be swapped at will.
There are plenty of penises — and just as many nude female bodies too. But the emphasis isn’t so much on sexual differences as it is on the underlying similarities, and on the intriguing, liberatingly androgynous qualities of the bodies we so often revere.
“What amazed us — what really interested me — is how similar the bodies are when you look at them this way,” says Whitaker, indicating a series of deceptively streamlined, centaur-like male-female body mash-ups (male heads and torsos on female lower halves, and vice versa). “I’d never actually seen this (specific style of juxtaposition) done before, which I thought was really odd.”
All of this, you might at first assume, is a far cry from the pair’s costumemaking stint on hit summer blockbuster Wonder Woman. You’d be wrong, however: there’s a direct thematic link between the acclaimed superhero movie and the art the duo is now working on, and some of their Wonder Woman creations are even included in the new exhibition. For the film, Whitaker and Malem, working under the costume designer Lindy Hemming, were tasked with creating the armour of the Amazons of Themyscira, the movie’s legendary all-female warrior tribe, as well as the island costume of Gal Gadot’s superhero Diana.
The resulting outfits were impressively intricate, with textured leatherwork — the textures in question chosen and imprinted by the pair — metallic finishes, applied by Malem, and a convincingly archaic/mythological feel. They were also noticeably form-fitting, with tight armour bodices and thigh-exposing skirts.
Indeed, director James Cameron — while making a point about his own Terminator heroine Sarah Connor — controversially disparaged the film’s feminist credentials on these very grounds, claiming that the appearance of star Gadot in the famous, flesh-baring Wonder Woman costume was dated and “sexist”. (The new complaints, about the Justice League Amazonian outfits, are more about practicality and a perinterest
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ceived change in style under a male director, although they arguably raise some similar questions.)
Malem says that he sympathises with Cameron’s defence of Connor, who was a ground-breaking character in many ways. But as far as he and his partner were concerned, hiding the bodies of the Wonder Woman’s female stars was never going to be an option — and the decision to bring the pair on board, incorporating their distinctive style into the film, would have been a deliberate (and, yes, feminist) choice by director Patty Jenkins. “That is what we have the reputation for: getting very, very near the body,” says Whitaker.
For principals, including Gadot, this meant shaping the leather armour to perfectly encase her form, building it around her frame — or at least around a digitally-moulded stand-in. The aim was to create something that the film’s warrior women would feel comfortable in, that would still display and celebrate the natural lines of their bodies.
“What we do with the actors is we get them scanned, so they only have to come in the once and we have a foam body to work on. You’ve literally got their body in front of you,” Whitaker explains. “That’s the bit that us the most, or certainly me, because my mum’s a sculptor. What we do is literally wrap the body. We’ve literally been presented with some of the most beautiful people in the world and had their laser scans.”
“Even with major principals, you only actually see them a few times before they’re on. Like on Gal, for her main Themysciran costume, you might get to see her three or four times, possibly — and the fourth time will be the day before she’s going on (to film a scene).”
Alongside Gadot, a number of women were chosen to play the Amazonians, including Victoria’s Secret model Doutzen Kroes, MMA fighter Madeleine Vall Beijner, and crossfit athletes Hari James and Brooke Ence. As the casting evolved, it became clear that muscled female strength was going to be a key part of the Amazon aesthetic. (Gadot herself, who was criticised by some as too slight for the role, also gained over a stone of muscle mass while preparing for her part.)
The designers cite Ence, whom they got to know during her fittings, as someone who directly inspired their current work. She’s undeniably beautiful — but in a strong, powerful, bulky way, that challenges traditional ideas about what a female body “should” look like. “Brooke Ence is really important to Keir and I, as she was a part of what led us to what we’re doing now,” Whitaker explains. “She’s got this amazing, smooth, ‘Tom of Finland’ body, with a very pretty cheerleader sort of face … Obviously I’m gay, but I’m interested in men, and women, and bodies. It’s what our whole work’s about.”
The word “work” is perhaps significant here: he and Malem refer to themselves as “pop artisans” rather than artists, a term that acknowledges the huge amount of hard physical labour and craft that goes into their creations. Their artwork is designed to be touched and handled — and the movie costumes they make are not fragile treasures, but sturdy, durable props, intended to be worn for long shooting hours (although rubber duplicates may be used for stunt work).
“It is a fetish process, in as much as we are subservient to the material,” jokes Whitaker. “I only realised that quite recently — we’re total f ****** masochists. But the more people who use 3D printing, the more people who say ‘oh let’s put a kitchen roll on a freezer and call it art — the more it makes us look special’.”
Some of their previous fashion creations, it’s true, were put together more quickly: “(On the) catwalk, it just goes down the runway and back, might good for a shoot for Vogue in a couple of weeks, then it goes into the archive and that’s its life, in terms of wear and tear.”
But the movie costumes have to last — and, no matter how beautiful they might be, will always be designed with an eye to what will actually be on screen. “They don’t have to be works of art on the inside, that’s the nice thing,” says Whitaker, indicating the plain, leather interior of one of the armour costumes retained by the pair. “We have been known to put some elaborate linings in for movies but in my experience they don’t tend to work, because they sweat right through everything.” In contrast, Malem points out, when you do couture you can spend “as long on the inside as the outside”.
The movie world has its limitations, however — and sometimes, despite their decades of experience, the pair’s artistic instincts must take second place to the aesthetics of a director, or the whims of a star. “The armour that we did for Aquaman, Keir patterned it and leafed it beautifully, but the film is quite loud and out there — it’s directed by James Wan, who did The Conjuring and Fast and Furious, and it’s got quite a poppy look to it,” says Whitaker. “It was all about what colour it would be, and was this the armour that (lead Jason Momoa) was going to wear?”
A suit from another design studio was even commissioned as a backup, in case Momoa rejected the pair’s design. In the event, the star — who collects vintage leather and had some very clear and apparently not all-that-bad ideas of his own about what his costume should be like — gave his approval. Wan, however, insisted on a much more cartoonish colour palate, replacing Malem’s Wonder Woman-like metallics with bright greens and reds.
Ultimately, though, this process is all part of the game. “What you have to accept is film hugely collaborative, and we’re very lucky that we’re acknowledged within the industry — because you are a cog in a machine. You’re making a product, and at the end of the day it is about the toys,” says Whitaker. “That’s why it’s been super important for us to get back to presenting something that’s just about where we’re at.”
The Homotopia festival