The Wonderful Woman Behind Wonder Woman 1984’s Incredible Costume Design

It takes incredible skill and talent to nail the costume design for an entire feature-length film, and Lindy Hemming has done a fantastic job with Wonder Woman 1984's outfits.

Costume design may well be one of the most underrated aspects of film making, at least from the audience's perspective. This is because it is one of those elements of making a movie that viewers only really notice when it is poorly done.

Great costume design is about creating outfits that compliment the scene and help make a greater sense of immersion and occasion to draw the viewers deeper. So when this is done well, people don't specifically notice the outfits; they praise an incredibly well-made movie.

Hemming's work on Wonder Woman 1984 is all the more impressive, given the 1980s aren't especially well remembered for the stylish fashion choices people were making. Permed hairstyles, ripped tights, bright colours, oversized jackets, and polka dots hardly lend themselves towards modern professionalism, but Hemming somehow pulled it off.

While the 1980s side of the costume design would indeed have been a challenge, she would have had plenty of inspiration to draw from on the Wonder Woman side. Wonder Woman's popularity has seen the superhero impact several industries outside of film, and many various iterations of Wonder Woman can be found in many sectors throughout pop-culture. In literature, for example, a book titled Wonder Woman 1984: The Junior Novel by Calliope Glass was published last year in July.

It has impacted the entertainment industry too as there is an officially licensed Wonder Woman pinball machine and a Wonder Woman: Challenge of the Amazons board game, alongside many video games such as the DC Unchained mobile game. Wonder Woman has left its traces in the iGaming industry too, and there is even a slot game with the same title by Playtech, which is one of the most popular providers, frequently offering the best new slots for its players.

It is no surprise that Lindy Hemming did such an incredible job, because her CV is what dreams are made of. She is a costume designer from Wales in the United Kingdom and the person behind bringing the feminist battle cry that is Wonder Woman 1984 to life.

“In the beginning, I was kind of horrified it was the ‘80s,” Hemming told the Los Angeles Times. “But what was fun was the idea of being colorful, and the research was very interesting. Having not really worn many of those clothes myself, I set about researching, looking back through paper patterns, fashion magazines, photographs and events that happened.”

Before working on the latest Wonder Woman film, her credits include work on Harry Potter films, James Bond movies; she was involved in designing Lara Croft's outfit for Tomb Raider and contributed to several Batman films. She won the Oscar for costume design for her work on 1999's Topsy-Turvy and a Costume Designers Guild Awards Best Costume Design in a Fantasy Film for The Dark Knight.

Not only does she have vast experience with major motion pictures, that experience includes creating stylish costumes in films and genres in which women are traditionally objectified, such as comic book movies. The previous Wonder Woman film (released in 1975) features Lynda Carter in the lead role sporting American flag-print hotpants, a revealing corset, and a billowing cape that hid almost nothing. Hemming's outfits were far more classy and did way more for the modern adaptation.

"It took at least six months from the first drawings and discussions to finish. From the drawings, we went into 3D modeling. The costume is a bodysuit with a corset to support it all, and was made from individual panels so she could move," Hemming told Variety when discussing Wonder Woman's costume, a true professional in every sense of the word.