There’s a moment in every superhero movie when you see the suit, and you either get chills or you aren’t moved at all. Black Girl Nerds was invited to check out the set of Supergirl at Warner Bros Studios in London and, based on what we saw, fans are sure to be excited for what’s to come. Stepping into the wardrobe department with costume designer Michael Mooney felt like walking into a super detailed mood board. Kara’s super suit stood front and center, along with outfits for Ruthye Marye Knoll, the villainous Krem, and the full-on Lobo fit. Our jaws dropped at the sight of the super sneak peek we were getting, all while our brains were working overtime trying to take notes and process it all.
Let’s start where our eyes scanned the room immediately: the super suit. Mooney explained how the lead costume designer, Anna B. Sheppard, pushed for this version to feel as close to the comic book source material as possible. The silhouette is clean, the colors are perfect, and there’s a movement to the skirt and the cloak that earlier versions never quite captured, respectfully. “We wanted to get as much movement in it as possible,” Mooney explained. “It just makes the fights much more dramatic.” The suit is also intentionally simple compared to the padded looks we’ve seen over the past two decades in comic book movies.
That said, the technical craft underneath it all is anything but simple. The suit uses two different types of binders: a stretchy one for the main print and a new binder the team specifically developed for the lines. What we end up getting is a costume that looks almost like a leotard on screen, but still holds texture and looks like armor. Mooney told us the suit took about three months to complete, yet it was actually one of the faster builds on the film. He was also clear that Milly Alcock, who plays Kara, makes the whole thing work in a way no stand-in ever could. “She looks fantastic in it. She looks really powerful. And of course she’s so slight, so when you put her up against Krem and the Brigands, she’s just tiny, but she sorts them out.”
My favorite part of the wardrobe visit was learning that Kara spends the majority of the film in a Blondie t-shirt, not in her super suit. Much like the comic book the movie is adapted from, Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, Kara is out in the galaxy living her life and celebrating her birthday, making questionable decisions. Getting to that shirt involved a very intense creative process. “We went through hundreds of different bands,” Mooney said. Director Craig Gillespie kept rejecting options until Blondie landed. Given that Debbie Harry built a whole identity on being cool and her effortless rock attitude, it says a lot about who Kara is when she’s off the clock.
Ruthye’s look went through quite a few versions before Gillespie and Sheppard landed on the final design. The Scalarians, the space pirate crew Kara and Ruthye encounter on their ventures, were written in the script as almost like a punk band. The costume team took that note and added graffiti details on their costumes that, oddly enough, were fun choices that really worked. Ruthye is younger in the film than in the source material, something I picked up immediately, having read the comic. The young actress who plays her, Eve Ridley, had just turned 13 during pre-production and carries this character so well, according to Mooney.
Next up is the villain, Krem. The team was really committed to his costume for actor Matthias Schoenaerts to step into, and his look is much different than the comic’s simpler design. Mooney and the team started with the prosthetics work, such as body piercings and armor, all before converting them to 3D and printing them at scale. There are so many layers of detail in this costume, including a two-headed rat that Schoenaert requested because, “I should have something that I’m eating.” This last costume gave me chills as it’s a long-awaited character adaptation that was so perfectly cast. Jason Momoa’s Lobo is the real deal, with the base inspiration, as Mooney explained, originating from a vintage dispatch rider’s coat from around 1918. It has a heavy leather piece with some real weight to it, but it still flies when Lobo pulls up on his bike. The back of the jacket underneath took one embroiderer three weeks per piece to complete. The chain around his neck started as a normal-sized prop chain until Momoa jokingly pointed out that he had bigger chains on his wallet. So the team went bigger, while also adding a grenade and claws that Momoa pushed for at the last minute. It makes for a cool behind-the-scenes fact for those who love to see actors’ suggestions get implemented into their characters.
Mooney ended the visit by emphasizing, despite the strong male characters, this is Kara’s film, and everything from the Blondie tee to the glowing pod-suit brain scanner that took four weeks just to program its lights was built to prove it. After what we saw, there is no doubt that the wardrobe will make Supergirl fans smile from ear to ear. And if you’re big on comic book-to-film adaptations getting the costumes just right, this one is sure to impress you.
Supergirl flies into theaters on June 26, 2026
