Author: Martha Thomases

There is a special exhibition at the Costume Institute at New York’s Metropolitan Musuem of Art called Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy. I haven’t been able to go yet, but according to the exhibit’s web site, the show features costumes designed around these groups:

•The Patriotic Body (Wonder Woman, Captain America)

•The Virile Body (they cite The Hulk and The Thing, which sort of creeps me out)

•The Graphic Body (Superman and other characters with logos)

•The Paradoxical Body (Catwoman and other hyper-sexualized heroines)

•The Armored Body (Iron Man, Steel)

•The Aerodynamic Body (The Flash)

• The Mutant Body (they cite Rogue)

• The Post-Modern Body (Ghost Rider, Punisher).

The show and its parties are sponsored by Conde Nast, DC and Marvel, and Giorgio Armani. The opening night was extremely glamorous, with attendance from stars like George Clooney, Julia Roberts, Tilda Swinton, and the Olsen Twins. Heidi has written great stuff about it at The Beat and the Fug Girls are all over it.

Some of these groupings I understand, and some seem to be redundant (really, is Rogue that much different from Catwoman in the way she’s presented in this show?). However, none of them seem to consider superhero garb the way I did, when I was considering being a superheroine.

It’s true that I was designing my costume when I was eight years old, when fashion was not my foremost concern, nor did I need to worry about where I was going to keep my breasts at that time. I wanted something that would allow me to hide in the shadows, mysteriously, even while showing off my beautiful blonde hair (I had a few blonde cousins, and thought all I needed was more time in the sun to achieve the same golden tresses). Midnight blue, I thought, was the perfect color, at least among those choices in my Crayola box.

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