Superman

Perhaps the most iconic movie costume of all time. It would be hard to think of anyone, any age, anywhere who would not be able to tell you exactly what this costume is and who wore it.

In 1977 a 25 year old Christopher Reeve was plucked from obscurity to play the son of Jor-El in the 1978 Richard Donner film Superman – the Movie. At 6 ft 4 Reeve was certainly tall enough for the role but was described as “skinny” at the time. He refused to wear a muscle suit under this costume and with the help of Dave “Darth Vader” Prowse spent several months getting into shape for his legendary performance.

This costume was designed by Yvonne Blake and constructed under the careful supervision of Noel Howard for Bermans and Nathans costumiers of London. It was made from a radical, brand new, specially formulated fabric which had to be flexible and yet not show any sweat stains or any other marks from the rigours of filming. (This was before the invention of “Spandex” of course!) The material was made on a single, now defunct weaving machine in Germany which also produced the judge outfits for Judge Dredd!

Reeve reprised his role three more times and the costumes used on each production were invariably reused on the subsequent sequels. A hero costume from the first movie may have become a flying suit for the second film and then become a stunt costume for the third film and so on as its quality degraded. Sometimes only particular elements of the outfit that were in acceptable condition were used and the remainder discarded. And so it is that today, the surviving authentic costumes tend to be a mixture of components that have enjoyed service in more than one Superman movie. There are usually printed and handwritten revisions to the labels inside the garments with dates and noted alterations as required.

This particular costume has been fitted to a custom made display mannequin. Made to form the Superman’s most famous pose. Perhaps the most striking feature of the mannequin is the head, which was created from an original life cast taken of Reeve during the pre-production of Superman by make-up legend Stuart Freeborn, the head has been finished by industry professionals to make it the most accurate possible representation of the man of steel.