Wonder Woman 1984’s Golden Armor Costume Was Fully Built

Wonder Woman 1984 is bringing the iconic Golden Eagle armor which the titular hero wears in comics to live-action life on the big screen. In today’s cinematic adventures, computer graphics have become so impressive in some cases that it can be difficult to decipher what is real and what is movie magic. As it turns out, the “Golden Armor,” as costume designer Lindy Hemming calls it, was actually built in its entirety. At times, the costume will be enhanced by computer graphics but Hemming and her team built the wings and all for Gal Gadot to wear as Diana Prince.

Hemming, who recently teamed up with SweeTARTS to design a limited edition Golden Ropes candy bag, spoke with ComicBook.com about the project. The full interview can be seen in the video above! Hemming’s impressive previous work includes The Dark Knight, Tomb Raider, and more.

“You call it the Golden Eagle Armor, but actually I just call it the Golden Armor,” Hemming said. “It’s the most powerful protection armor that was worn by her mother originally and somehow or other in the story, which I don’t want to sort of give away, it ends up being with [Diana] in Washington. And so when she’s really threatened by everything she resorts to wearing the Golden Armor, and that was a fabulous challenge to design it because when I inherited Wonder Woman, the first one, obviously Michael Wilkinson had already worked and done a design for Wonder Woman’s armor, from the cut what she looks like in the comic. So, I had to inherit and modify that. This was my opportunity to actually work on a completely 100% original new design and so I could talk for hours, you better interrupt me cause I’ll just go on talking about it!”

In bringing together this particular point of joy for Hemming, the entire costume team behind Wonder Woman 1984 had to band together to create the best and most functional look.

“The thing is what I’m so proud of about it is that I’m proud of the technicians and of Pierre Bohanna, who makes all these wonderful things and Steve Gail who manufactured some of the beautiful textures of fabric, which makes the sort of armor and a chain mail and a suit which isn’t really chain mail at all,” Hemming explained. “But those people they made the most marvelous things, but we did make the wings and the wings did exist. And the whole story of the wings came about through wanting them to be more than wings, because it isn’t only for flying, do you know what I mean? It’s a protective armor, massively protective. And so she can fight with it with the wings on and use the wings in a way which is more than just for flying. And the wings were manufactured, the whole suit is manufactured.”

Of course, Gadot and the wings could not be walking around and functioning as a protective and effective functional weapon on set, so the rest of the work was left up to the visual effects team to masterfully craft.

“Every single piece of it is real, including the underbody suit, which looks almost like it’s been put on digitally, but it isn’t,” Hemming exlpains. “And then of course, during the filming and in the work afterwards…the suit is enhanced sometimes I feel, although I haven’t seen the film, so, but I would have imagined that because we were trying so hard, I wanted to have, partly wanted to have this sort of magical quality about it, instead of it just looking like a suit of armor, because it’s coming from the magical goddess past. We made it in a fabric, which Pierre Bohanna had invented a way of using gold and a mirror effect. So every piece was like a mirror, but the challenge was the mirror couldn’t show the crew. So you can imagine it was really, really complicated. Because anytime she was wearing it, you must not be able to see cameras or lights or anything, you know. Anyway, he had invented this fabric, which somehow is mirror-like, but does not reflect in a clear way. You sort of feel it swirling almost hence the posters with the kind of swirling look to them. And it seemed like it was very, very ’80s to do that. And that’s the period we’re dealing with of course. So it was a crossover between a really ’80s glitzy marvelous thing, and a sort of magical almost sometimes translucent almost sometimes disappearing and being able to be seen technical fabric.”

Are you excited to see Wonder Woman 1984 and the Golden Armor in action? Get ready for it by picking up some of the Golden Ropes candy from SweeTARTS in the mean time! Share your thoughts in the comment section or send them my way on Instagram!

Wonder Woman 1984 is scheduled to hit theaters on October 2.