So you have just gotten superpowers and want to use them to either fight crimes or commit some and you are in a world where people embrace the super costume look, not one that shuns them. There's just one problem, you can't sew and don't know anyone who does... so who do you turn to? Enter the Super Costume Clothier—the fashion designer and/or tailor to superheroes/villains (perhaps they will only work with one side of the market, other times they may work with both).
They could be a high-end fashion designer, if they are expect them to be an eccentric one who combines flamboyant flare with the cackling self-aggrandising "I'm a genius, I'VE DONE IT!" screams of a Mad Artist or Mad Scientist. Others may be more down-to-earth and presented more as community tailor, just their community is one that can survive fire blasts, bullets, and being thrown through buildings... but the costumes they wear often don't fare as well as they do, so as well as being the person who helped design the outfits, the Super Costume Clothier is also the person people turn to patch their torn outfits up.
Due to the challenge that superpowers present to cloth, spandex, and even metal, they may have to dabble in science as much as they do draughtsmanship, sewing and other tailoring skills. Not just to help the outfits survive all sorts of super battle fallout, but also the powers themselves if a person's Required Secondary Powers don't account for that—for example, having to come up with those Magic Pants that somehow always stay put on people who stretch or transform into a bigger more muscular form as part of their power set, or for individuals who turn invisible or shapeshift but can't spread the same effect to their clothes, the tailor will create outfits that will work with said powers. Some may welcome this challenge as part of their own set of eccentricities.
In order to be able to pull off these feats of fashion fancy they may be a bit of a Mad Scientist or Gadgeteer Genius themselves. Sometimes they even have their own superpowers, but usually not ones that aid too much in fighting crime. Instead, they may have powers that lend themselves well to their trade, which may mean they actually have a more practical money-making use for their abilities than some superheroes and villains do.
Contrast with Clothes Make the Superman, where a character's outfit is what gives them superpowers to begin with (though it's not unheard of for the more mechanical-focused costume makers to be the brains behind the tech rather than the person wearing the suit. If that's the case, they may operate as Mission Control if they are the one who knows how the suit works). A Super Costume Clothier may be why those with powers can say My Suit Is Also Super in cases where a super's clothes don't get included in their power set inherently.
Examples
- Cardcaptor Sakura: As Sakura is one of the few Magical Girls who doesn't have a Transformation Sequence, her best friend Tomoyo sets about creating all of Sakura's mission outfits, which are protective and designed to actually aid her against a specific card's power. Especially impressive considering she's just a 10-year-old school girl so even though it's a hobby rather than a profession Tomoyo has had a literal truckload of costume options turn up before a fight, much to Sakura's surprise.
- In Mission: Yozakura Family, the Yozakuras make all their gadgets, including their work clothes, in-house to keep up with their superhuman spy shenanigans. The loungewear that Taiyo gets is sewn to be bulletproof and blade-resistant while being as lightweight as normal clothing. Kyoichiro is later said to have sewn clothes with the same level of protection for his four-year-old niece and nephew after the Time Skip.
- My Hero Academia: In this world where nearly everyone has a superpower called a Quirk, creating superhero costumes, as well as a variety of other equipment to support them, has become its own massive industry. Consequently, hero schools like UA feature Support courses alongside their Hero courses, and businesses and individuals exist who do this either as their main profession or on the side.
- UA has its own Development Studio headed by teacher Power Loader and also features student Mei Hatsume, an eccentric Wrench Wench and member of the support course who are usually the ones to repair and upgrade the hero students' gear. Power Loader's Quirk allows him to also fight, but Mei's Quirk is ZOOM, basically just super vision so whilst she's a great spotter in battle she doesn't really fight herself and uses her super vision to see fine detail when creating gear and costumes.
- All-Might's costume was created by David Shield, who has the Quirk squiggly fingers which means he can turn his fingers in any direction and much more precisely than the average person, and has used this to become one of the world's most prominent costume designers. His daughter Melissa is Quirkless but a brilliant engineer who wants to follow in her father's footsteps.
- Giren is a villain who as well as having black market connections and being a scout to recruit new villains to the League of Villains is also the one who provides them with their costumes.
- Detnerat is a company that provides items to people that are adapted to work with their Quirks to supplement, amplify, or negate the more negative side effects. They initially arose as generally creating items for the wider population of non-hero Quirk users but got into developing items for heroes too. They also have been known to leak designs to the black market as a method of basically free quality testing.
- The DCU:
- Paul Gambi from The Flash may be the Trope Maker: debuting in The Flash (1959) #141 in 1963, Gambi was a criminal tailor who designed and maintained costumes for the Flash's Rogues Gallery.
- Paul's brother Peter Gambi was introduced in Black Lightning #1 in 1971, a former mob hit-man he reformed and became a tailor working out of Metropolis' Suicide Slum and he designed Jefferson Pierce / Black Lightning's super suit and force field belt.
- Marvel Universe:
- Leo Zelinsky, introduced in The Amazing Spider-Man (1999), is tailor to heroes and villains alike, though to prevent fights from starting in his store he sees heroes on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays and villains on Tuesdays and Thursdays. He's less "high-end fashion designer" and more "small business owning old-fashioned tailor" but he is one of the few people on either side of the hero/villain divide who can fix things like pants that can be worn by a 7-foot-tall brawler with skin made of rocks or who can patch holes in the cape of Dr Victor Von Doom.
- In The Unbelievable Gwenpool Ronnie, the owner of Big Ronnie's Custom Battle Spandex is not only Gwenpool's costume designer but has done work for many other heroes—she lists Captain Marvel Carol Danvers, Jessica Drew,note Matt Murdock and Peter Parker amongst her clientele. She also lets Gwenpool know of various missions that carry hefty rewards so she can pay her.
- Jumbo Carnation from X-Men is both a mutant himself (he has four arms) and he also designs a clothing range for other mutants. Thanks to his own experiences he has a focus on things like shirts with more than two sleeves, pants with extra legs, or with them in nontypical positions, selling them through the X-Factory Store.
- Invincible: Arthur "Art" Rosenbaum is a seamster known for having designed the costumes of several superheroes, including Invincible himself. Hilariously, this career path results in him also having to protect his secret identity by posing as a tailor who develops normal clothes.
- With This Ring: Despite having a power ring, Paul wants body armour as a backup, so he follows some vague recollections about the costumer used by the Rogues and reaches out to Captain Boomerang to put him in contact with Paul Gambi.
Turns out that Paul Gambi doesn't actually sell armour. He literally just does bespoke tailoring for supervillains. Luckily his brother Peter Gambi does have a line in personal protective equipment, and he was willing to put me in touch.
- The Incredibles:
- Edna Mode is a Challenge Seeker who loves designing outfits for superheroes and having to factor their powers into her designs. She was intentionally written to evoke both the Eccentric Fashion Designer and Mad Scientist character archetypes. In the first film she mentions she despises having to work with mundane supermodels when she used to design for people she saw as gods.
- Incredibles 2 reveals that she has a rival we never see, called Alexander Galbaki, who Edna has an extremely low opinion of. This implies that before superheroing became illegal, superhero fashion design was a healthy trade.
- Downplayed in Please Don't Tell My Parents I'm a Giant Monster by Richard Roberts, Gravitimmy is a Mad Scientist who creates forcefield devices. While he doesn't make outfits directly, his inventions make impractical superhero/supervillain outfits wearable. Some supers buy his products as shields and armor, but his real fortune comes in from selling tiny forcefield inserts to make outfits not chafe.
- Whateley Universe:
- Cecelia Rogers
is a Whateley Academy graduate who is a Master of Threads and maintains a tailor shop near Whateley. She is acknowledged as the world's premiere costumer, and in her youth had gone on a journey to learn the ancient secrets of tailoring around the world, which among other things allows her to recognize a super-fabric as being extraterrestrial in origin.
- Mrs. Ryan, a retired supervillain, teaches Costume Shop classes at Whateley, both for those who need super-costumes and those who need to hide odd body shapes. While she focuses on practical and protective designs, she is not averse to encouraging students to show off a bit, going so far as to suggest that female heroes and villains should Show Some Leg.
- Millie Wilkins is a specialty seamstress and would-be high fashion designer who—like several of the Wilkins family—funds her business by supporting the criminal element in NYC, in her case providing tailoring for supervillains and off-the-rack uniforms for their minions. She sees herself as having a rivalry with Miss Rogers, but she is thoroughly outclassed by Cecelia.
- Some Gadgeteers (such as Steamer) do business providing custom clothes to heroes and/or villains, or just to those students who are passing through the area. They often specialize in hiding Gross Structural Dystrophy problems to avoid Fantastic Racism problems.
- Cecelia Rogers
- Black Lightning (2018): Adapts Peter Gambi from the comics, like there he's a former mobster turned good, or at least turned Anti-Hero, who took up tailoring. In the show, he explains he intentionally got into tailoring to help him focus on something to help him deal with his PTSD. He makes Jefferson Pierce/Black Lightning's outfits as well as those for his daughters Anissa/Thunder and Jennifer/Lightning. He also uses his sewing skills as a Back-Alley Doctor whenever Jefferson needs patching up himself.
- Daredevil (2015): The first season introduces us to Melvin Potter, a talented tailor who was being forced by Wilson Fisk to make special cloth-like body armor for him. When Daredevil discovers this, he promises to protect Melvin from Fisk. In exchange, Melvin makes Daredevil's iconic red suit and billy club for him.
- Power Rangers:
- Power Rangers RPM: Doctor K created all of the Rangers' suits in this iteration, which are exoskeleton robotic suits meant to enhance human performance. She gets particularly pissed off when someone calls them "spandex".
- In Power Rangers Cosmic Fury, after the Dino Fury powers are destroyed, Billy, the Blue Mighty Morphin Ranger, creates new morphers and costumes for them, deliberately retaining the dinosaur aesthetic. The actual costume design seems to have only been a wireframe blueprint though, as he's as surprised as everyone else when Amelia, the Pink Dino Fury Ranger, becomes the Red Cosmic Fury Ranger.
- Luke Jacobson from She-Hulk: Attorney at Law is a fashion designer who designs outfits for supers, he's picky about his clients and has been known to refuse people especially if they disappoint him in some way.note Jacobson initially balks at being asked to create a business suit instead of a superhero suit for Jen Walters/She-Hulk but becomes becomes intrigued by the challenge of creating one which will fit Jen in both her human and She-Hulk forms.
- Jen and Nikki Ramos were referred to Jacobson by another character, Alonzo, also called "The Drip Broker" who doesn't create super clothes himself but does work as a distributor for such items.
- Earthsong: Most people on the planet Earthsong were drawn there, superpowered, and drafted into the war between Earthsong's Genius Loci and an invasion force. Then there's Spinster the tailor, who does business with both sides and enforces a Truce Zone at his shop, leading to an awkward Villains Out Shopping encounter.
- Grrl Power: Ashley is a super who can control cloth. Rather than use this power in the field, he instead uses it to quickly make highly durable and perfectly sized uniforms for the ARCHON team. Though he can use his abilities in combat if necessary.
- Invincible (2021): Art Rosenbaum is a designer who made Omniman's (and several other heroes') costumes.
