How Superman’s Costume Designer Created Those “Glowing” Kryptonian Costumes

In Superman: The Movie‘s Krypton scenes, Jor-El (Marlon Brando) and members of the Kryptonian Council wear these wonderful, other-worldly luminous costumes. Today, a computer would create these effects, but no doubt, the costumes would lose much of their charm.

In the late Seventies, in the time of Star Wars: A New Hope, special effects were more DIY and often invented on set. Costume designer Yvonne Blake used this exact approach for the costumes using special material developed by 3M for cinema screens.

“From the very beginning of the movie,” said Blake in the documentary Making Superman: Filming the Legend, “we all came to the conclusion that it would be wonderful to have something very special for the Krypton costumes. And we decided that it would be wonderful to show a great energy from it and that we would try and look into materials that were reflective. The material used was a reflective material used for cinema screens, made out of minuscule balls of glass.”

The costume department spent weeks sewing these minuscule glass balls to the costumes. They had to wear cotton gloves because natural skin oil from human touch would destroy reflective quality.

The photography involved projecting a white light onto the costumes via a special 45-degree mirror. The costumes would reflect the light emitting a luminous, almost magical glow.

The final look has outlasted the technology and is one of the many iconic images from the film.