How the Superman ‘S’ became fashion’s favorite logo

Over the years the red, yellow and blue supersuit has gained an unlikely fashion following, beloved by everyone from Jeremy Scott to Marc Jacobs.

“I don’t think I was lustful like that, until I saw him in that little outfit,” said Whoopi Goldberg in the new documentary “Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story.” Goldberg was, of course, referencing the 1978 electric blue lycra body suit and red cape Reeve wore in the first ever live-action adaptation of the seminal comic book series. Since then, the blue, red and yellow ensemble worn by Clark Kent’s alter-ego has remained largely unchanged over the decades — especially when compared to his heroic counterparts. While Batman eventually ditched his tights in favor of a darker, more militant type of body armor, Superman held strong with his second-skin suit. And although we’ve certainly seen a variety of blue shades — from periwinkle to cobalt and even Dean Cain’s indigo-washed costume from the 1990’s TV show “Lois & Clark” — Superman’s uniform is still instantly recognizable across generations. In fact, there is only one film — Zack Snyder’s 2013 “Man of Steel” — in which Superman does not wear his iconic red belted trunks. That particular suit was “grounded in the culture of his home planet, Krypton,” the film’s costume designer Michael Wilkinson told CNN via email. Wilkinson was inspired by the scale-like armor and muscular physiques of the Kryptonian race. “We drew many versions of the suit — one day we did (one) without the trunks and it seemed to be the best fit for our vision.” For James Gunn, the director of the upcoming remake, “Superman,” reviving the layered briefs once more was a disarming tactic. “He wants to be a symbol of hope and positivity. So he dresses like a professional wrestler,” Gunn said in an interview with entertainment site CinemaBlend last year. “He dresses in a way that makes people unafraid of him.” But not only is Superman’s primary-colored supersuit a cheery beacon to his fans, it is also a surprising source of inspiration for fashion designers. A handful of luxury fashion brands have considered the comic book hero something of a muse. In 2008, New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute staged an exhibition on superheroes, titled “Fashion and Fantasy. There were some 60 ensembles on show, from movie costumes to haute couture. One such piece was German designer Bernhard Willhelm’s 2006 royal blue dress emblazoned with a bloody, dripping Superman ‘S’ logo. “Today, superhero imagery has suffused almost every aspect of popular culture,” the institute’s curator, Andrew Bolton, said at the time. “The superhero’s iconic costume of cape, mask, and bodysuit finds many fashionable permutations. But fashion’s embrace of the superhero extends beyond iconography, to issues of identity, sexuality, and nationalism.” He added that fashion shares with the superhero “an inherent metaphorical malleability which fuels its fascination with the idea and the ideal of the superhero.”