Diana Prince was destined to be a fashion icon from the beginning. From her first dramatic appearance in the DC Extended Universe, she turned heads. The sexy star Gal Gadot, known for her iconic role as Wonder Woman, cemented herself in superhero movie history.

While Gadot’s role as the Amazonian princess has ended she recently appeared in Shazam: Fury of the Gods (2023) and The Flash (2023). You may have seen her in one of her many appearances. But do you know why she wears bracelets? Why did she almost suffocate in her costume? Why did her breasts get bigger?

Read on to find out some fascinating, exciting, and strange facts about Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman costume. 

1. Gadot Couldn’t Breathe in Her Suit

In the movies, the lovely Gadot wears a red leather bodice with a golden eagle on top, attached to a blue leather skirt, and supposedly bound together by a golden belt in the shape of a ‘W’.

On Jimmy Kimmel Live! she explained what it was like to wear the costume for the first time. “I walked into this huge hangar filled with images of me as Wonder Woman, which was surreal,” The former beauty pageant titleholder said. “Then they got me into the fitting room and tried on the costume. And I was so happy and so grateful for being there and doing this role that I didn’t say anything about the fact it was so tight, I literally could not breathe.”

After her first fitting, Gadot said she “went to the gym” and when she tried it on again “it felt great a much better fitting.” Unfortunately for her, the joy was short-lived. The costume department decided to make the costume even tighter. The beautiful Gal Gadot did eventually convince the studio to make the costume less tight-fitting. The costume is sexy but that wasn’t enough to distract people from the biggest debate about her casting.

2. Gal Gadot’s Breasts Caused Controversy

In the comics Wonder Woman’s design changes depending on who’s illustrating her. But many of the comics feature a busty Amazonian. One 2017 poll claims that fans expect her chest to be between “DD or E cup”.

When her casting was announced for Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice some fans complained. Gal Gadot wears a 32B (70B EU) size bra. It’s a respectable size but some comic readers complained they weren’t big enough. The whining got so loud the actress felt the need to address them.

When she spoke with an Israeli entertainment show the former model was asked “It’s been said that you’re too skinny for the part. Wonder Woman is large-breasted, is that going to change?” She told Good Evening with Guy Pines she represents the Wonder Woman of “the new world”.

“Breasts… anyone can buy for 9,000 shekels [$2,490] and everything is fine,” she said, “By the way, Wonder Woman is Amazonian, and historically accurate Amazonian women actually had only one breast. So, if I’d really go ‘by the book’…it’d be problematic.”

Apparently, the cutting-off boobs thing may be a myth but she made her point.

3. Wonder Woman’s Breasts Got Bigger

After the solo superhero film was released some said her chest looked bigger than in Batman v Superman. Some of it’s the costume. Some of that is a very active imagination. But there’s another reason: While filming Wonder Woman Gadot was pregnant with her second daughter Maya.

Mammary glands get bigger during pregnancy because the body is preparing to nurse the kiddo. Progesterone and human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG), two pregnancy hormones, increase blood volume, causing breast tissue to swell and potentially grow by up to two cup sizes. Nothing was done to augment her knockers specifically but her chest grew bigger naturally.

The Israeli actress hid that she was “in a family way” from the studio to keep from getting special treatment. Gal Gadot is always stunning and wanted to make sure she could do some of her own fights and stunts. So she concealed the effects of pregnancy by getting sick in corners, roughing it through hormone-induced migraines, and drinking water with chunks of ginger in it. “I gutted it out. I started to come to the set with sunglasses,” Gadot said in an interview with Marie Claire. “I had this jug of water with huge pieces of ginger. One of the producers kept on asking, ‘Why are you drinking that potato water?’ They thought I’d gone Hollywood.”

But by the time the reshoots started, she was five months pregnant and couldn’t hide it. So the special effects team modified her costume to include a green stomach. Then they removed her baby bump digitally. “On close-up, I looked very much like Wonder Woman,” she told Entertainment Weekly. “On wide shots, I looked very funny, like Wonder Woman pregnant with Kermit the Frog.”

4. Wonder Woman’s Costume Made a Comic Creator Mad

The golden armor from the 1996 “Kingdom Come” comics by Mark Waid and Alex Ross serves as the inspiration for Wonder Woman’s gold armor. Waid and Ross were named in the end credits for Wonder Woman 1984 (2020). But Ross said that’s not enough. He wants some of that sweet, sweet box office money.

He complained that the studio had neglected to compensate him for the use of his design in forms of media other than comics. Speaking to John Sientres on the podcast Word Balloon he put DC comics on blast. “They didn’t pay me or Mark [Waid] anything for using our [designs]”, he said. “I don’t see any money for [Wonder Woman 1984] using my armor.”

5. Wonder Woman Wears a Classic Dress

This movie’s Diana (Gal Gadot) wears a blue long dress in one scene; this is a nod to Lynda Carter’s 1970s show Wonder Woman. The group finds out that the German High Command will host a gala nearby. Diana wants to assassinate Erich Ludendorff (Danny Huston). Ludendorff is really Ares the god of war. So she thinks that murdering him will end World War I. The movie’s sassy protagonist enters the party with her God Killer sword concealed inside her royal blue gown. Diana Prince’s blue dress has an open back, sleeveless V-neck, and floor-length column sheath silhouette.

This dress is one of many allusions to the most popular live-action portrayal of Wonder Woman. In season two of The New Adventures of Wonder Woman, the show featured an episode called “Light-Fingered Lady”. In it, Diana (Lynda Carter) goes undercover in a burglary ring. She wears a bright blue dress that’s clearly the inspiration for the one Gal Gadot wears in Wonder Woman to show off her shapely figure.

The costume is so popular that Mattel released a special doll with the costume and hidden sword. 

6. Gal Gadot’s Sword Was “Too Aggressive”

When Wonder Woman was first introduced she didn’t have any offensive weapons. Just the lasso of truth and her bulletproof bracelets.

But after the 1985 comic book crossover storyline “Crisis on Infinite Earths” George Perez and Greg Potter rebooted the superhero. They gave Wonder Woman a whole arsenal of weapons, including armor, a spear, an ax, and, perhaps most notably, an amazing shield. But it was in the series reboot of “New 52” that she started using them on a regular basis.

Wonder Woman uses a sword and shield in Batman v Superman but by Wonder Woman 1984 she stopped using them. Why did the Amazonian stop using a sword?

On a press tour, she said they felt the weapons were “too aggressive”. They also felt that the items took away from her inherent power. “If you have a sword, it means you need to use it. So we wanted to give that up,” And we didn’t feel that the shield was necessary either. She’s a goddess, she can fight, she’s super strong, and she has the skills.” The gorgeous Gal Gadot also said that Wonder Woman is not defenseless. “So no, she has the gauntlets,” she added. “She has the lasso. She has her tiara and that’s about it.”

Speaking about her tiara…

7. It’s The First Time Wonder Woman’s Tiara Points Downward

From her creation, the monarch has always worn a tiara. Every Wonder Woman throughout the Multiverse dons a gold or silver tiara with a red star that represents her role as the princess of Paradise Island. The tiara typically has a point at the top. In some iterations, the tiara has a point at the top and bottom. However, Gal Gadot’s tiara has a point downwards like an arrow. It also has a stylized multi-pointed star instead of the five-pointed one in the comics.

In both the comics and Wonder Woman (1975), it can be used as a weapon. Similar to a boomerang, the tiara may be employed as a throwing weapon. Diana does this in Wonder Woman 1984 (2020) as well.

With the Amazon princess’s superhuman strength, she can use her tiara to cut through tough materials. For example, in Wonder Woman #219 (2005) she slices Superman’s throat to momentarily incapacitate him. In this film, Wonder Woman’s Tiara is an heirloom from Antiope.

8. Wonder Woman’s Clothes Were Based on an 80s Model

The Wonder Woman sequel is set in the 1980s and features an authentic look for the time, inspired by designer fashion shows and supermodel Brooke Shields. The Fast & Furious actress and director Patty Jenkins had a distinct idea of how they wanted Diana to look.

Lindy Hemming, the costume designer, felt that Gadot and Shields have a lot in common physically. For example, both are tall for a woman. The former Miss Israel is 5′ 9″ (1.75 m) and Brooke Shields is 6″ (1.8 m). Both have a slender build. So the fashion designer used many fashion styles from Brooke Shields.

“The white dress was a dress that Lindy had found a reference from a Dior fashion show back in 84, Gadot told a Town Hall interview with Jess Cagle for SiriusXM. “So, we literally just like, we, we completely mimicked the dress and made some alteration. The look with Steve, when I’m with a jacket was a look that we found, you know, it was a tough look to crack because it had to be made out of men’s clothes for her. And I wore it for a quite, you know, long period of time in the movie. And that was a Brooke Shields ad for Ralph Lauren that I found like that was, that was, that was something that we, again, we found a good reference and then we made the adaptation for ourselves.”

Ironically Shields performed as the Amazon Princess in the club’s 1986 production of “Star-Spangled Banter” while donning the Wonder Woman costume. The theater group at Princeton University is called the Princeton Triangle Club. One of the country’s oldest undergraduate theater groups, it was established in 1891. Each year, Triangle performs a brand-new musical that its students have created, followed by a tour throughout the country.

9. Wonder Woman Uses One of Superman’s Most Controversial Tricks

When Diana arrives in London, Steve Trevor (Chris Pine) and his secretary Etta Candy (Lucy Davis) take her dress shopping. After she tries on an outfit Trevor puts glasses on her to make her less distracting and hide her identity as Wonder Woman. Etta Candy points out their ineffectiveness.

The eyeglasses are soon broken during a street fight. This is an allusion to Lynda Carter’s Diana wearing glasses in her civilian guise throughout the first season of ABC’s Wonder Woman show in the 1970s. It’s intentionally similar to Superman’s Clark Kent who hides his alter ego behind eyeglasses.

10. Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman Doesn’t Wear Earrings

For the first time, the Goddess of Truth doesn’t wear earrings in this film. She wore red circle earrings for the entirety of the live-action Wonder Woman television series and the enduring Saturday morning cartoon Super Friends from 1973. Meanwhile, she had white star earrings for the Cartoon Network’s Justice League show back in 2001. 

Her earrings have had a long and varied history. In the Golden Age of comics, they were shown to be able to provide oxygen in space when Wonder Woman squeezed them with her super strength. This ability was later explained as being a magical property. In the 1970s, for a brief period when Wonder Woman was depowered, she wore earrings that doubled as miniature grenades. These earrings were powerful enough to blast through a steel door. They were created by a reformed demolition expert who Wonder Woman had previously captured. However, these earrings were only used once and Wonder Woman soon reverted to her original costume.

These abilities were mostly forgotten towards the end of the Silver and Bronze Ages of comics. In the 1980s, George Pérez rebooted Wonder Woman’s costume and the earrings were no longer shown to have any special powers. Now they’re simply decorative.

11. Wonder Woman’s Costume Became More Heroic

In the comics, Wonder Woman wears bright red, blue, and gold colors. For Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, the colors are darker and more muted. But the color palettes shifted in 2017’s Wonder Woman to make them lighter. In the Justice League movie later that year, the colors of all the superheroes are even brighter. Costume designer Michael Wilkinson, who also worked on “Man of Steel” and “Batman v Superman” said that this was intentional. They wanted Superman and the other heroes to appear in a more heroic way in this film. For example, Henry Cavill’s suit has a bolder blue and is a little more lustrous.

In Wonder Woman 1984, the colors were even brighter. Costume designer Lindy Hemming explained that Diana’s costume differs from her previous outfits. She explained that the first Wonder Woman costume was different in color and style lines and now has a more vibrant red and gold hue.

After ten years the DC Extended Universe is dead. Warner Bros. chose to launch the DC Universe, which will have a unified narrative and story spanning live-action films, TV, animation, and video games. Thereby leaving the DCEU behind after DCEU’s many failures and inconsistencies. Gunn announced the casting of the new Superman and Lois Lane. It ends Henry Cavill’s long reign as Superman. But the future of some of the DC Extended Universe’s most prominent characters is still uncertain. Ben Affleck has left his role as Batman. But Gal Gadot’s Wonder Woman has a much more promising future.

Gadot’s Wonder Woman costume and outfits have set a new standard for the character. Fans embraced her epic performance. “I’ve been so grateful for the opportunity to play such an incredible, iconic character, and more than anything I’m grateful for YOU, The fans,” she said on Twitter. “The most amazing, warm, loving fans in the world. I’m still pinching myself to see if I will wake up. Can’t wait to share her next chapter with you.”

What do you think of Gal Gadot’s lovely Wonder Woman costume and style?