Maxance Vincent
When costume designer Trayce Gigi Field began working on Spider-Noir, each costume was conceived for the show’s black-and-white format, its exclusive viewing method. However, as she explains to Awards Radar during a Zoom press day, things changed when the costume, production design, and cinematography teams “were thrown a curveball when we learned they would do it in both mediums. I had to design everything to work in both mediums, which was a learning curve. We had these lenses that interpreted color and black-and-white in certain ways, and each department was given a camera so we could run tests on the wallpaper for the production designer and the fabric for me.
It was every kind of fabric. What worked in black and white didn’t always work in color, and vice versa. The color palette was extremely important to me, but I also needed to ensure it worked in both mediums. Contrast and reflection are extremely important in black-and-white, but when you watch it in color, it blows your mind in a way that it’s so much more reflective. For example, there’s this crazy gold color that you didn’t realize would be when you’re watching the black and white. If you watch both, you’re blown away when you see the color, because you didn’t expect it to be that specific color.”
One of the most important elements that went into the costume design was to ensure that “everyone who loves the comics loves the show as well. Whatever connective tissue I can have was really important as well. I’m a big Easter egg person, so I hope people pick up on certain things. The color palette is one of them. For Silvermane’s gang, everyone had a piece of jewelry, a brooch or something that was indicative of their color palette, and the comics themselves. Silvermane has been done so many different ways, but from what I researched, I felt like his colors were really in the blues. He wore a lot of blues, so his color palette reflects that. I hope the fans picked up on that.”
Reflecting on her work, Field described the costumes she designed for Spider-Noir as her “most beautiful […] to date. We created over 1000 custom pieces for this series. Creating the first live-action Spider-Noir costume is a dream come true for me. I’m such a nerd, so anything that I can do that’s fantasy or sci-fi really feeds my soul. I just designed Spaceballs 2, and I think accomplishing Spider-Noir really helped me with it. It’s the highlight of my career right now, and I wouldn’t change anything about it. It was such a challenge, but it was worth every stressful moment.”
With, of course, such a rich array of costumes, there was so much to talk about, including contrasting Ben’s detective looks with his Spider-Noir costumes, designing Cat’s golden dress, designing a show that fits into both the grand archetypes of superhero storytelling and the great film noirs, and so much more.
Listen to the full conversation below and stream all episodes of Spider-Noir on Prime Video:
[Some of the quotes in this article were edited for length and clarity]
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