As if shrinking technology wasn't impressive enough, the costume department on Ant-Man and the Wasp broke new ground when they invented a new color for Wasp's suit.
Set in the aftermath of Sokovia Accords, he's only under house arrest, which allows him to maintain a healthy relationship with his daughter. However, when he's ultimately required to don the Ant-Man persona yet again - this time side-by-side with Hope Pym (Evangeline Lilly) suited up as the Wasp - he is thrust back into action that ends up reawakening secrets from the past. And amid all the creative inventions courtesy of Hope's father Hank (Michael Douglas), one standout invention actually happened behind-the-scenes when the costume department invented a completely new color for Wasp's debut suit.
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While Star Wars prequels) about the Wasp's brand new suit in the sequel. It turns out that the color he ultimately landed on with her suit was a combination of colors that ended up accidentally coining the name for a new color - a combination of gold and silver that someone in his department mistakenly referred to as "gilver." He explained that once the term had been dropped, it became a unanimous decision that the color they created "had to be gilver."
Aside from the new color they invented, Coveney also touched on other design hurdles that he and his team had to cross. For one, he explained that creating the Wasp's breastplate took nearly 40 different iterations before reaching the final design. He also added that he was careful not to make both Ant-Man and the Wasp's costumes too striking, seeing as the sole point of their skills is meant to revolve around stealth. He said:
"Somebody made the mistake of coming up with the term 'gilver,' which is like a mixture of gold and silver. And soon as somebody said that, everybody in production decided these had to be 'gilver.' Will somebody tell me what gilver is? So, we went through letters and prints and we... yeah, obviously 40 odd different takes. It was a... so, it’s that whole thing of you don’t want it to be really garish. It seemed like on the first film when we - we had working lights on him, we had it worked out and all that, and then they said, but he’s meant to [be] stealth."
As far as costume designs go in the MCU, the general consensus is that they've been spot-on. Between Iron Man's suit staying mostly true to the source material and Thor creating a more grounded, but still theatrical, spin on his outfit, the takeaway is mostly positive. With Ant-Man and the Wasp, this is especially true. More than any of the other characters in the MCU, their suits rely more on function than form, and the challenge was met with success. Making the costumes for superheroes based on insects feel as though they could not only exist in the real world, but more or less double as fitted space suits, is worth recognition. Inventing a new color is just the icing on the cake.
