Costume designer Alexandra Byrne has dressed interstellar beings (2011’s Thor), Earth’s mightiest heroes (2012’s The Avengers), a space-faring found family (2014’s Guardians of the Galaxy), and superheroes who traverse both time and space (2016’s Doctor Strange). In director Matt Shakman’s The Fantastic Four: First Steps, set in the 1960s-inspired, retro-futuristic world designated Earth-828, Byrne does all four.
The Elizabeth: The Golden Age Oscar winner and her team styled Marvel’s First Family — scientists, adventurers, explorers, and imaginauts quartet Reed Richards (Pedro Pascal), Sue Storm (Vanessa Kirby), Johnny Storm (Joseph Quinn), and Ben Grimm (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) — whose wardrobes consist of space suits, fashionable ’60s-era outfits, and the matching superhero uniforms that complement the ever-lovin’, blue-eyed Thing’s baby blues.
“We spent hours over the dye vats, working out the varying tones and shades in a palette of blues. It’s a painstaking process, but so exciting,” Byrne says in the summer 2025 print issue of Disney Rewards Insider magazine. “The entire process is an adrenalized chase to capture the essence of the film.”
The starting point is “always the script,” Byrne adds of the screenplay by Josh Friedman and Eric Pearson and Jeff Kaplan & Ian Springer, based on the Marvel Comics by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. And Shakman, who previously brought vintage chic to a ’70s TV-inspired episode of Marvel’s WandaVision, “was very clear about his vision of 1960s New York City in a parallel universe” that is visited by the Shalla-Bal Silver Surfer (Julia Garner), heralding the imminent arrival of the planet-devouring Galactus (Ralph Ineson).
On Earth-828, the 1960s look much different than in the Sacred Timeline of Earth-616, in part due to the advancements made by Dr. Reed Richards of the Future Foundation and Dr. Susan Storm of S.T.O.R.M. (Science, Technology, Organizing, Reading, Mathematics).
Byrne started with mood boards, then worked with concept artists including Marvel Studios Head of Visual Development Ryan Meinerding (Deadpool & Wolverine), Matt Allsopp (Jurassic World Rebirth), George Hull (Tron: Ares), Richard Thomas Burns (Silo), and Pablo Domínguez (Avengers: Endgame) to develop the costumes. Byrne researched ’60s fashions in both the United States and Europe, and looked at technical inspirations.
“Working on the space suits and the life support systems was a breakthrough moment in terms of the retro future style,” she said, describing it as “a balance of retro engineering and shiny new aspirations.” The future looks fantastic.
Also starring Paul Walter Hauser, John Malkovich, Natasha Lyonne, and Sarah Niles, The Fantastic Four: First Steps is only in theaters — and FantasiVision — July 25.
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