Summary
- Catwoman's costumes in live-action have varied widely, from practical jumpsuits to sexy leather bikinis.
- Some versions, like Halle Berry's in 2004, missed the mark with overly sexual and impractical designs.
- Others, like Michelle Pfeiffer's in 1992's Batman Returns, struck a balance between danger and seduction.
Catwoman has been a staple fixture of DC movies and TV shows for some time now, with a variety of feline costumes ranging from abysmally bad to stunningly well-made. Aside from Batman himself, Catwoman might be the single most recurring Gotham-based character to feature in live-action DC media. With every new TV or cinematic version of Catwoman comes a brand-new costume that has to stack up against a long line of competitors, with some nailing the look better than others.
In the comics, Catwoman typically wears a jumpsuit of some kind, usually paired with a cat cowl or mask not unlike Batman's own. While the exact color and fit of this costume has varied somewhat, the source material has been shockingly consistent with what Catwoman wears. Interestingly, the live-action Batman movies and TV shows have had much more variety with Catwoman's outfits, each being molded to fit the unique artistic vision of the project it appears in.
There's a lot to consider when designing a Catwoman suit for the big or small screen. As a cat burglar, Selina Kyle's choice of attire needs to be practical enough for second-story work, evading tripwires, and carefully liberating precious jewels from their glass cases. However, it's also important to maintain the cat theme, not to mention Catwoman's signature seductive appeal that usually manages to keep her on Batman's good side. The best Batman movies and TV shows are able to strike a neat balance between all three of these aspects with their Catwoman costumes.
8 Halle Berry's Ridiculous Movie Costume Catwoman (2004) 
It's a shame that Catwoman's only appearance as a headliner in a movie was so infamously poorly-received. Halle Berry's Catwoman is a disaster in many respects, from the nonsensical story that completely disregards Catwoman's comic origin in favor of a supernatural power set to the cringe-inducing romance sequences and endless cat puns. Like so much else, Catwoman fundamentally gets Catwoman's costume wrong, even if it is strikingly worn by Halle Berry.
It's par for the course for Catwoman to have a certain amount of sex appeal, being a femme fatale character, but Catwoman takes things way too far. Rather than a practical jumpsuit, Catwoman instead wears a leather bikini and chaps that expose far more skin than is necessary, ruining the outfit's ability to read as a cat-themed superhero suit. That's not even to mention the hilariously tall cat cowl that's simply impossible to take seriously, leaving Berry looking more like a sexy version of the Tasmanian Devil than anything else.
7 Julie Newmar's Simple But Safe Outfit Batman TV show (1966-1967) 
The Adam West Batman TV show had three Catwoman actresses, with each new iteration of the character, surprisingly, getting her own unique costume. Of the three Catwoman performers in the series, Julie Newmar only made two appearances early on, quickly being replaced by Lee Meriwether with the release of the tie-in movie due to scheduling conflicts. Being such a rough draft of the Catwoman character, Julie Newmar's outfit doesn't have a lot going on.
Newmar wore a form-fitting fabric jumpsuit with a strange sparkling hue that would go on to be a recurring element in future Catwoman costumes of the series. The fabric could easily mistake the getup for a simple gown, and her dangling gold necklace seems less than practical for performing daring heists. The true pity is her cat-ears in lieu of a full cowl or even a domino mask, making for a decidedly low-effort final look that would quickly be outdone by future Catwoman appearances.
6 Zoe Kravitz's Painfully Realistic Look The Batman (2022) 
It can be difficult to justify the animal-themed antics of Catwoman when trying to make the Batman mythos as realistic as possible. Matt Reeves' The Batman hit this stumbling block when ideating on the Catwoman outfit for Zoe Kravitz's take on the feline antihero, grasping for a way to marry the obvious cat aesthetics with the film's more somber tone. The final result feels like an awkward middle stage between a knowingly unrealistic superhero costume and something a real-life criminal might actually wear.
For what it's worth, Zoe Kravitz's jumpsuit looks amazing, easily forming a fantastic foundation for a great Catwoman suit. Unfortunately, what lets Kravitz down is the goofy mask, which seems to suggest an unintentional cat-ears effect by having Selina Kyle wear an oversized balaclava that awkwardly covers her nose and nothing else. It's no wonder the film constantly finds excuses for Catwoman not to be wearing her mask.
5 Lili Simmons' Prequel Costume Gotham (2014-2019) 
Throughout the many seasons of Gotham, Selina Kyle slowly evolves from a lowly henchman on Fish Mooney to a self-made criminal in her own right. Like most characters in the show, Kyle spends most of the series without a true superhero costume, only wearing a leather jacket and upturned goggles that give the faintest suggestion of a genuine Catwoman suit. However, towards the end of the show, Selina Kyle finally gets to go out on a heist in a true Catwoman outfit.
Surprisingly, the appearance of this costume is almost dead accurate, with a classic jumpsuit full of utility pouches, high heels to maintain Selina Kyle's trademark animal magnetism, and an honest-to-goodness cowl. The ensemble looks good enough in-motion in the brief scenes it appears in, but in broad daylight, a shocking omission is uncovered — The lack of any cat ears whatsoever. If it weren't for this egregious shortcoming, Lili Simmons' suit might've been the perfect prototype for Catwoman, but can't in good faith be regarded any higher.
4 Eartha Kitt's Copycat Costume Batman TV show (1966-1967) 
In the seasons of Adam West's Batman immediately following the release of the series' feature film, Catwoman once again swapped actresses due to scheduling conflicts. This time around, Lee Meriwether was replaced by Eartha Kitt, who managed to truly make the character her own with a performance that wound up clearly inspiring future Catwoman actresses. However, Kitt's costume left something to be desired compared to the movie version.
Admittedly, Eartha Kitt's costume is quite similar to her predecessors, with the domino mask and ears of Meriwether alongside the dangling gold adornments of Julie Newmar. In practice, sadly, Eartha Kitt's costume ends up looking like a cheaper version of Lee Meriwether's with a slightly poorer fit, sillier-looking mask and ears, and a strange purple hue. Kitt's costume was great in concept, but left something to be desired in execution.
3 Anne Hathaway's Modernized Cat-Suit The Dark Knight Rises (2012) 
Being the Catwoman with the best Batman romance, it's no surprise that Anne Hathaway's Selina Kyle got one of the better live-action cat-suits ever seen. Christopher Nolan was sure to keep his vision of Gotham and Batman's suit and technology realistic within reason, but didn't overly burden himself with removing the flair of his characters' costumes. This shines through in Hathaway's Catwoman costume, which ends up just reading like an updated version of the Lee Meriwether suit.
The basis of Catwoman's jumpsuit in The Dark Knight Rises is not dissimilar to Scarlett Johansson's Black Widow suit that premiered two years prior, form-fitting enough to be evocative while still being practical. Making Catwoman's ears into a pair of goggles/radio receiver that could flip up was a clever way to justify their stylistic flair in a more grounded universe, and the concession that her domino mask was the result of a high-profile masquerade ball was equally genius. Still, Hathaway's Catwoman doesn't fully commit to the superhero aesthetic.
2 Lee Meriwether's Classic Outfit Batman (1966) 
Playing Catwoman only in the tie-in movie for Adam West's Batman TV show, Lee Meriwether truly enjoyed the highest-budget Catwoman costume of the three original actresses. A clear improvement over Julie Newmar's costume in essentially every category, it's almost unfair to compare Meriwether's look to her contemporaries working on the original live-action Batman series. Her Catwoman costume looks as if it jumped straight out of the pages of a Silver Age DC comic.
Gone are Newmar's small attempts at cat-ears, replaced by a magnificent domino-mask and cat-ear combo that accentuates Meriwether's head into a feline profile. The costume also ditches the strange dangling gold necklace the other two Adam West Catwomen insisted on, adding in some dangerous-looking gilded claws on the tips of her gloves for a touch of lavish flair instead. Finally, Meriwether's costume is also the only one of the original three with an appropriately dark black color palette, bringing to mind a classic black cat.
1 Michelle Pfeiffer's Striking Stitched Bodysuit Batman Returns (1992) 
Even if Michelle Pfeiffer's actual performance as Selina Kyle may have left something to be desired, there's no question that her iteration of Catwoman's suit is one of the most iconic takes on the character ever. Merging the classic DC Comics look with the signature gothic art style of Tim Burton, Michelel Pfeiffer's costume creates something that is at once new, yet recognizable. It's now wonder that Pfeiffer's Catwoman inspired other Catwoman designs, from The New Batman Adventures to the Batman '89 comic run.
Catwoman's latex bodysuit in Batman Returns is effortlessly sultry, nailing Catwoman's mix of danger and seduction. Her sharp claws and cat-eared cowl keep the feline theme strong while conveying a sense of threat, something Pfeiffer is able to follow through with in her performance. Tim Burton's touch is also very apparent in the Frankenstein-esque stitches and pale, chalk-white makeup, contributing to a striking, almost otherwordly Catwoman design that easily tops all others in film and TV.
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