Part II: The Supermodel From Krypton!

The editors certainly had asked for fan suggestions⁸, and in Adventure Comics #397 they began printing them with a vengeance.

The issue had Kara's classic costume being torn in battle by magic (nothing less than magic or kryptonite could have shredded the Kryptonian cloth). For help on the case, Supergirl went to Wonder Woman, who at the time was without her own superpowers and running a high-end fashion boutique. Besides help against the villains, Wonder Woman provided Supergirl with a snazzy new costume, which was a combination of ideas sent in by Louise Ann Kelley and Jean Bray. In a pair of messages directly to the reader, Supergirl explained this combo and thanked the runners-up, adding: "I wouldn't be too surprised if now and then you don't see me wearing one of [the runners-up's] creations -- just for variety's sake -- after all -- a girl just can't wear the same old thing every time she goes out!"

And she didn't. All told, Supergirl went through six new costumes (plus an evening gown that I have to assume was never meant to be used for fighting crime) before settling on one. This batch of new costumes was made by her friends in the Bottle City of Kandor; once they were removed from the bottle (and enlarged to the proper size, of course) they were as virtually indestructible as her original costume had been.

Finally Kara settled on what is probably her most infamous costume: the hot pants.

The shorts, which appear to be pantaloons with gold elastic bands around the thighs, possibly embellished with lace (or maybe barbed wire - it's hard to tell) were paired off with a V-necked blouse with billowing sleeves and a small S-shield over Supergirl's left breast. The cape sometimes seemed to come from the blouse and sometimes from the choker, which I suppose wouldn't bother an invulnerable neck. In its first appearance, seen here, the costume ended in ballet slippers with laces, much like the Wonder Woman of old; the laces soon disappeared and the slippers were eventually replaced by classic Superboots.

Kara wore this costume for two issues before trying out the full length one shown above; she returned to the booty shorts for an issue and then to the Crazy Truss costume, but was back in the shorts by the backup story of the Crazy Truss issue. It seemed she'd found a winner, because she stuck with this costume for the rest of the decade, as she finished out her run in Adventure Comics with #424, starred in 10 issues of her first self-titled comic, and costarred with Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen in Superman Family.

She was still wearing it when Supergirl v.2 rolled around in 1982, but, much like her original costume, it got shredded in battle in Supergirl v.2 #13. When her adoptive mother Edna Danvers showed Linda a few hip new costume designs she'd come up with, Linda quickly unraveled the indestructible Kandorian thread of the old costume to weave a new one.
 

For all its 1980s glory, the new costume was cast along fairly standard lines. The S-shield spilled upwards in a faux-over-the-shoulder sprawl that was typical of the costumes of the era, but the V-line skirt and the gold embellishment on the boots would eventually be incorporated into later Supergirl designs.

Supergirl v.2 #17 added a rad 80s-style headband, a mandate from the producers of Supergirl: The Movie, which premiered in July of 1984. The producers wanted the Kara of the comics to match the Kara of the film; ironically, the headband was later dropped from the film's costume, along with a Super-perm, which did wonders for the cinematic Supergirl's look (although unfortunately not for her box office sales).

Supergirl's movie costume is in fact the classic Supergirl look - blue top, yellow belt, red skirt, cape, and boots. Although Kara would continue to wear her headbanded trainwreck for the next year, until her death in the Crisis on Infinite Earths, the costume worn in the movie would be the one donned by the first post-Crisis Supergirl, and the costume most people associate with Supergirl today.