The batsuit has come a long way since Adam West engaged in fisticuffs clad in grey leggings, shiny pants and a fabric mask in the 1966 TV series.

In fact, for Chris Nolan’s Batman Begins, the suit had mutated so much from its original, fit-for-a-gymnast, incarnation that actor Christian Bale couldn’t actually turn his head, or he is quoted as saying, breathe particularly well.

In the Dark Knight, Morgan Freeman’s onscreen character Fox and Bruce Wayne set about redesigning the suit. Freeman says: “You want to be able to turn your head?” Wayne replies: “Would sure make backing out of the driveway easier.”

Behind the scenes, costume designer Lindy Hemming and director Chris Nolan undertook the real work. Cue a batsuit that allows Bruce Wayne to manoeuvre his head to see the baddie looming over his shoulder and a Joker who manages swagger and menace in equal measures.

With Batman throwing himself off skyscrapers and out of planes, it is perhaps unsurprising that Hemming’s new design was inspired by extreme sportswear.

“Chris Nolan and I were desperate to change things as much as we could. But not just to change it. I looked at the way trainers are constructed, the mesh, the plastics and leathers. I also looked at the under-armour that people wear when they’re motor biking or indulging in extreme sports,” she says.

Hemming has been instrumental in creating some of the most visually memorable moments in British cinema in the past two decades. She dressed Harry Potter for his first day of Hogwarts, designed clothes for all Four Weddings and a Funeral, and has dressed 007 for every clinch and bullet dodge since Goldeneye. So when she turned her hand to the second of Chris Nolan’s Batman film, she knew how to make an impact.

One of the biggest issues was making sure that Christian Bale had more mobility: “I don’t know about the other Batmans previously, but for Christian, because he’s very physical, he does lots of his own fight scenes. We removed the neck columns completely and changed the way it technically functioned so that he was able to compress his neck into his shoulders and move his head freely. Not completely freely, but much more freely!”

But for Hemming, who lives in London but travels across the world designing film costumes, her favourite character was the Joker: “We had to make him appeal to a group of younger people and give them an understanding of what he does. I was looking at all the anarchic younger people, from Pete Doherty to the Sex Pistols’ Johnny Lydon.

“The idea of what the he looked like came really easily to me and I managed to show Chris Nolan and Heath Ledger my drawings at the first meeting, I had all sorts of tear sheets of clowns and of fat ladies whose make-up was running.

“I decided the reason his hair was green is because he’s bleached it out and something’s gone on it and it’s made it green. Instead of painting it green in the first place.”

Heath Ledger’s look was also inspired by some great British designers: “One of my nods is towards people like Vivienne Westwood and Alexander McQueen and the way they slightly extremise everything. We tailored his jacket so it had the flow of a skirt and we made sure the lining was the burnt orange colour. His cuffs are always open and pointed down.

“The shoes turned up at the front, his socks were weird greens and purple. His gloves actually came from Alexander McQueen, they were really expensive, then we made lots of stunt pairs. Just little things, that helped his body to have that slightly strange banana shape. It’s subtly working on someone’s silhouette to make them have more of the character they had already.”

The film received near-universal rave reviews on its release and Heath Ledger has been tipped for a posthumous Oscar for his performance.

Hemming says: “I know that in the press everyone is saying ‘what a great loss’, but I’m telling you, it is a great loss. He was one of those real collaborators, one of those clever people who could see a way of making something work.

“At his first fitting, he put on the prototypes of the clothes. He became something immediately, he had an energy where he just made things work.”

Unusually, leading lady Maggie Gyllenhaal’s clothes take a backseat to her male co-stars’ outfits: “Because she’s so tall, and because we didn’t think the character would have much money, but we thought she might be able to put things together in a slightly unusual way. I designed a wardrobe of clothes that picked details out of the Seventies and Thirties. She had an Annie Hall-ish waistcoat and we made the pants flared at the bottom.”

Ultimately Hemmings designs may work not only because they impress the cineplex crowd but also because they hold special appeal which might only be noticed by the most devoted of Bat aficionados.

“I’m really enamoured with the new Batsuit. I loved looking at all the details which, I’m not sure anyone else except the real fans can see," she says. "It’s fabulous to be part of something that people love.”

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