Harley Quinn features a fantastic costume design for Poison Ivy, giving her a modern look while still maintaining her classic design elements. Her best costumes from DC Comics all build off her original look and use artistic and narrative license to take what was a relatively simplistic design to complex and unexpected places.
Poison Ivy's best costumes also benefit from adaptations in other media especially Batman: The Animated Series. Her classic costume from the series represents Ivy's natural evolution between the comics and cartoons, with each informing the other and contributing something new that continues the cycle in classic Ivy fashion.
The Original
Poison Ivy first appears in Batman #181 in 1966. Carmen Infantino, among the best Batman artists ever, provides Ivy with the core elements that inform every costume that follows. Her essential look leaps off the page, composed of a top made from poison ivy leaves. The leaves also make up her bracelets and crown, aspects that came in and out of fashion over time.
Ivy's basic unitard-like look with lighter green trousers functions in virtually every subsequent costume, making this original incarnation a legendary look for the classic Batman villain.
Gods Of Gotham
Poison Ivy's costumes mostly follow the same general look, but her look from 2001's Gods of Gotham storyline breaks the mold. This armored look first appears in Wonder Woman #164 and succeeds in taking the basic Ivy concept and translating it into an armored, quasi-medieval look dramatically different from anything she wore before or since.
The Greek gods Eris, Deimos, and Phobos possess Ivy in this storyline and transform her completely. Her red hair comes off much more brown, giving her a much more wooden feel appropriate for her possession. Black comes into her costume for the first time with this look and sticks around in later great outfits as well.
Queen Ivy
Ivy gains another god-like form in recent comics. Her Queen Ivy costume evolves her core style into a more regal attire. This stately costume, complete with an elaborate headcrest made from vine, succeeds in evoking Ivy's natural power. With access to The Green (the same elemental force that powers Swamp Thing), Ivy ranks among the most powerful characters in the DC Universe.
Black remains a unique contrast in her otherwise colorful look. This time black smatters her eyes like runny mascara, giving her a more sinister appearance than the legendary villain traditionally has.
DC Bombshells
Ivy wears a few different costumes in DC Bombshells comics, but her best costume from the run takes her classic look and translates it into something both retro and progressive. Her classic unitard look morphs into World War II-era lingerie, not too far from her iconic animated style established in the 1990s.
This outfit varies somewhat depending on the medium, and sometimes she wears stockings and gloves, often with a vine-like pattern that evokes many of her best comic book costumes from the past.
New 52
Ivy got a major costume makeover in 2011 with The New 52 relaunch in DC Comics. This costume stands out in its stark use of black in contrast with her classic green. This time, Ivy wears a full black bodysuit half-covered in leaf and vine. The overall look gives her an earthen quality as if she's a plant literally growing out of the black earth.
Though very different from previous incarnations, this costume did build off previous ones that experimented more and more with black. It also contributed seemingly to her most recent incarnations in the HBOMax series, which features a stylish take on this idea.
Hush
Hush, among the best Batman comic book story arcs ever, gives Ivy a fantastic modern update. Jim Lee takes the classic Ivy look and alters it slightly, covering her in wild vine that grows around her arms and legs. This small change emphasizes Ivy's ever-growing nature and contributes to the web-like sensibility of her hypnotic powers.
Ivy ensnares Superman in this storyline, covering him in the vine as well, and the visual depiction of her classic ability to corrupt and control others makes this an all-time costume for her.
Rebirth
The Rebirth era literally represents rejuvenation for Ivy. She comes back to life and gets a new costume, fantastic in its even more natural take on her classic outfit. This time, her suit forms from giant leaves and wooden elements that reflect the fact there is no real difference between her and the plants she loves and fosters.
Vine and leaf also grow off this costume, often uncontrollably, making this a great extrapolation of the Jim Lee look and one that reflects her evolving powers and character through the comics.
The Batman Adventures
Ivy's classic costume from the most defining Batman: The Animated Series episodes carried over into the comics. Her throwback jumpsuit echoed the fashion from the 1930s that the series took as inspiration for all its characters while also honoring the original comic book outfit, creating something timeless.
The leaf motif from the comic books remains, though toned down significantly and used primarily in the costume's few flourishes in her gloves and boots. Her subsequent redesign for The New Batman Adventures also ported over into the comics and presented a much darker green palette that likely influenced subsequent comic book takes.
The Eat. Bang! Kill. Tour
Another instantly classic animated look for Ivy also came to the comics in Harley Quinn: The Animated Series - The Eat. Bang! Kill. Tour. Ivy gets her most modern costume to date, pairing her mostly traditional green body suit with a stylish black leather jacket. This look spins several comic book and animated styles into one signature look.
The jacket also goes a long way toward visualizing Ivy's somewhat distant personality. She remains at her core a far more reserved and buttoned-up person than her partner Harley Quinn, and the jacket, which is always closed, gives her a more insulated look than any of her previous costumes have in any medium.