Carrie Fisher's complicated relationship with her iconic Princess Leia gold bikini

There are few film costumes more iconic - or controversial - than the "slave bikini"which Carrie Fisher donned in the 1983 Star Wars film Return of the Jedi.

While for Star Wars fans around the world the fascination with the sculpturaltwo-piece has never really gone away - it is one of the most popularguises seen at fan conventions and the original sold for $96,000 at auction last year -Fisher"s untimely death has seen the images of her wearing the bikini beamed around the world once again.

"Sass underpinned by pure steel" was the phrase used by The Telegraph"s film critic Robbie Collin to describe Fisher"s approach to playing Princess Leia, butit"s also a neat way to sum up not only the bikini itself but the somewhat complicated relationship which Fisher - always an ardent feminist - had with the skimpy costume which had undeniably givenher sex symbol status, whether she liked it or not.

"I remember that iron bikini I wore in "Episode VI": what supermodels will eventually wear in the seventh ring of Hell," Fisher once wrote in Newsweek.

However there was a narrative behind that bikini which meant it was imbued with a more empowering message than some of those sultry film stills might suggest.

In a 2015 interview with theWall Street Journal, sheresponded to controversy about an action figure which portrayed Princess Leia in the bikini.Fred Hill, a father of two daughters, had been shockedto see that version of the toy on offer to young children.

"Tell them that a giant slug captured me and forced me to wear that stupid outfit, and then I killed him because I didn???t like it.And then I took it off.Backstage," Fisher advised Hill to tell his daughters, referring to the way her character uses the chains attached to the bikini to strangle Jabba the Hutt.

It"s no glowing review but it"s a rare example of a bikini takingon more significance than straightforward sex appeal.

"His eyes started sparkling when we talked about it," Aggie Rodgers, Stars Wars"s costume designer told Wired of George Lucas"s enthusiasm for the fleeting costume change (around two minutes of screen time) which took Fisher to get out of the long white robes she hadworn until that point and into the metal bikini.

"The costume is a type that can be traced to earlier films, such as Myrna Loy???s turn as the native dancing girl in The Desert Songfrom 1929, Yvonne De Carlo in Slave Girl,1947, and Maria Montez adventure films from the 1940s," wrote Dwight Bowers, curator at the National Museum of American History.

"These early vamp characters functioned largely as sexual objects, waiting to be moulded by a male character.With the Leia slave bikini, George Lucas, however, turns the idea of "object" on its head.Leia is not a character that needs to be moulded.She is exposed and temporarily humiliated, but she is in control, plotting her revenge.

"Ironically, and somewhat brilliantly, the vehicle for her revenge is the costume itself ???she uses her own chains to strangle her monstrous captor."

So how did the bikini - which some call the "Hutt-slayer"costume in a more positive recognition of its role in the plot -come into existence?

The swirling design was inspiredthe workof Frank Frazetta, the renowned fantasy artist who was admired by Lucas."He really loved [the female]form," Rodgers remembered.

"I wanted 25 yards of fabric to be flowing through the scene but we couldn"t make that work," Fisheraddedof her dramatic vision for the costume.

Sculptor Richard Miller then created the metal version of the designwhile others were madein rubber and lined with leather to make the stunt work more feasible.

Fisher said on the narration of the film that Lucas showed hersketches of the design to "frighten me into exercise, I think.He succeeded."In fact, it was so "barely there"that one of the costume"s makers was reportedly dismissed from the job after expressing a little too much enthusiasm for the measurements he would have to take for the bottoms.

Fisher later told People that she was "nearly naked, which is not a style choice for me.???It wasn???t my choice."

Paying tribute to her yesterday, George Lucas said:"In Star Wars she was our great and powerful princess ??? feisty, wise and full of hope in a role that was more difficult than most people might think."

It seems that bikini was a fitting symbol of Fisher"s determined and spirited portrayal of Princess Leia, although she was likely to have been far more at ease in the khaki shirts which made up her wardrobe in 2015"s The Force Awakens.