We study the range of the gradients of a $C^{1,\al}$-smooth bump function defined on a Banach space. We find that this set must satisfy two geometrical conditions: It can not be too flat and it satisfies a strong compactness condition with respect to an appropriate distance. These notions are defined precisely below. With these results we illustrate the differences with the case of $C^1$-smooth bump functions. Finally, we give a sufficient condition on a subset of $X^{\ast}$ so that it is the set of the gradients of a $C^{1,1}$-smooth bump function. In particular, if $X$ is an infinite dimensional Banach space with a $C^{1,1}$-smooth bump function, then any convex open bounded subset of $X^{\ast}$ containing $0$ is the set of the gradients of a $C^{1,1}$-smooth bump function.

We describe new construction principles for infinite-dimensional Lie groups. In particular, given any measure space $(X,\Sigma,\mu)$ and (possibly infinite-dimensional) Lie group $G$, we construct a Lie group $L^\infty (X,G)$, which is a Fr\'echet-Lie group if $G$ is so. We also show that the weak direct product $\prod^*_{i\in I} G_i$ of an arbitrary family $(G_i)_{i\in I}$ of Lie groups can be made a Lie group, modelled on the locally convex direct sum $\bigoplus_{i\in I} L(G_i)$.