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| https://www.blackenterprise.com/meet-the-hollywood-costume-designer-behind-marvels-black-panther/ |
Ruth E. Carter is an award-winning costume designer behind some of the most iconic black films of all time—Malcolm X, Amistad, Do the Right Thing, and Selma, to name a few. So it should come as no surprise that Carter was tapped to lend her incomparable talent to design costumes for Marvel’s Black Panther movie—a highly anticipated Hollywood blockbuster.
We caught up with Carter to learn more about her journey into Hollywood.
What inspired you to become a costume designer?
I discovered costume design as a career path while attending Hampton University. But costume designing was a summary of my experiences. My mom was a counselor for the city; she would stop in the street and talk to people who had all types of problems. Back then it was embarrassing but her empathy for people gave me permission to open my eyes and see people for all of their complexities. Having had that as a young person coupled with going to college and majoring in theatre, I could read a script about a person and see a version of how they might look like. Ultimately, I was groomed to be a storyteller at a young age.
When it comes to hiring you to design costumes for movies, how does the process work with film studios?
Directors hire me—but they don’t want to impede on my creativity. When I first get the script, they give me broad strokes [direction]. They may say “We want realism or this has to be incredible, intense, wild, and colorful. etc.”
First, I read through the scenes of the scripts. I get into the words and the characters. I laugh and cry with it. This helps me determine when to be pronounced. For instance, if the scene is Harlem 1940s, and Thurgood Marshall is sitting with his wife, and Langston Hughes walks in, I look up Langston Hughes in the 1940s. Then I look for great photographers of that era—I discover Teenie Harris, an accomplished black photographer. I review his body of work and notice he was photographing people candidly. But these pictures were in black and white so I go to the original collections and they give me a direct path to the tones and brightness and dullness of saturation or desaturated of colors that will create a 1940s landscape.
Which moments have been most helpful in getting you to this point in your career?
When I started there were very few people who were doing costume design. My mentors were unconventional people like Spike Lee. He said, “Attend the University of Southern California, and go to UCLA for training and sign up for a student film that way you’ll be on a set with all the professional equipment used by major studios.
He also taught me about buying in multiples. For instance, for a scene where people get into a fight—you might need to buy five of the same shirt because movies shoot out of sequence, so if the actor bloodies or dirties that shirt—that shirt has to stay exactly like it is for the scenes that follow. But if we haven’t shot the scenes that come before it—you need a clean version. Nobody else told me this.
Spike Lee was my greatest support and biggest mentor. I am indebted to him for the life and career I have now.
Marvel’s Black Panther movie is one of the most highly anticipated films of 2018. But beyond a star-studded lineup of incredible black talents such as Michael B. Jordan, Angela Bassett, Forest Whitaker, and Lupita Nyong’o, the film also includes an action-packed storyline equipped with a variety of jaw-dropping costumes. So we caught up with Ruth E. Carter, the Academy Award-nominated designer behind the film to talk about how the ancient tribes of Africa inspired her designs of the superhero costumes.
Carter is no stranger to recreating representations of blacks in films—she’s also the creative mastermind behind some of the most iconic black films in history—School Daze, Malcolm X, Amistad, Do the Right Thing, Roots (2016) and Selma, to name a few. Below she shares her design process and inspiration behind the film’s costumes.
Ruth E. Carter on working with the film production team and planning for the design process.
Marvel Studios gave me a blueprint. They had a lot of plans for the costumes, whether it was visual effects, special effects, or photo doubles. So they told me the elements the costume needed to have. From rich saturated colors and beautiful prints to textures—these things were rooted in African culture.
So we researched all of these wonderful different ancient tribes from the continent of Africa such as the Xhosa, Zula, Himba, and Maasai, and learned about their secrets and the reason behind doing things a certain way. For instance, when The Himba Tribe used this beautiful red clay that they put all over their bodies (including, jewelry hands, and hair) it was for the desert dwellers to have moisturizer. It also made your skin and hair really soft. It even had Shea butter—it was also so colorful and intense. It could even be bottled and sold today as a moisturizer.
On the other hand, the Maasai Tribe was known for all of this beautiful beadwork—so we wanted to direct the costumes towards that look. The stacked rings are a very prominent visual jewelry and were worn by ancient African tribes—that was also part of the framework that Marvel said we would like to have. I hired a jewelry designer who does African-inspired jewelry. She created rings, and necklaces—featuring a hand-tooled element that really pulled the looks together. We also pulled inspiration for the costumes from the draped robe attire that you often see in the Nigerian culture.
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