Two-time Oscar-winning costume designer Ruth E. Carter shares how research, culture and storytelling shape her iconic work – from Spike Lee films to Marvel's Black Panther duology.
Carter reflects on blending African tradition with Afrofuturism, using colour theory and designing powerful costumes for complex female characters.
Ruth E. Carter's Black Panther costumes are on display in our major exhibition
You might also like
Learn more
Transcript
Maria Lewis: Ruth E. Carter thank you so much for joining us.
Ruth E. Carter: Hey, thank you for having me. It's wonderful to be all over the world with your work. It's nice that this is an opportunity for me.
ML: It's incredible to see your stuff here in the Southern Hemisphere because it's one thing to see it on screen or even on paper but seeing it up close in real life is another thing entirely.
RC: That's the beauty of having these exhibitions available to people because even for me, when we are creating costumes, we do all of this research, we add all of this story and detail to the costumes, and you know, sometimes, when we see it in the movie theatre, we're like... dog, you know they didn't get a shot of the back, or they really didn't go through the bead work, and when you put them on display and people know the film, they actually even learn more about the stories behind each one of the costumes because, you know, costume design is storytelling.
ML: The audiences don't see the hours, the months, the weeks, the years that you've spent finessing that story – and it's really interesting that you bring that up because one of the things that kept coming up when I was reading your book [The Art of Ruth E. Carter: Costuming Black History and the Afrofuture, from Do the Right Thing to Black Panther]– which is absolutely amazing if people haven't acquired it – but also your blog, and listening to interviews with you, you were constantly stressing throughout your career, whether that was on the stage or on the screen, the importance of research and how it kept coming back to research. Why do you feel it's so important to know where you've come from and to know where you're going with this kind of storytelling?
RC: Well you know research allows you to understand what you're looking at. When you understand from the research what you're looking at in photos you really learn so much more about a culture about a people about the "why".
Some items of clothing are functional. There's a reason why overalls are worn in the fields, there's a reason why tribal beading was so intricate. So, when you understand what you're looking at, you can actually communicate more with your with your design process.
There's such a connection from our past that we don't realise is valuable to understanding our "now" and our "tomorrow". So, I like to be inspired by the learning that comes with costume design, the learning of who people are and how they create their culture – when we understand how they overcome adversity to be able to create.
ML: It's really fascinating to hear you talk about inspirations because I think for a lot of people, and especially creatives of colour, the work that you've done with Spike Lee, which has been a long-running collaboration that has spanned over a dozen films, has been very inspiring to people. And you guys go way back to the 80s when he hired you to work on his second feature School Daze (1988). I was thinking about how the late 80s, specifically in LA, is the birthplace of hiphop – it feels like this really significant moment. Did it feel like that was a really important moment and a hinge point for black culture and pop culture?
RC: Oh. absolutely. Spike Lee was very much aware of where we were in cinema and he wanted to put more people of colour behind the camera. He didn't feel that there was enough representation. We were not seeing our community presently in other films, so, we were making films that represented who we were, who we felt we were, how we dressed, how we looked, and that included pop culture ideas and styles.
Spike loved athletic wear. He wore Brooklyn Dodgers, vintage t-shirts, Jackie Robinson... and I feel like the whole "athleisure" craze that we're in now is partly due to Spike Lee.
We looked at sports as a styling base. We knew that we were trying to do something to ascend to a better future for black filmmakers, for independent filmmakers, for the culture. That was very much in our sights during that time. We didn't know how it would be received, we just felt like everybody, even all of the cast, all of the crew, everyone was on board with it because it was nuanced. Yes, we didn't have a crystal ball but to look 20 years in the future, certainly there weren't a lot of filmmakers doing what Spike Lee was doing.
ML: Whether it's a hundred million dollar blockbuster or a really scrappy independent feature, how critical is ingenuity when it comes to doing a lot with a little?
RC: Well, it's always a factor. What people want is your point of view, your artistic point of view, so, what I learned when I came on to Black Panther... I had never done a superhero film before, it had a bigger budget. I was somewhat intimidated by the fact that it was Marvel. What I quickly realised was a) Ryan Coogler had been a fan of Spike Lee films. He'd seen Malcolm X and all of the films that he studied when he went to USC film school, so, there was that part. Then I realised that even in the process, there's a big process to making these big tentpole films that have superheroes in them. There's a lot of layers to it but when it all boils down, what people need from you is your artistic vision and that translates to any budget. You have to have a vision for it – and then they can implement all of the technology that's involved with creating these extraordinary costumes but when it all boils down, it's "what does it look like" and that translates to any budget.
ML: It truly does make sense when you see like things like the sneaker game even in Black Panther but also in Wakanda Forever when Shuri's rocking some of the athleisure. It feels very like Spike Lee-adjacent, especially the colours and the textures and even the historical knowledge, it feels like such a visual influence in a way that you wouldn't necessarily expect with a superhero film. But I think that is testament to why the work really connected with people, including people who have no connection to African culture whatsoever and are coming along to just watch a superhero movie, and then they sneakily leave with all of this meaning which I think is really beautiful.
RC: Well, there's colour theory to the comics; it's a colourful platform. There's also colour theory in Black Panther films – we have the River Tribe that has a colour: the green that Nakia wears. You have the Dora Milaje and their red. You have Queen Ramonda and the royal colour of purple. So, there's colour theory. It wasn't unfamiliar to me because Spike also wanted to bring colour into his films – because black people look great in colours – so, once I was paired with Ryan Coogler, he knew the colour stories that we were telling, and wanted me to be very clear about how to delineate not only the characters' basic wardrobe but how to delineate them within colour theory, so, we do that from the very start. We understand how we're going to craft these characters within like a colour story.
ML: Traditionally, women on the comic book page, especially black women, have been very much drawn for the male gaze, and Black Panther and Wakanda Forever, specifically, have so many female characters, which is absolutely one of the best things about it: complex female characters; interesting, nuanced female characters. I was curious, in terms of their costumes, how did you go about subverting and converting that? Because, I mean, even Shuri's costume... the difference in her costume and the functionality, compared to T'Challa's, is such a fascinating example of building a costume that is not specific to just one character but something that is unique to the personality and the story of that character's journey.
RC: Yeah, I don't think that we will ever get away from male or female gaze. I think that everybody wants to embrace a look and feel the sensuality of the person's adornments. So, to create, say, the Dora Milaje or Shuri's panther suit, we're not trying to go against the female form – we're trying to honour it in ways that I think people don't realise are acceptable.
So,the Dora Milaje are in a uniform because they are the highest ranking female fighting force of Wakanda. They protect the king, so, they need to be in a uniform that is serious, that covers vitals, that isn't a triangle top and a cheerleader skirt. We can actually give them a uniform that circles around their body, that honours the female form but also is a serious uniform, and I took a lot of pride in crafting that uniform. Also, for Shuri's panther suit, she has a story there and that's her conflict of losing T'Challa, losing her brother, and also stepping into the role of Panther, so, there's good and evil at play with her costume that you see represented in the silver and the gold elements of it. At the same time, it fits her her female form, and we understand that that's not a male-inspired costume – that's her costume as a woman.
Also, in her lab, I didn't want anything that she wore to have a direction of "I'm female" and all of that. I really just wanted it to be something that made sense for her as a 16-year-old in a lab, where she had protective layers and it was more functional than it was necessarily fashionable – even though I love the fashion of it.
For a long time, the film industry was just looking through one lens. Now we have a lens that's much broader because we do have so many layers as women, we do have so many stories: we are mothers, we are sisters, we are protectors, we're the heads of families, we're the heads of corporations, so, we have lots of stories within this one ideal. That was important for me to communicate, and Ryan, of course, was completely on board, in the Panther series, that we show the diversity of women.
ML: With Wakanda Forever, when you have so many inspirations and so much to draw from and so much uniqueness and specificity within African culture, how do you tackle that and find which aspects to harness when it comes to storytelling through the costumes?
RC: You know there are thousands of cultures and tribes in Africa, and Ryan Coogler and Hannah Beachler did like a bible which they selected twelve tribes that we would be inspired by, and they assigned each one of those real life tribes to our fictitious tribes. So, we had the mining tribe that mines vibranium in Wakanda and they were inspired by the Turkana tribe. The Himba tribe... when I started doing my research and looking at the images, it was very clear that we had to redirect our images so that we could we could train the eye to see beauty by other standards. There certainly was this shea butter clay soil mixture that the Himba women put on their bodies and in their hair and you see that with the mining tribe elder in Black Panther, and so we fell in love with the costume possibilities of these twelve tribes. We picked the Zulu tribe for the royal family and how we would combine colour theory with what we knew about the tribes, and then show them as a forward-thinking nation that had vibranium and had technology, and kimoyo beads. So, we couldn't leave them as their Indigenous look. We had to elevate it and move it forward so that we could create these costumes that felt like the Basuto blankets but they were used as shields with vibranium printed on one side. So. that was the joy of putting it all together. We could be have our base, our tribal base, and then we could elevate these stories into this greater aesthetic of Wakanda.
ML: You were the first black woman ever to win an Oscar for costume design twice and you're the most Academy Award-nominated black woman in history, and what I think is so interesting is oftentimes it's really hard to be the first person through the door. You want to have that pathway cleared for you but I think we've already started to see progress in terms of the doors you have kicked open, even with Paul Tazewell, for instance, winning [in 2025] with Wicked and those beautiful costumes. What is something that you hope will be different for the next generation coming up after you?
RC: Well, I already see the next generation coming up after me – they work alongside me. I can see them forging their paths. I support a lot of new filmmakers of colour and what they're doing. When I first went into Marvel and I met with Ryan Coogler, who was 31 years old and I had 20 years experience already behind me, I knew that there was something I could offer this young filmmaker, that he wanted someone who could build a world and that world was Wakanda.
So, I just love to see that we are making progress, that those doors that we were able to open, whether it was with Spike Lee and people behind the camera, or it was just me having my presence being seen in the shops and the stores where we pull costumes. Now I go into those same offices and I see other people of colour pulling for their shows and getting written up, and racing out to have their their movies adorned, and I can't help but feel that I had something to do with that.
When someone like Paul Tazewell wins on the wings of Ruth Carter's win, we are showing that we show up as black excellence. When we now go into our interview spaces and we meet studio executives, we don't have to feel like we are trying to be accepted. We have entered this industry and we are winners, so, the fact that we are winners gives us a leg up and we can be more creative. We can feel the inspiration of those who have opened the doors for the next generation, so, I mean it's wonderful to mentor at this at this stage.