Black Panther's Costume Designer Ruth E. Carter Breaks Down Her Iconic Costumes

Well, the most difficult part

about being a costume designer

is that, in many ways, you're also a psychologist,

you're an art director,

you're in the background and you're in the foreground.

And being able to balance that

with all the creative input

becomes very difficult and challenging at times.

[upbeat piano music]

My name is Ruth Carter and I'm a costume designer.

There are lots of people

and layers to creating a costume,

from getting a person dressed for the set,

to communicating ideas,

that I'm constantly paring it down.

We all want to take the lead,

and show our stuff,

and be out front.

And, Look at me, look at me.

But a lot of times it's, Don't look at me.

And a lot of times it's let's be subtle.

I don't do a lot of subtle films,

but believe it or not,

there is a dialing down

and a constant understanding of the bigger picture,

the composition.

And I have to consistently be aware of the intent

and the composition of each scene,

and let all of the parts come together and have synergy.

I got into costume design,

kind of as a default,

I was studying acting in college,

and I didn't make the role that I was going after.

And the instructor who was actually directing the play

asked me if I wanted to do the costumes instead.

And it was kind of like the constellation prize.

I said, okay,

because I had dabbled in sewing as a kid

and I gave it a try and it stuck.

And I have worked on everything from School Daze,

to B.A.P.S, Do the Right Thing, Mo' Better Blues,

I'm Gonna Git You Sucka,

Selma, Malcolm X, and Black Panther.

When I first started as a costume designer,

I was very much focused on doing the illustrations

and going through the process.

And then as we traveled through the years,

costume design has evolved to be illustration process,

involves more people.

It's more digital.

I was, you know, working on one sheet of paper

with my pens or my brushes.

And now we're illustrating by computer.

We are creating costumes with 3D printing.

We can actually, you know,

really see 3D renderings of what we're creating.

So we can look at a costume

from all angles before we begin the build process.

So we're much more informed now

even though I think my original approach

to costume design still is alive and well.

There's nothing more beautiful

than a sketch done on a piece of art paper.

But now we can use our digital process

to reverse things that we don't like much easier

than it was from that first idea.

[mellow piano music]

When I was first asked to do Black Panther,

I thought, Why me?

I had never done a superhero film before.

And walking into Marvel was similar

to me like walking maybe into the CIA,

you know, doors mysteriously slammed behind you.

You get your eyes scanned.

And I walked into a room with Ryan Coogler and Nate Moore.

And, you know, I found myself welcomed to the team.

Ryan was asking me questions

about Malcolm X and other films that I had done.

And I felt like I had been designing superheroes already,

real life superheroes.

And that's what he wanted me

to bring to the Black Panther film.

Coming into designing for Black Panther

was definitely a multi-tiered process.

There was a Wakandan Bible that gave us some direction

for creating the looks for many of the tribes.

When you're building a world, you can't take for granted

that it's gonna be a one dimensional kind of a thing.

It was multi-tiered, multi-dimensional.

And as we delved into each individual costume,

for example, the costume for Okoye,

who is the general for the Dora Milaje,

we wanted to have a uniform.

We didn't want a cheerleader skirt and a bikini top.

We wanted these women to be taken seriously in a uniform,

because they are protecting the King,

King T'Challa, the Black Panther.

And so it was Ryan Coogler

who felt like they should be flat on the ground,

split toe boot,

no heels, no wedge boots.

And we crafted a costume

that really did represent all the areas of Africa.

You have bead work from the Turkana tribe.

You have a leather skirt wrapped like the Himba women,

who soaked the skins of the calf

and stretch the edges so that it ruffles.

When I viewed a lot of the techniques

that were used for a lot of indigenous African craft

and tribalwear,

I saw so many beautiful ways

that we could represent it on this costume.

We have the Ndebele neck rings and arm rings

that represents South Africa.

But we wanted the neck rings to feel like jewelry.

So we actually got a jewelry designer

to come in and create our prototypes for those pieces.

So there are so many ways

in which the Dora Milaje costume honors the female form.

It has a leather harness

that travels around the body,

and you'll see it wrap around the bust area,

and into the waist.

And in between there's a raised printing

that mimics scarification.

Different tribal customs use scarification

as identifying their origin.

Sometimes the scars are on the face.

Sometimes the scars are on the body.

And you'll see that represented

in many areas and many aspects of different tribal customs.

And so this Dora Milaje costume would not be complete

without some representation of that tradition.

To design for Queen Ramonda,

it was very stressful for me at first,

because in the comics Queen Ramonda is walking around

in yoga pants and barefoot,

and she has her white, beautiful dreadlocks.

And, you know, she's very easygoing,

and because we're making a movie,

and I really wanted you to recognize her as the Queen

at first glance,

when we see her there on the landing pad

when T'Challa returns to Wakanda with Nakia,

we know right away that that's the Queen.

And I think it's identifiable in her costume.

She has her shoulder mantle, which is 3D printed.

She has her isicholo,

which is the married woman's hat from South Africa.

And one of the main reasons why it was important

to 3D print that piece was I needed it to be perfect.

If Wakanda is this forward-thinking place

that's leading in technology,

the Queen would definitely have pieces

that represented tradition,

but also represented new innovations.

The first Black Panther suit

was seen in the film Captain America: Civil War.

I think it was added maybe well into the production.

And so there were a lot of things

that weren't really sussed out completely.

So by the time I came onto

the full-blown Black Panther film,

I brought the costume to my office

and I put it on a mannequin,

and I thought, Hmm, you know,

the mannequins just really don't give you the magic.

Maybe I need Chadwick Boseman to come into my office.

He came in and he put the suit on,

and it was magical.

And he stretched,

and he did his karate poses,

and he did all this stuff

in my office and I was completely floored.

I wanted to step in

and give it my personal spin.

I felt like there needed to be a connection

between the suit and the place, in Wakanda,

and I saw that there was an opportunity

to add a surface pattern

to the suit,

which was a triangle.

The triangle is sacred geometry of Africa,

I like to say.

It means the father, the mother, and the child.

And because we needed a surface texture,

the triangle was developed.

But the suit itself,

it was designed by Adi Granov

of the Marvel visual development team.

And people don't realize

that it really does take a team

to create all of the beautiful things that are developed.

There's hundreds of illustrations that are put forward.

And then it comes into my world.

My world is one of design

and it's also one of materialization.

And the materialization of the costumes is a big,

it was responsibility to understand how the textures

will work together.

And once we materialize these things, we do prototypes.

And so I did a prototype of the Panther skin,

as you might call it.

Several prototypes were developed

and submitted for the Marvel executives

and Ryan Coogler to take a look at.

And so they chose the one that they liked.

And then we made the complete suit.

[mellow piano music]

I worked with Eddie Murphy for so many years.

It was a reunion of sorts.

It gave me an opportunity to reacquaint myself

with his body type,

and how things change as you get a little bit older.

Things do change.

So at that point,

I needed to go back to the first movie,

and really study it

and find the things that we wanted to extract and keep,

and then move it forward.

I mean, going from Wakanda to Zamunda,

it really needed to have its own signature

and its own look.

When I was on Black Panther,

I would tell my crew and everyone coming onto the job that,

Hey, this is not Coming to America.

Even though it was a great film,

Wakanda needed to really have its own identity.

And here I am on Coming to America,

saying to everyone, This is not Wakanda.

So I really examined what was really great about the design

on the first movie,

and what we really could expect in a sequel,

because we're much more sophisticated now.

We have seen African royalty,

and we really need to address the audience

and their knowledge of Africa.

One of the things that we...

I would like to say we modernized,

or we made different in Coming to America,

was we were cruelty-free.

If you remember, the King wears a lion on his shoulder

when he comes to America.

And Prince Akeem, he also wears like an ocelot

over his shoulder.

And in the new Coming to America

we decided that we would 3D print the lion on the shoulder.

And I like the idea of it being a piece of jewelry as well.

So we printed it in gold,

and we gemmed the eyes and the nose.

And as you might know,

even the Maasai tribe in Africa,

traditionally, they killed a lot of lions,

but now they have technology that helps them chart

where the lion herds are,

so that they won't follow their herd of cattle,

and they can steer away from it.

So that all connects to technology for me as well.

We 3D printed the lion on the shoulder of a Prince Akeem.

So we have had very little time

to create all of the majesty of the looks,

especially for the Queen of Zamunda.

And we actually had the embroidery done in India,

but we sent them a detailed sketch,

which included a lot of Ankara symbols,

or African Mass, the ankh.

And we had these things embroidered

onto her costume and her cape,

so that we could, you know,

honor these African in symbols.

[mellow piano music]

So I'm a long time collaborator with Spike Lee.

He gave me my first opportunity on School Daze,

which was his first studio picture.

And I really felt like I was part

of the 40 Acres film family.

We returned to New York,

to Brooklyn every year to do a new film.

And we were excited about what he had in mind with a film,

like Do the Right Thing.

It was a response to a lot of the things

that were going on in New York at the time,

in Bensonhurst,

the tension between the Italian-Americans

and black Americans in Brooklyn,

the Tawana Brawley case,

and Mike Tyson.

There were so many things that were happening in New York

and it was Spike's response to that,

Do the Right Thing.

It was done at a budget.

And so we had to depend on a lot of product placement,

and Nike was a big product placement company that we using.

And a lot of the sportswear,

the colors and the tones were saturated.

And it was very difficult to bring in

so many saturated tones,

and the compression shorts,

and the basketball shorts,

and the jerseys that all of the actors wore.

It was very hard to incorporate that

into the everyday look of Brooklyn, New York.

If you look past the Do the Right Thing set,

and you looked at real Brooklyn,

it looked a lot different than Do the Right Thing.

Do the right thing was stylized.

And part of the stylization of the look

had to do that with a lot of the color

and the color that was brought in through Nike.

So the other side of that coin was,

how do we bring in the culture of Brooklyn?

And we brought in a lot of the Ankara prints,

a lot of African materials you see.

We Love radio with Samuel L. Jackson,

and he had all of these hats that he wore.

When you see the people walking up and down the streets,

you see a lot of young people,

and they're wearing a lot of athleisure,

is what we call it today.

But then we were doing a balancing act

on pop culture, African influence.

So there was so many very stylized

aspects of the film.

There is even prose in Do the Right Thing,

where we talk about Eleanor Bumpurs,

and there's this dialogue that happens

in front of Sal's Pizzeria.

And it really did give it its own look,

its own feeling, and its own purpose.

And the writing was so unique,

and it stands the test of time today

with the issues that it was bringing.

[mellow piano music]

I knew that it was it's gonna be based on the autobiography

of Malcolm X written by Alex Haley.

So I had read the book in high school,

and I returned to the book and read it again.

And there are some specific things

that are mentioned in the book that I really felt

that I wanted to make sure we did,

like the powder blue zoot suit.

And also I wanted to know a lot more

about Malcolm X, the man.

I realized that since he was incarcerated

in Massachusetts at the Department of Corrections,

I did a letter writing campaign

to them asking to see his file.

And I got to know a little bit more about Malcolm X

through his writing.

And I felt that that was important

since I was going to be creating his wardrobe

in times where we didn't know him,

and we didn't see him in photographs.

And I wanted to be able to make those decisions

that I felt were critical to telling this story.

And he went through several phases.

There were these pivotal moments

in his life that I wanted to, you know,

separate the script and separate the story,

and really color those times of his life very specifically.

So as he was this street hustler,

this guy who wore these fancy zoot suits,

and went to the dance halls,

it looked one way.

When he became the guy who broke into a house in Boston,

we calmed the pallette down.

When he went into prison,

it was very blue for the denim that they are wore.

And it kind of cleansed the palette

from what he was before.

As he emerges from prison,

and he is going to see Elijah Muhammad for the first time,

he's very humble.

And that's one of the costumes I'm really the most proud of,

because it's an old, oversized suit,

that's a little rumply,

and Denzel is is playing the character so humble.

And I felt like the costume

didn't overshadow his performance.

It just worked right in there with it.

And so those are the things that,

on the journey of telling someone's life,

you really do have to stay connected

to those phases, those times in their lives,

when they are feeling different ways,

and performing different activities,

that you dial it in,

you keep dialing it in,

and you're constantly working with the actor

and how their discovery changes.

And you adjust with them.

[mellow piano music]

I was interviewed by Ava DuVernay for Selma.

I went to her home,

I think she calls it a tree house,

that overlooks the Hollywood sign.

And, you know, I really was so impressed with her knowledge

and her commitment to telling this story of,

I think, black America's first family,

royal family, the Kings.

And so I was excited to come together with, you know,

a woman as a writer, as a director, as a leader.

And there was a mutual respect and admiration.

And I felt that there was a trust

about the images that I presented.

One of them was, you know,

Martin Luther King was a robust man.

He was a, you know, kind of thick,

I guess you call it.

And he had this little roll of skin

that happened over the collar of his shirts.

And I've noticed that with other men that I've dressed,

you know, it doesn't mean that the shirt is too tight.

It's just the flesh that kind of comes over the collar.

And I wanted to make sure

that David Oyelowo had that same fit.

And so I made his shirt,

the necks of his shirts just a tiny bit smaller

than his actual size.

It worked.

He had the roll,

and it didn't bother him too much.

I saw him thinking, you know,

Ruth has made this one.

Maybe the laundry caused a little tightness.

But I later told him about it.

And he agreed that it was an important detail

as an aspect of the look of Martin Luther King,

Also because they were the first family,

Coretta Scott King was always presented

with such elegance and class.

And I wanted to really stay in that zone with her

and keep what I feel is, in Black American culture,

a tradition of being appropriately dressed,

you know, especially in the church,

the Mother of the Church has a certain aura

and presence to herself.

So we see scenes of them at home at dinner.

And everyone actually is dressed for dinner.

And to, I guess, a different crowd maybe

that doesn't look natural.

In the South, I think there's like a proper thing about,

you know, when you go to breakfast,

you put your clothes on for the day.

You don't go to breakfast in your pajamas.

I mean, we're much more relaxed about that now,

but I really wanted that kind of structure

to be seen in Selma.

And then speaking of the Selma marches,

there are so many beautiful photographs of people marching,

and they're all in black and white

especially the march over the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

And we have people that were little children

when that happened,

and they were actually a part of our background,

and I would talk to them,

and they would tell me about things they remembered.

And I walked around to a lot of the background

and say, you know,

Look at this posture.

Look how they have their hands in their pockets.

You know? You should do that.

And you know, it really connects you

to the filmmaking process,

because you have dressed these people

based on what you see in the research.

You have done all of that work.

And so, as they are collecting on the set,

you want to take it a step further

and see the the actual posture of the participants

in the research come to life in the filming process.

And so that became really important

and significant to me that,

because I dressed to the research,

I really wanted to make sure

even that the the ADs were moving people up front

that we're supposed to be up front

according to the photographs.

When Black Panther premiered

it kind of shot me out of a cannon

and everyone wanted to know more.

And so the need to actually tell my story

became a little bit more paramount.

Over the years, I've amassed a collection of costumes,

and now we have created

with SCAD Fashion in Atlanta an exhibition.

Hopefully we will be able to go back to the museums

and walk through them the way that we are accustomed to.

And so that's really exciting to be able to tell my story.

And I'm so proud that people want to hear it.

And yeah, you know,

it's a lot of years of blood, sweat, and tears

that I have experienced to be able to present that.

[mellow piano music]