From School Daze to Sinners, Ruth E. Carter Walks Vogue Through Her Life in Looks

Hi, Vogue.

I m Ruth E. Carter and this is my Life in Looks.

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School Daze.

School Daze was directed by Spike Lee,

but it was my first movie, first movie ever.

Right here we have Giancarlo Esposito and Tisha Campbell.

He s wearing a fraternity jacket.

It s like the bomber jacket style.

He has a bulldog embroidered on the chest.

It says, Dog or Die.

I remember seeing Spike write

Dog or Die on a little notepad and send it to me

and said, This is what goes

on the gamma s Letterman jacket.

I came out of the HPCU experience,

so it was the perfect first film.

So let s see what s next.

Oh my goodness, I m Gonna Git You Sucker.

I m Gonna Git You Sucker

we shot in Los Angeles with Keenan Ivory Wayans,

cause Damon Wayans and Kadeem Hardison,

they did a lot of acrobatics with their costume

where they fell down the steps,

and it was really a fun experience.

I m Gonna Git You Sucker

was kind of like a spoof on Blaxploitation films.

We had Mr. Big, you know, we had Fly Guy,

we had these great names

and these great characters that really stemmed out

of the Blaxploitation era.

Even the concept of over gold,

where you die because

you re just wearing too many gold chains.

It was funny, and it was where we were at.

I feel like we were getting out of an era of stereotypes

and Blaxploitation and really having fun with it

and making fun of it.

Seinfeld, I was the costume designer

for the pilot of Seinfeld.

Jerry was like, you know,

Come by and pull some stuff outta my place,

you know, For me to wear.

I remember saying, wow, everything is really organized,

clean, and neat, you know, for a guy who is kind

of like a sports guy.

I remember doing the glasses

for George and him coming into his fitting

and saying to me, you know, I d like to wear glasses,

you know, I d like to have some wire rim glasses.

And I had just finished doing Malcolm X,

and some of the props and things I still had,

and I did have a pair of wire rim glasses that Denzel wore,

and I gave him to him to try on.

He put em on.

He was like, Yeah, this, I like this.

This is it.

Kind of was my Easter egg for years,

that actually George was wearing Malcolm X s glasses.

Turning the page.

Woo, Do the Right Thing, Spike Lee.

And this was gonna take place in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn,

New York City.

We were very much a part

of the Brooklyn community on every film with Spike.

So doing a film like Do the Right Thing

really was a love letter to Brooklyn

and to what the community does when they come together

as the Korean markets, and the Italian pizzeria.

And Spike really wanted to write a protest film,

and he wanted to show

what happens when the Korean grocery comes

into the neighborhood.

Well, how does the neighborhood feel about them being there?

And, you know, what that racial tension created, you know,

by the end of the film; we went from July to September

and so the temperatures change in on the East Coast.

so it was quite rigorous that summer.

But we were always very conscious of the community,

and how to tell the story of the community.

So we had Radio Rahim

and we have him in this Bed Stuy Do or Die T-shirt.

And that was actually painted

by a local Brooklyn artist, Nasha.

There were so many elements like that in the film.

You see the car watch, he has a leather lanyard.

He s wearing a leather necklace.

He has his Jackie Robinson Dodgers shirt on.

So, you know, that was a Spike Lee

that I began to work with,

who was very intentional, knew exactly what he wanted,

would bring things, you know,

in that other people would wear, either.

He dictated who wore what tennis shoes too.

So the Jordans on Buggin Out

was definitely written in the script,

but also chosen the style chosen by Spike Lee.

Leon in The Five Heartbeats.

It was Robert Townsend

who was the director,

and Robert was also one of the actors

in The Five Heartbeats.

He was duck.

They had all kinds of tricks in this film.

They had the costume that breaks away,

and they re in this spacesuit underneath.

And we had to dress all of these background in the 1960s.

It was the first time

that I had done a Period piece for film.

I loved doing Period work in theater,

especially because you got to do the research

and make some of the images

that you see in the research come to life.

We re gonna go from Robert Townsend s Five Heartbeats

to Malcolm X.

This was a full experience for me.

I got called by Spike Lee.

He said, Don t think about winning awards,

don t think about the Oscar or anything like that.

Just do a good job.

And actually it just made sense, you know,

it was such a big project.

It was such an important project to tell the life story

of Malcolm X.

I knew that he had an experience

in prison in Massachusetts,

and I m from Massachusetts,

so I felt like maybe I could write the Department

of Corrections and see his file.

They gave me a date to come by,

and they sat me in a cubicle,

and files and files of his letters, of his medical records,

of his whole entire experience in Massachusetts

was sat right in front of me.

I would actually get to know the man, you know,

behind the face a lot better.

I could make decisions on clothing choices

because I would know him better.

That was the springboard to the whole experience

of working with Spike Lee,

working closely with Denzel Washington.

I really wanted to support Denzel s performance

during that time.

Turning the page.

Tina Turner, What s Love Got to Do with It,

starring Angela Bassett as Tina Turner.

Angela has been such a gift to me.

We have gone on a journey

and a half together.

You know, seeing someone

that committed, you become as committed.

And this dress in particular was very special,

because Tina Turner was around when we created this dress,

and she actually brought a CD cover to me with the picture

of her in this dress.

And she said, Can you create this for Angela?

And of course I was excited,

but it was filming the next day.

You know, my team was, you know, ready,

up for the challenge,

you know, probably pulled an all-nighter

to get this leather dress done exactly the way it looked

on the CD cover that Tina Turner gave me.

And so that next morning,

I m at Base Camp

and Tina Turner is walking across Base Camp,

and she looks over at me

and she s got her wig on a wig head,

and she s heading towards Angela Bassett s trailer.

And she says, Meet me over that Angela s trailer.

And I open the door,

and there was Tina Turner sitting back

with Angela Bassett

between her leg sitting cross-legged on the floor,

and Tina was brushing her hair, getting it prepared

for her wig.

And I remember looking at that

and thinking that she was passing on a crown.

It s a memory that I have personally that,

and an image that I ll never forget.

We did the story of Ty Cobb.

I had been nominated for Malcolm X,

and now Hollywood was taking notice

that there was a costume designer out there

that could do Period epic films.

We made all of these uniforms,

and it was really hard to find a material

that looked like wool but wasn t as heavy or as hot as wool,

because the uniforms back then were boiled wool.

I felt like I was a little bit of an underdog.

You know, I d come out of a lot of independent films

with Black filmmakers,

and here I was working with Ron Shelton on Ty Cobb.

It was like way outside of like

what my normal film family was like.

And Ron really embraced me,

made me feel right at home.

But Tommy was a consummate actor,

and you know, he embraced the fact that I was this,

you know, Black girl working on this film.

You know, he was tough for on the crew,

and most of the time the ads would give me the sides

to bring into his trailer.

I would be welcomed into Tommy Lee Jones s artistic realm.

Rosewood, the story of a Black township

that was completely burned down like the Black Wall Street

and so many others.

It was directed by the late John Singleton, my brother.

It was another Period piece.

It was the early 20s,

and Don Cheadle, Ving Rhames were the two male stars.

Again, I got to explore many details

about Period clothes, also, you know,

the aging process.

Aging and dying was my thing.

I was an ager and dyer in the theater.

So when I got to a project like this,

I felt like I knew exactly how to paint the clothes,

because people don t realize

that you can t just take something

and put it on screen from a store,

or right from the sewing machine.

You actually have to put the life in it.

And the life that goes into it is from aging and dying.

B*A*P*S starred the late Natalie Desselle,

my buddy, and my other buddy, Halle Berry.

My favorite scene is the scene in the bathroom at the bidet.

And I read that in the script,

and I read how they couldn t control the water,

they were trying to turn the spigots off,

and they just got even more erratic.

So I thought, well probably Halle Berry needs

to have a rubber suit.

So not only can she not control the spigots,

but she can t control how slippery the whole room becomes

as the water goes everywhere.

So we created this orange latex unitard.

It was really, I think, successful to have

that jumpsuit in that scene with all the water.

And every time I watch it, I crack up.

I worked on Amistad

with Steven Spielberg, Anthony Hopkins,

and Djimon Hounsou.

I remember the interview.

I walked into Amblin over on the Universal lot.

Steven was shooting Jurassic Park at the time,

and he was coming over during his lunch break.

And I remember him coming in the room.

There was no script, I couldn t read the script.

He looked at me and he said,

I really loved your work in Malcolm X,

and it really made me feel really comfortable talking

to him, you know, about what I knew about Amistad

and what I could bring to the story.

And he said, Well,

take the script home and read it, and,

you know, let me know if you want to work me on this.

And I thought to myself,

I could probably call him back from the parking lot.

It was a special film for me,

because I got to go to the opera houses in Italy

to see all of the collections in London.

And really, I had the opportunity to do my best work.

Love Basketball.

Gina, she s a female director.

Her story was deeply personal.

Working with Sanaa,

the Great Sanaa Lathan

is a wonderful actor, as well as Omar Epps.

We went on this story about, you know,

a young athlete in Los Angeles,

and it s one of the great love stories,

I think, in Black cinema.

Shaft, Samuel L. Jackson.

You see Vanessa Williams in the background,

and he s got on that laser cut Armani jacket.

When Richard Rountree was shaft

in the 70s, is that Black leather trench coat

that he wears coming out of the subway.

And you hear the music

and you see him walking across the street.

It became iconic.

So we knew that we were going to collaborate

with the Fashion House, and that one was Georgio Armani.

We were also flown to Milan

to his fashion show in his apartment.

And I kept thinking,

How is he having a fashion show in an apartment?

But I didn t realize it was the apartment building,

and there was a floor that was dedicated to the show.

So the experience of doing the film,

collaborating with the late great Giorgio Armani

is something that I will hold dear for always.

Selma directed by the great Ava DuVernay,

really great actors like David Oyelowo and Colman Domingo.

The set was The Marches.

The Marches became the set.

Hundreds of people came

into the Wardrobe Department every day

and got dressed in their Marcher attire.

And thankfully there was a lot of documentation

on the Selma to Montgomery march,

so we could use, you know,

our Ebony magazines

and all of those things that I have collected over the years

to really see what kinds of articles

of clothing they wore to march in.

And so it was really a great experience

to really examine all of that research

and bring it to life here in this film.

The late Chadwick Boseman.

We really wanted to honor Africa

and give the Panther suit a signature.

So there s this veining that goes throughout the suit

that has a lot of Wakanda language, honor, dignity,

all of these great phrases,

as well as a medallion in the center of the chest.

But what I m really most proud of

is the surface Okavango Triangle.

We named it the Okavango Triangle for the Okavango River

that travels from north to south on the coast of Africa,

and it means the family.

And you see a lot of the triangle shape in the artistry.

So it s the mother, the father, the child.

And so we actually created this surface texture,

but also this story along the body

of the suit, around, it envelops him, it wraps him,

and he is wrapped in Africa.

Yellowstone.

Kevin Costner.

Taylor Sheridan called me wanting me to work

with him on Yellowstone.

And I didn t think that I had the energy for it,

but he said, you know, Cowboys wanna be cool.

They like hip hop.

And he was just rattling off the different kind of jeans,

and all the different ways

that Hollywood has depicted cowboys,

but the way it is in real life is a real difference.

So he intrigued me with that.

And I went on to Utah to do

the first season of Yellowstone

with Kevin Costner, and a really, really great cast.

After working with Ryan Coogler on the Black Panther

and the sequel Wakanda Forever,

he said that he had written a script

that he told me about, and it was a Period piece.

I couldn t believe it, I just didn t expect this story,

a 1920s story about vampires.

He immediately talked to me about the color palette,

that Smoke would be in blue, and Stack would be in red.

One wears a tie

and a pocket square,

one really doesn t care about it, a tie.

He s got a holster and a gun under his jacket.

Ryan respected the fact that I came up

with Spike Lee, but Delroy Lindo was also in this film,

and he was in Malcolm X.

And I remember during our camera test,

Ryan just walking away from the set

in the camera,

and we re kind of in the dark

in the background behind camera.

And he comes over to Delroy and I,

and we re just having a conversation,

and he just hugs us,

and he says, I just, I m feeling so honored right now

that the two of you are here.

And it was a really, a beautiful moment.

It took us by surprise.

You had to stop and think about it for a moment

and say, you know, here we re giving a new young filmmaker,

our wealth of knowledge and experience,

and we re bringing it to his film.

Teyana Taylor and the Met Gala.

I can t tell you how much fun this costume was to make.

And just the thought that it was gonna walk the carpet,

it was actually gonna open the carpet at the Met Gala.

It started with a Zoot suit

and we said, Oh, it s gotta have the stripes,

and it s gotta have the right proportions,

and then she says, And then I wanna do a cape.

And so we created the cape, I did illustrations for it.

And then on the day of, she said, I need a durag.

So we created a durag that was part of the cape.

When someone is wearing a Zoot suit,

you almost get permission to be bigger than big,

because that is the origin of the suit.

Thank you Vogue for this wonderful opportunity

to give you a little snippet of my Life in Looks.

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