Black Panther Costume Designer Ruth E. Carter on Storytelling through Costuming, the Academy Awards, and More

For the past 30 years, Ruth E. Carter has been designing costumes for major Hollywood productions and critically-acclaimed films, picking up a plethora of award nominations for her work, including three Oscar nominations. Then, thanks to one fateful conversation with Black Panther director Ryan Coogler, the costume designer was granted her first big-budget blockbuster, something that led straight to her first victory at the Academy Awards.

Growing up in Springfield, Massachusetts, Carter ended up attending the Virginia-based Hampton University where she first really got into costume design. In fact, it’s where she tossed a potential career in education aside in order to pursue her hobby in depth. Since then, that hobby has transformed Carter into one of Hollywood’s most-desired costume designers and has given her the platform to be able to tell stories that need to be told.

We spoke with Carter earlier this week and talked about her journey from Hampton until this moment in time. Here’s what the Oscar-winning designer and to say about internships in Santa Fee, the collaboration with Marvel Studios, and more.

ComicBook.com: Once upon a time, you were actually going to school for education, right? At what point during your studies did you decide, “Hey, you know what? Maybe I want to get into the world of costume design?”

Ruth E. Carter: Well, I was a special education major and I had dreams of working in the theater for the deaf. Even though I was an education major, I still was interested in sign language and pantomime and communicating without words, so the theater part of me was always there. It just spoke to me a little stronger during my sophomore year, and I was auditioning for plays, and then I just decided I was spending so much time in theater already that I should change my major. So when I entered my junior year of school, I changed my major, which was kind of late.

You mentioned theater. Was there a single moment growing up that you decided you really enjoyed theater?

I was always a kid that was in summer theater programs, cultural programs, African studies, and we would have theater programs for the parents and family to come up at the end of the program to see what we’d been doing all summer, you know? I really was very, very active with those kind of programs. They call it spoken word now. I was doing the poetry and dance, so it was kind of there, the interest was there, and the activity was there throughout high school. That’s why when I got to college, I didn’t think of it as a profession. It was extracurricular, even when I was in high school. I just majored in special education and then tried to do extracurricular theater activities, and it kind of overtook everything.’

Theater had been kind of a hobby, but then you eventually turned that into an internship with the Santa Fe Opera. Was that always your desire, to work on stage productions? Did you ever anticipate at the beginning that you’d make it to Hollywood?

I really didn’t know much about Hollywood and film. I mean, coming out of Springfield, Massachusetts, you don’t get a lot of exposure to what the film community is doing. By the time I graduated college, I knew very strongly that my next step was to get an internship someplace where it was an intensive study where I could actually further education, because in college there wasn’t really a specialization in costume design, either. I kind of carved that niche for myself, and I felt a little insecure about maybe having trained myself in getting a theater degree, that I needed to really get a stronger foundation. So there were two internships, one before Santa Fe Opera, and that was with City Theatre that was in my hometown and they recommended, after that internship ended, that I go on to Santa Fe.

Now you’re in Santa Fe, right? What makes you take the leap to get to Los Angeles, especially not having the film industry on the mind?

My brother married a girl from Los Angeles and her parents were empty-nesters, and they offered me room and board if I wanted to come up to Los Angeles. They were the ones that said there is a film community out here and the fact there may be opportunities. So I took them up on their offer to live free room and board, and drove out here. I was still looking for theater. I mean, there was this little bank of theaters on Santa Monica Boulevard that I happened to drive by, and I thought, “Wow, that looks like base-level and they could use my help.”

I would bring my portfolio around because I was always working on my portfolio, reading plays on spec and doing the costumes. So I didn’t get any jobs there, but I did open the calendar section of the LA Times and they had a picture of the Los Angeles Theater Complex opening up their doors after building a huge theater complex that housed five theaters under one roof, so I immediately thought they could use my help, and I got a job there.

Awesome. How long were you there?

I was there for one whole season, and I met a lot of people and became a fast friend to actors in the community who also did film. There were dance companies that came through to the theater for a weekend and performed, and I became friends with all of them because after my work in the costume shop was done, I was also working backstage, helping to run the shows in the costume department. So I spent long, long hours in that complex and really developed some friendships that I still have today.

Malcolm X was only the fourth or fifth movie you worked on, obviously one of many collaborations with Spike Lee. When you two first started work on the film, did you ever anticipate, “Wow, this film’s going to end up in an Oscar nomination?”

No, because Spike was very honest about not being a Hollywood type, not falling into that mindset of looking for Hollywood’s stamp of approval. He was very clear that the reason why we were doing Malcolm X was to bring awareness about this man and what he became. So when he first called me, he told me immediately, “Don’t think about an Oscar,” and I didn’t. So it was really more about studying this icon’s life and looking at his clothing and really painting the proper picture. So I was given a directive not to think about it, and I really didn’t.

So you go through that production, and then a few more years in, you get your second Oscar nomination. Even though you don’t think about it, you’re at the top of the costume world and you’ve been doing this now for quite some time. After not winning on Amistad, had there ever been a point where frustration started to creep in at all?

Well, I started to think the ones that were winning were designed to win. I lost Malcolm X to Dracula, and that was Eiko Ishioka, who was a visual artist and she was able to make a costume with gold leaf, and I didn’t have that kind of money when I did Malcolm X. Then the second loss on Amistad was to Titanic and I started to realize that the popular film wins the prize, so it kind of lessened the blow for me, because I wasn’t ever the type of person who felt like being popular was a success.

I started to sort of surmise that the place we were, in terms of what people were going to see, my films just didn’t have the numbers. I think there were many reasons for that, but I used that in my mind to sort of justify that I didn’t really need to win, because there were all kinds of circumstances surrounding those that win.

You did bring up a good point, that you could go to the theater, strip away all of the dialogue from a movie, and there would still be a story to be told just with what you see with the characters are wearing. I’m sure it depends on the project, but say like a Malcolm X or Amistad, how do you wrap your mind around the initial storytelling process?

I usually kind of section a story out. It has a beginning, middle, and an end and many times, as with Malcolm X, that beginning has one particular kind of color. Maybe he’s younger, he’s more fanciful. And in the middle, there’s usually a transition or some type of a change that occurs. And with the film Malcolm X, it was his time in prison, which kind of wiped away the color. It was mostly denims and blues and very cool, very cold. And then you come out of it towards the end, and it’s an era, it’s the ’60s, it’s like a new beginning. So I usually look for the transitions in a script, and I attach each transition its own color story, its own dynamic with regards to what people are wearing, what makes it come to life, what makes us get into it, what makes us enjoy it. And then I just go from there through the other transitions.

Then we fast-forward a few years. It’s, what, 2015, 2016? We’re starting to get into the world of superheroes and before long, you join Ryan Coogler, Nate Moore, and dozens of so many talented people on Black Panther. When you were first approached about the prospect of doing this huge mega-blockbuster movie, how surprised were you?

I was surprised that I was asked. I wasn’t sure exactly how to prepare for the interview. I had to kind of ask a lot of people who had worked for Marvel what they might want to see from me in the interview and then when I got the job, I realized, because of the person who interviewed me, Ryan Coogler, that he was not only doing a superhero movie, but he was also doing a cultural phenomenon, and the cultural part of it, I felt like I could handle. I felt very strongly in the beginning that I had to rely on Ryan Coogler’s knowledge of the comics and Nate Moore’s knowledge of the comics and that they would be very accommodating. I felt like if I had a good question, a stupid question, or whatever kind of question, I could go to them, full disclosure, and I wouldn’t be judged that I was a girl that didn’t know about superhero films.

And then I began the process of surrounding myself with really strong people that had done them that could guide me, and I was able to do that. So the guidance that I was given was not to tell me what to do. It was to tell me when it was time to make a particular type of decision for the art. When I realized that it all boils down to artistic decisions … you know, there are certain processes that go into making a superhero film that … I had people with me that knew we do this first, and then we do that first, this is how much time we need on the second part and the third part. So I relied on them to put that timeline together and get the people together that build those costumes that know that world, but in the end, they all came back to me for artistic choices.

So realizing that it was really going to be an artistic choice, whether it’s the muscle sculpt or the little triangles on the suit, or it’s the way the colors come together, what materials we would use to accomplish it, when I realized that it boiled down to the art, I felt at home again.

When you think of Black Panther, Wakanda’s this beautiful, sci-fi futuristic setup. How do you start to wrap your mind around this Afrofuturistic culture? Where do you start developing the pieces for this costume department?

Well, the opportunity to weave the cultural story into a futuristic model was an honor. When you look through much of the artistry throughout the continent of Africa, that depict all of the tribal techniques and practices, you’re thinking about what we could use to make this dynamic and it starts to pop out at you. When you think about the Ndebele people of South Africa and their neck rings and their arm rings, and you see that there’s women in Asia that also wear these rings, and you hear the folklore, you read the folklore that they were initially done to protect them from attacks from wild animals, so there’s a piece of superhero right there, and it becomes kind of a part of the story.

When you read about Black Panther and the comics and how it melded traditional African dress within the story of the Black Panther, part of the story itself is cultural and has really less to do with superheroes as it is to do with this fictitious place that is in Africa that has vibranium, and their cultures that have melded together, and there’s a tribal council, and you start going, “There’s a big story here,” and the Black Panther is the one who holds the magic. And how do I set him in Wakanda? We’ve seen him outside of Wakanda. Now he’s at home. How does he look at home? How does he work in this world as a superhero? And then you start putting it together.

So it makes sense, and it’s like reading one of those stories when you were a kid, about a far-off kingdom and all the elements of that kingdom. In many ways, it’s the Black Game of Thrones. It really does take on its own mystique and its own folklore and its own rules, its own regulations, and I think that’s what makes it great.

You won Marvel Studios its first Oscar. Is it safe to say we’ll be seeing some of your new designs in Black Panther 2?

Well, I loved the collaboration over at Marvel. They are extremely supportive, more than I’ve ever experienced in my whole career. There are some incredible artists there that support the costume design and if I am given the opportunity to go back, I think that we’ll all sort of even grow to higher heights.

*****

Which costume in Black Panther was your favorite? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below or by tweeting me at @AdamBarnhardt to chat all things MCU!

Avengers: Endgame is now in theaters and will be followed by Spider-Man: Far From Home on July 2nd. Captain Marvel is now available digitally ahead of a home media release June 11th.