Meet: Ruth Carter
Y’all- Miss Ruth E. Carter is the fashion diva making sure Black folks stay looking fabulous on screen! If you haven't heard of Ruth Carter, get familiar! Dawning on almost 30 years in the TV and film industry as a supreme costume designer, Carter has modified how Black people have been experienced on screen. She evokes the Afro-futurist spirit of Octavia Butler, yet instead of dystopian novels, Carter constructs fashionable pieces that leave a lasting imprint on fans who view her designs!
One of her most popular works involves her Oscar Award-winning role as the costume designer for Marvel’s Black Panther(2018); the first Black woman to win in the category! Carter meticulously researched ways to advance the absolute fire that staple characters like T’Challa(Chadwick Boseman), Shuri(Letitia Wright), Nakia(Lupita Nyong’o), and M’Baku(Winston Duke), carried throughout the film! Ruth Carter went as far as to outreach and traveled to the Kingdom of Lesotho of the Maltoi Mountain region of South Africa, in addition to learning from the Ndebele and Maasai peoples of Kenya, South Africa, and Tanzania to understand the ethnic significance of particular garments, and fabric materials in order to design for each Black Panther cast member!
Hailing from the HBCU, Hampton University, Carter sustains much devotion to the Black community, celebrating the range of complexions, hues, hairstyles, and body types of Black people and features in her work! She has shifted the paradigm on the significance of costume design and how looks influence an audience's overarching outlook and internalization of characters. Adding to the narrative complexities of a character’s story, Carter goes the extra mile in researching intimate details that give a more personalized quality to the individual; intricacies that elevates a character’s relatability and deepens a viewer’s connection to them!
Carter’s designs have merged the abstract with Afro-punk,
surrealism and the ethereal, simultaneously!
Having developed visually remarkable avant-garde looks for iconic Black TV and film characters like Radio Raheem(Bill Nunn) in Do The Right Thing(1989) or the recent reimagination of Kunta Kinte in Roots(2016), Ruth Carter has worked alongside directors like the ingenious Spike Lee to Ryan Coogler and John Singleton!
This go-getter attitude coupled with a genuine passion for showcasing the beauty and complexities of Black/African cultures and people, Carter reigns as an underground Hollywood designer that continually does justice to the culture!
Ruth Carter’s works have even reached such distinction that some pieces have been selected for showcasing in the exhibit, Ruth E. Carter: Afrofuturism in Costume Design featured at the Tubman Museum of Art! So don’t be shy, check out all of her amazing pieces!
