How do you outfit an African queen? For Ruth E. Carter, the costume designer for “Black Panther,” it involved a Zulu hat and a 3-D printer.
In her 30 years in film, Ms. Carter has made her career putting images of African-American history and contemporary culture onscreen, from Spike Lee’s canon to “Selma” and the recent remake of “Roots.” For the Marvel blockbuster “Black Panther,” she got to envision a futuristic African alternate reality — made up of diverse tribes and untouched by colonizers.
“I really wanted this movie,” Ms. Carter, 57, said. She didn’t know much about the Marvel universe when she met with the director and co-writer, Ryan Coogler, but she liked the comic books’ portrayal. “You saw people with little kufis,” she said. “You saw a tribal council happening and someone was sitting there in a suit, and then they’d have a big Maasai headdress.”
To imagine the fictional African nation of Wakanda, without the influence of the Dutch, the British and other colonizers, Ms. Carter borrowed from indigenous people across the continent. During six months of preproduction, she had shoppers scouring the globe for authentic African designs, like the traditional stacked neck rings worn by the Ndebele women of South Africa. Textiles were sourced to Ghana, but many African fabrics are now printed in Holland; Ms. Carter rejected those. “I wanted to create the fabrics, and I wanted them to feel very superhero-like,” she said.
There was a strict color palette, drafted by Mr. Coogler: Chadwick Boseman, who plays T’Challa, the Wakanda royal who is also the Black Panther, wears black; Danai Gurira, as the warrior Okoye, and her band of female fighters, the Dora Milaje, are in vibrant red; and Lupita Nyong’o, as the spy Nakia, part of the river tribe, is in shades of green. (Black, red and green are also the colors of the Pan-African flag.) For Mr. Coogler, blue “represented the police and authority.” She dressed Michael B. Jordan, as Black Panther’s rival, Erik Killmonger, in it.
She also leaned on a visual bible created by Hannah Beachler, the production designer, which laid out the districts and culture of Wakanda. The merchant tribe is inspired by the Tuareg, ethnic Berbers of the Sahara, Ms. Carter said. The mining tribe resembles the Himba of Namibia, known for their red ocher body paint and leather headpieces. And for the artsy Step Town district, she scoured looks from an Afropunk festival in Atlanta, where “Black Panther” was shot.
“She has everything you want in a collaborator,” Mr. Coogler said. “She’s experienced but still youthful and energetic, still curious and open to trying new things.”
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