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| Ron and Patrice |
Hate-based groups have long used clothing to both spread and normalize racist rhetoric. At the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville last year, white supremacists co-opted khaki pants and polos to march across a college campus chanting racist and anti-Semitic slogans. Four decades earlier, Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke selected polished three-piece suits in an effort to appear charming, saving his hooded robes for cross-burning ceremonies. Marci Rodgers, the costume designer on Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman, the true story of a black undercover cop who infiltrates the KKK, researched this period of American history while the 2017 rally was in full swing.
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| Patrice |
“[Lee] had sent me the script prior to the Charlottesville riot,” Rodgers, tells i-D, recounting the days she spent researching at the Library of Congress. “When I landed in DC, that day, it was almost a twilight zone. I had just re-read the script, watched Birth of a Nation, watched Gone With the Wind — then the riot happened right before my eyes. I was watching on TV right as it was happening. I had just started to do some research on Mr. Duke. It was weird.”
Further research for BlaKkKlansman brought the Howard University alumna back to her former college, which Kwame Ture — played in the film by Corey Hawkins — attended back when he was still known as Stokely Carmichael. Rodgers met with the real Ron Stallworth to perfect the former cop’s suede and shearling-heavy wardrobe, and learn how he used accessories to blend in on the street. Laura Harrier’s black power activist Patrice is one of the film’s fictionalized characters — but her intricate all-black leather looks are also inspired by real historical figures.
As BlacKkKlansman hits cinemas today, ahead of the Charlottesville anniversary this weekend, i-D talked to Rodgers about working on the year’s most terrifyingly relevant film.
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