[Ruth] People assume that I became a costume designer because I love fashion.
But that wasn't it at all.
My heroes were Langston Hughes,
James Baldwin, Nikki Giovanni, Sonia Sanchez.
Playwrights, poets.
Those were the designers that inspired me.
People think I sew, but that's not really what I do.
What I do is I tell stories.
[Ruth] When I was first starting out doing costume design for theater,
my mom came to see a play I was doing and she came backstage afterwards.
She sat in the costume shop
while I gathered the laundry from the play,
brought it up to the costume shop.
She said, "You mean to tell me
that you graduated with a four-year degree
to come out and do somebody's laundry?"
-[laughs] -[female interviewer laughs]
What is costume design?
Nobody really knows what it is that we do.
Is it fashion? Do you sew?
I mean, they know what lighting design is, they know what directing is.
I think as we evolved as a filmmaking body,
there's more focus on it as an art form.
For me, costume design is the process of taking an idea
and making it come to life.
It starts, you know, in here first
and it, uh, is developed.
You have to understand a little bit about people,
what makes a person who they are,
where they live, what they believe in.
Sometimes that's really reflective on the outside.
It's storytelling.
[woman] The best costume design does this quiet work
of setting the stage for the viewer.
When it's in the hands of someone like Ruth Carter,
you can't even tell that she's designing to tell a story.
[man] There's a certain way that Ruth
assembles her costumes
that makes you feel like, whoever this person is,
that they are indeed the...
the owners of this... you know, I don't want to say costume,
because I think that the power is that you don't think of it as "costume."
You think of it as, like, "This is... this is who they are."
[Spike Lee] As a director, you wanna surround yourself with the best people.
The films I've done with Ruth, it's not like...
you gotta talk all the time.
Nah. We know what we're doing.
And I trust her, knowing that she's gonna come back
to show me stuff that's gonna be right on the money.
[Samuel L Jackson] She makes you feel good about yourself in those clothes.
You can tell when, uh,
she's gotten it right or she feels like she has it right because she lights up.
[Ryan Coogler] What makes Ruth's work so beautiful is the humanity.
It never feels like costumes, you know. It just feel like clothes.
Even when it's at its most extravagant,
people are jumping out of airplanes and fighting big Afrofuturistic battles.
[grunting]
It still feels like something that these characters put on
and that they wear.
They still felt like people.
That's one of those things when it's like, "Man, how she do that?" You know? [laughs]
[birdsong]
[Ruth] The very first thing I do is break down the script.
There is a lot of wonderment in the first reading of the script.
"How are we going to attack this?
What is the DP going to want as far as a color palette?
What's the director thinking of in terms of these characters,
and what does everybody see?"
One of my favorite projects was Roots.
"We start to hear the pounding of drums.
This then becomes the screams of Africans being taken into slavery.
The waves of the ocean sea join this mix.
Kizzy sees a figure coming towards her for a moment.
It's clear as day that it's young Kunta Kinte."
It's just beautifully written.
My job is the... the visual, uh, story.
You know, to bring those textures and those colors that,
you know, how beautifully this reads into the story.
I think the first initial idea is very broad.
You want the colors of the scene
to support the words that are in the script.
The dirt, the drums, and the sea.
[seabirds calling]
The blue indigo of Africa
and Kizzy's hair wrapped in this natural homespun cloth.
You can feel the color of the earth,
whether it's red clay or brown.
You can kind of really feel the richness of the scene.
This is like the imagination part of the process.
The script is just the beginning.
I take that and I expound upon it.
Right now, we're in the costume shop of our film Dolemite Is My Name,
starring Eddie Murphy.
Dolemite is the story of Rudy Ray Moore.
He was a comedian,
and he created his own pimp character called Dolemite.
Dolemite is my name,
and fuckin' up motherfuckers is my game!
Ooh!
[Ruth] The '70s is such a personal time for me.
It was when I was a teenager,
and I remember a lot of things about it.
So, I'm bringing all of that to the costumes of the movie.
We knew that we were going to go really bold.
All of our fabrics, and our linings, and our buttons, and our trims.
And combine them in such a way
where it would really tell this story
of this larger-than-life character.
Then comes the nuts and bolts of,
"What do these ideas really look like?"
and "How do I place them in front of me so that I can realize them?"
There's lots of people that need to know what your vision is.
And so, the mood boards help explain all of that.
It's a hodgepodge of fabric swatches,
magazine tear sheets,
illustrations and sketches,
photos from the original movie.
Anything that gives us inspiration.
Everything that Dolemite wore was custom.
I don't wanna get in my car with this shit on.
I'm glad y'all brought my clothes to me.
[Ruth] This happened to be something close to what Dolomite actually wore.
We'll never really know for sure what that mesh was.
I'm thinking if Dolemite were to walk in here in that suit,
he'd say, "Man, this is made out of chain mail."
And I'd go, "What?"
But this is kind of what we used.
It's quieter than chain mail would have been.
You know, once it's done, it becomes a wearable garment.
And then, you get the actor in it,
it's very rewarding.
The fitting room is a transformation room.
So you're gonna be in the pimp scene, so we've gotta get you right.
Let's see you try on this shirt right here. This green one.
She wants you to be comfortable in what you're wearing
while you're doing your work, so that you can do your best work.
[whispers] He's putting on his pants.
There are times I want to disappear,
and there are times I wanna be the thing that you can't take your eyes off of.
And she gets that.
Turn around, let's see.
Ooh.
Transporting into the '70s.
When I put my costume on and I look at myself,
then I've come to completion.
Yes! There it is.
[laughs]
[Ruth] I think that it's fascinating
how the actor and the character kind of meld.
Yes, so now you got to stand with some attitude.
There we go.
And that's really your job, and that's what they want you to do.
Collar out.
Done!
[cheering]
[Ruth] I'm looking at things and how they can be better
and how they can change.
It's like an artist on a painting. It's never finished.
That's how I feel about all of my costumes.
You have to see what you don't want sometimes to know what you want.
And sometimes it's like, "Oh, my God! Wait a minute.
Close your coat. Take your shirt out. Take it out. Hurry up, hurry up.
How much time do I have?"
[laughs]
-Marker! -Start blocking for rehearsal, guys.
It's never done. Someone has to just, like, drag me away,
kicking and screaming, and then they can roll the camera.
-Go ahead. Mark rolling. -Rolling, rolling.
[Ruth] I really enjoy recreating the '70s.
The '70s was my era.
Those years of high school, I was into drama.
I just liked the performing arts a lot.
By the time I went to college, I hung out in the theater department,
and I was acting.
I remember auditioning for Molière, The Would-Be Gentleman,
and not making the audition.
And the instructor saying, "Do you want to try doing the costumes?"
So I said, "Okay."
There was no specific study in costume design,
but I knew how to navigate around the scripts.
I went to the local fabric store,
bought a bunch of fabric, got some patterns.
That just snowballed into the next production after the next production.
Before long, I was the costume designer on campus.
Theater was my first love.
Designing for theater is very different
from designing for film.
With theater, you view things from the audience
when you're designing it.
There is a certain amount of texture and color
and things that you don't see the further away you get from it.
So, we make things larger than life, patterns are sometimes bigger,
so that things that you've done read from the audience.
But in film, because everything is blown up so large,
things that make an impression are sometimes extreme details.
But film was the last thing I was really thinking about, you know.
I was really trying to get a theater project.
In this very theater,
I was, uh, designing the costumes for this dance company,
and it was that show that introduced Spike to me.
[Spike] As a director, you have to be a talent scout.
I was forming a team. Like, I was general manager.
In sports, you know, puttin' my team together.
So I needed a costume designer.
[Ruth] He sent me postcards,
inviting me to screenings to see She's Gotta Have It.
And I was like, "Nah, put it in the drawer.
Another one from Spike, put it in the drawer."
Then my friend, who introduced me to him, called me and said...
[woman] "Spike brought his film She's Gotta Have It
to the Cannes Film Festival."
[Ruth] And I was like, "What?
Why didn't I answer one of those postcards?"
[ringing tone]
Someone called me one morning at, like, five in the morning.
He said, "Ruth." It's like, "Yeah?"
"Ruth?" "Yeah?"
-"Ruth" -"Yeah?"
"It's the man of your dreams."
I said, "Denzel?"
"No! This is Spike."
[laughs]
[Spike] Do The Right Thing directive was
this film takes place on the hottest day of the summer.
Shorts, tank tops,
cut-off jeans.
I mean, even look at what Ruth had Rosie Perez wearing
in the opening credits sequence.
All that stuff that Rosie's wearing while she's dancing,
that's... that's Ruth Carter.
Do The Right Thing is the film
that single-handedly made hip-hop fashion a thing.
The reds, the blacks, the greens, the yellows,
that are really mimicking various West African flags.
[Ruth] It was very prevalent in Brooklyn
to have a connection to your culture, and to Africa,
and to wear kente shorts,
and to have necklaces with the continent of Africa.
And we wanted to make these African crop tops
and African shorts.
We wanted to sort of show how pop culture responds to the inner city.
[Tanisha] She's using this vibrant color palette
as a color palette of protest.
That's why the costumes in Do The Right Thing are so important,
because they help us understand
the politics of the space
that most viewers in middle America had never really experienced.
The moment when John Savage,
wearing a Larry Bird Boston Celtics T-shirt,
accidentally steps on Buggin' Out's new pristine Jordans?
Yo!
That's part of the culture. I mean, like...
Yo!
[Tanisha] It's why that movie still persists
as one of the most influential
films on race relations in 20th-century America.
[Ruth] Hollywood wasn't used to the Spike Lees of the world.
He wanted to show black people on camera, in cinema,
in more of a realistic manner.
We didn't have images of ourselves
that were positive.
I grew up looking at, um,
all of those old black-and-white films.
Birth of a Nation was one of the first films.
And it was so derogatory towards African-Americans.
There's this white man running around in blackface,
and this woman screaming and running from him, like he's a beast.
And, um, you know, other movies we were either tap dancing or serving someone.
I think the '60s started to change that,
but it was very slow.
And we went through blaxploitation,
where we were pimps, and drug dealers, and prostitutes.
I've got ten of the finest hoes in the world working for me.
I'm gettin' a hundred dollars a day from each one. Okay?
[Ruth] We are tasked with the responsibility to rewrite that.
I was raised in a small town, Springfield, Mass.
When I look around my old childhood library,
it still feels like this place where I can come
and just lose myself in history, and poetry,
and just whatever it is that I'm trying to learn about.
And the possibilities are just endless.
This library happened to be across the street from my high school.
This was the hooky spot.
Nobody ever really questioned me for being in here.
Even if it was two in the afternoon, I could be in the library.
Just escaping.
We always wanted to be conscious.
So, reading about slavery or knowing about civil rights
was an easy entry point for me as a young person.
I like to feel like my costumes
are supporting a greater story.
The story of the times and the story of the person.
And I like to feel that they have a breath to them.
It was a natural progression for me
to be on films that had me research.
What were the colors of the time?
What were the economics of the time?
Once you understand the world that a character lives in,
you can support that part of the story with your design.
Malcolm X was the first film that I'd done that, um,
went through so many eras.
He was so multi-faceted
with all the things that he did in his life.
Researching New York in the '40s was wonderful.
Harlem was alive, it was buzzing.
And so you really wanted to bring in that sense of the heartbeat of Harlem.
There were certain areas that were really broad.
Those were the zoot suits.
Zoot suits were considered a hoodlum fashion.
[both] Roseland!
[Spike] The dance sequence in the film.
Those zoot suits.
That was... That was amazing.
[Ruth] I researched exactly what the length of the coat was,
how narrow the pant was,
what kind of chains went around, what kind of pocket watch,
how long the feather would be,
so that we could really get a true sense
of what a zoot suit looked and felt like to wear.
From there, we took the journey
to his gangster days in the '40s and the '50s.
And then we go from there to incarceration.
I went to the Department of Correction
and I asked them if I could see Malcolm X's files.
I had medical records,
his booking photo,
and I had quite a few letters that he had written.
And I noticed how his penmanship changed
and his grammar increased as he educated himself.
When he came out of prison, he was humble.
I connected to that moment with his costume.
He was bent over in this rumpled, oversized suit.
He was not that cocky gangster anymore.
I feel it's a big responsibility to dress these big iconic figures,
because people... know them.
They feel endeared to them.
You have to actually honor them with your artistry.
[Awol] Sometimes, when you watch a film,
it's supposed to represent something real and true,
but then you kind of only get the film version of it.
She always makes a point to bring out the realness.
The humanitarian aspect of her costume design,
and the meticulousness of her choices
give the person that's being depicted this kind of dignity,
where historically, you know, that was lacking that.
[Ruth] I looked at the cargo list that was on the real Amistad,
and I saw that there were blankets and there was cloth.
You know, I felt like these were Africans that came from different communities.
They would maybe cover their hair, wrap turbans.
As they arrived, they were brought to jail.
We managed to keep the American flag kind of wrapped on one of the guys' heads,
as if he's unaware of what that means.
And in one of the writings of the Amistad case,
it said that in the courtroom, they looked like doves.
And so, I gave them all these clean white shirts
to sort of give them that dove-like appearance.
You know, I don't like to rely on what my subconscious tells me
because I think it's usually wrong. [laughs]
I love these, uh, runaway slave ads.
Ten-dollar reward for Tabitha.
"Tabitha is about five feet two or three inches high,
dark yellow complexion, stout made,
common head of hair, and about 20 years of age."
I like the people that I read about.
And I really want to see them resurrected in some ways.
So, I work really hard to try to get those details on, uh, an actor.
I think that there hasn't been enough
study of African-American history.
And the way that we tell the stories
sometimes is through movies.
And it's important that we take responsibility for it and...
and, um...
bring to life, as best we can, the truth.
There's eight of us in my family.
I'm the youngest.
-Roy was three years older than me. -[Roy] Yeah. I was working.
[Ruth] I used to go in your room and you used to hate that.
-Yeah. -Why?
I still don't know why, to this day, Roy, why you hated me in your room.
[chuckles] Because it was my stuff.
[both laugh]
Ma, what kind of kid was I?
-A nice daughter. -[Ruth] Ah! I'm glad.
Ma used to drive us all to school,
and then you'd drive up the hill to Springfield Technical Community College
and go to your class.
[Mabel] I was puttin'... I was puttin' emphasis on education then.
I wish I could have went to school a little longer. I like...
I like school.
The thing I believe that my mom instilled in me is this empathy,
this great empathy for people.
You know, because of the psychology that my mom studied
and brought home every day,
I got to take a deep dive into why people are the way they are.
You know, I'm grateful for her for teaching us that empathy.
That's probably why I see the things I see in characters.
This is the old machine that was in my room.
By day, it was a desk,
and, uh, by night, I guess,
it was a sewing machine.
It had a cool light.
I also, when I left, I guess, for school, I wrote a sign.
So, while I was away, nobody would get rid of it. I...
I was endeared to this machine.
It says, "This machine belongs to Ruth E. Carter.
Do not throw it away, sell it, or keep it.
Thank you. It's mine."
I remember I sewed a big, fluffy, orange vest
that I wore to one of my friends' parties.
And she asked me, you know, "Did you make that?"
And I said, "Yeah.
I made it."
[laughs]
I had a knack for creating stuff out of nothing.
[school bell rings]
Going from junior high school to high school,
I decided I wanted to be a Muslim.
So, I took my pants and I opened them up and I made 'em into long skirts,
and I covered my hair.
And I started studying the Koran.
And people thought I was deep, you know?
I'd do the little praying to the east,
and people gave me a little distance,
because I had a purpose and I had an aura.
[laughs]
Eleventh grade, it all went out the window.
I went to the other school that was up the street.
I just remember going to this new high school with this totally new look.
High boots, and long gauchos, and a vest,
and blouses, and a briefcase.
I remember a couple of kids in the hallway
asking me if I was, like, a substitute teacher.
Oh.
You know, I was no longer the Muslim girl.
I was the... you know, the businesswoman.
And then, that way, I put on these personas.
When we try on clothes in a store,
we get excited because they're brand new and fresh.
You walk out of the store with your new item in your shopping bag,
and then you get home and you're like, "What was I thinking?
This doesn't look at all like who I am."
Or, "I feel silly."
You're really talking about character.
One of the ways I get ideas is to go out into the street
and observe people.
Especially when I'm in New York.
I just love to go people-watching.
I look at people's clothes,
how they carry themselves,
and I make up stories in my head about their lives,
and it's all based on what I see.
These are the people that bring the ideas to my work.
Clothing can tell you so much about a person.
You know, if they're a mother, or if they're an artist.
That informs you about what their footwear looks like.
The age of their clothes.
The expense of their clothes. What's their economic status?
What do they care about?
All those things work out on the clothes.
It's part of a bigger picture.
Maybe if we take a little bit less of the research
and, uh, kind of create our own lines down the sides there.
Once I have my ideas, I'll do a rough sketch
and I'll take my ideas over to a digital illustrator.
I think it needs to have a little bit of a train.
-Okay. -We should probably add a train to it.
If we get a little bit more dramatic there
and then add some more of the elements of the shield.
It's up to you to kind of inform them about detail.
That's the great part, because they're really wonderful artists.
And they make you look really good.
[man] It's a very collaborative process
in which we're able to work, but also back up the designer
to figure out what's going on in... in their head,
and try and get it out to everybody else.
-Which is, uh, an art form all in itself. -Yeah.
[laughs]
Are you trying to say that there's a lot in my head?
Mmm, yeah.
[both laugh]
-And I got to get it out of there. -Uh-huh, yeah. I help. I help.
[Phillip] A lot.
[Ruth] Beauty is a subjective thing.
I need it to look like what I'm feeling in my soul.
And when it doesn't feel that way, we have to change it.
For us, as artists, we have to create this into a design that's wearable.
It's wearable art.
You have to be able to foresee what the problems could possibly be
with the materials that you chose.
It can be really scary, because time is money
and you don't want to go down the wrong road.
There's so many details to the vision.
And the bigger the project, the more challenging it gets.
Any time you have to create a world,
it's a huge, monumental task.
When people say, "Wow, she designed the Black Panther.
Tell me how your process is."
I'm like, "Oh, yeah! I go home and cry in my pillow every night
because I'm scared."
[laughs]
I think it was because of the level of stress, the level of responsibility.
You know, I hadn't done a superhero film before.
[Ryan] In a film like Panther, it's as complex as it can get.
But, uh, I'm a football player. Man, like, you know, I came up playing football.
We would call somebody like Ruth...
um, like, we said they had good footwork.
Kind of light-footed. Know what I mean?
Like, she's able to transition in ways that it's almost seamless. You know?
[Ruth] Before the Black Panther, I had small exercises in fantasy
and futuristic ideas.
And one thing that I did o research what would be the future
was to look at the past.
Which is what I also did with Black Panther,
looking at the ancient indigenous tribes around Africa.
And Africa being this vast resource of artistic ideas,
it's kind of fun to sort of reimagine things.
[Ryan] Clothing, you know, it's a form of expression.
When you see people in a film, that's the first thing, usually,
that you get out of them, it's what they're wearing.
You're not thinkin' about it.
You're waitin' for them to talk or for them to do a action
that's gonna tell you something about them.
But... but, you know, that first impression
is what they have on.
When you meet Killmonger in this film,
you know, as soon as you see him, you get a little bit of a read.
Good morning.
[Ryan] He's wearing western clothing.
He's got the denim jacket on with the black--
It feels contemporary, of the moment. Um...
You kind of clocking all those things.
And I think when it's... when it's working at its best,
you know, costume is... is... is giving you information
about the character
in a way that serves as a story.
[man] When can we get this done?
[Ruth] You can pick any fabric
and they'll make up anything that you want.
African fabrics are actually brought to Africa by the Dutch.
And since we were trying to imagine Wakanda before it was colonized,
we tried to create our own patterns and things.
And then, I mixed in a lot of this,
so, for the color and...
You know, this says Africa.
So, regardless, it does say Africa.
But I was very careful about where I used it.
These are from Mali, the Tuareg.
These are mostly, like, around South Africa, the amber.
They use a lot of it.
We came to places like this to purchase a lot of pieces we used
in the Warrior Falls.
[Ryan] A big theme for me was his concept of what it means to be African
and how colonization has affected that.
You know, we wanted to really define the ethnic groups of Wakanda.
You know, and kind of steep them in real...
you know, real ethnic groups from the continent.
[Ruth] The Dora Milaje was the fan favorite.
[Ruth] There were so many things in that costume
that had significance to Africa
and to creating them as the highest ranking female fighting force of Wakanda.
The printing of their bodysuit has this special raised print
to look like scarification.
Their neck rings and arm rings were taken from the Ndebele tribe of South Africa.
And the overall color of red was taken from the Maasai
and many other tribes of Africa.
On the tabard, there are small, uh, trinkets.
And these trinkets represented what tribe they hailed from.
I kind of added that,
so that each of the Dora
would have something that individualized them.
[Ryan] You want it to feel real.
You want it to portray a certain amount of dignity and cultural specificity.
And some of it, you're pulling from real people that exist in the world,
and other bits of it, you're kind of totally inventing.
[Ruth] We were able to infuse cultural and African diaspora
with the realm of fantasy and future,
and keep it within the realm of what the fans knew about Black Panther.
And we needed, like... We, the black folks,
needed a movie like that where there were black heroes.
It's still kind of, you know, inspiring, especially for young kids.
[Ruth] The Black Panther stands alongside
many films that were addressing
those issues of dispelling negative stereotypes
and moving the culture forward.
As much as I love being a designer,
there are sacrifices that come along with it.
You are traveling three months in one city,
and then you're back in another.
And so, it's really hard to cultivate long-standing relationships.
I met my husband in a hair salon.
Mario Jackson.
Snag was his nickname.
His street name.
When I first met my husband, I didn't know he had gang affiliations.
He was charming, he was witty, he was funny.
He was a regular guy, but, you know, he grew up in the Crips.
And as an adult, uh, it's something that just kind of never leaves you.
[Ruth] On Baby Boy, he told me everything.
Some nice shoes.
[Ruth] How they would wear the Stacy Adams,
how they would crease their pants,
what type of Wrangler jeans would be worn,
how the T-shirt would fit at the neck,
what sizes I should buy,
what kinds of belts I should buy,
what a Romeo was,
where I should go and buy them.
All of those terms were defined for me right there in my own house.
You know, it wasn't easy being married to Snag. [chuckles]
He didn't invite that world into our home,
um, but he did, uh, keep an active group of friends
that came from there that he knew all of his life.
That day, he was going out to meet some friends.
I remember standing in the driveway as he was leaving,
and then he stopped before he got in the car
and he came back up the driveway and he gave me a kiss,
and then he drove off.
That was the last time I saw him.
That day, I went and got a canvas. I was going to paint in the backyard.
I saw this picture of this woman with her hands outstretched, looking up.
I started painting this canvas and just kind of getting into the subject.
It was, like, ten o'clock at night,
and I thought, "Well, yeah, I haven't heard from him."
Someone called me and they said, "Oh, Ruth."
And the way they said, "Oh, Ruth," I...
kind of knew.
They were watching a boxing match in a respectable bar.
-[announcer] ...remaining undefeated... -[cheering]
And the guy came in,
he pulled a gun out,
killed my husband's best friend,
and then shot my husband seven times.
Basically, out of jealousy,
because he had changed his life
and moved on.
My feet just weighed a ton.
My feet were like cinder blocks.
I could barely pick my feet up to walk in there.
I know it sounds strange,
but after that happened
and he was freed,
it freed me, too.
And I didn't have the weight of his life anymore.
You know, that's when life began for me again.
I had been searching for a spiritual practice.
Going to church never connected.
Doing meditation just wasn't enough.
And then, Oprah was on set one day.
We were in the middle of Louisiana, in the bayou,
way out somewhere.
And she just said, "You know, art is prayer.
It's just God speaking through you."
And that just hit me like a ton of bricks.
Because I was like, "Wow! Did she just say art is prayer? Like...
I can totally see that."
When you zone out on something that you're working on,
it's creative,
it's imaginative,
it's restorative.
Why wouldn't it be prayer?
I'm gonna take me seriously.
Now.
I have taken school,
parents, friends, poets seriously.
I've known the cracker to be seriously dangerous.
I've taken daytime, nighttime rhetoric seriously,
and been wounded by lovers of slick, black rapping.
I'm gonna look in a mirror each time I pass one
and smile at my image, sayin', "Yeah, sister, it ain't easy,
but move beautifully on past it.
Keep holdin' your head higher,
'cause your best is yet to come."
I'm gonna take me seriously.
Today. Now.
And study myself.
Get a PhD in Ruth Carter
and dare anyone to be an authority on me.
'Cause I'll be wounded with Ruth's beauty,
learning,
love,
and will be dangerous.
I'm gonna be serious about me
and live.
Yeah.
[Ruth] There's a little bit of a dust on his...
right there on his shoulder.
So, you might want to help her, because the collar is a little off center.
Okay, let's... let's move on to the trench coats.
How are we gonna do that?
Black Panther put everything that I've ever done on a pedestal.
And I think that's really nice, to be able to re-introduce your work.
Just look at it as a body of work, now.
This is the first time I've ever seen all those costumes together in one room.
This is great. This is really great.
A lot of great, great memories here.
A lot of really, really important work.
And a lot of great times with a lot of great people.
[Awol] It's very interesting that people are just now kind of catching on to Ruth.
Her work has this presence of, like, "Oh, my God!" Like...
You mean, like, one of those Picasso type of-- You know what I mean? Like it's--
Her legacy’s, like, so, so much bigger than she is.
[Tanisha] We've seen this woman, over the course of her career,
learn how to bring that humanity, that emotionality
to life through her clothes
in a way that is not only historically accurate,
but that can imagine possibilities for black lives
that the history books have told us wasn't possible.
[Ruth] We go to the movies to be entertained
and to be educated in some ways.
So, it's a big part of our culture. It...
It stamps our place in time.
If I am tasked with this great responsibility
of dressing a culture,
I want to spur it even further
than people have done in the past.
[cheering and applause]
I am so overwhelmed with joy.
Ladies and gentlemen, we made it.
Can you believe this night is finally here?
[cheering and applause]
[Ruth] When I look back,
I see a little bit of a different me with each film.
It feels like I am here.
That I have connected to...
my voice.