Costume Designer Ruth Carter Get’s 3rd Oscar Nom For ‘Black Panther’
Costume designer, Ruth Carter has been making monumental moves in Black Hollywood for decades. Her latest feat is her third Oscar nomination for costume design in the award-winning movie, Black Panther.
Costume designer, Ruth Carter has been making monumental moves in Black Hollywood for decades. Her latest feat is her third Oscar nomination for costume design in the award-winning movie, Black Panther.
According to Slash Film, the over 30-plus year costume design veteran received prior Oscar nominations for movies Malcolm X and Amistad.
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Carter is known for working with filmmakers such as Spike Lee, Robert Townsend, John Singleton and Lee Daniels on popular black cinema movies such as Do the Right Thing, Crooklyn, What’s Love Got to Do With It, The Five Heartbeats, How Stella Got Her Groove Back. The costume designer said she never participated in the huge publicity campaigns in the past, but the popularity of Black Panther has changed that for her.
“Normally, when the film is done, it’s done for me,” Carter told Slash Film. “The filmmakers get to enjoy the blossoming of their films; they go on the press tours of their films. So there’s this other side of life that they’ve enjoyed, whereas I go back to my life that I enjoy, that is nice and quiet—me and my dog—and life goes back to normal. But life hasn’t gone back to normal since Panther came out [laughs].”
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The first time most fans saw Carter’s work was in Spike Lee films. Over the last 30 years, Lee and Carter have shared a cinematic history would rival any Hollywood working relationship. Slash Film pointed out the similarity of the use of colors and the meaning behind them in Spike Lee’s film Do The Right Thing and Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther.
The artist revealed every time she’d get on a project, she gravitates toward color. She also worked at understanding how to use it effectively. For Black Panther she showed Coogler images of Afro-future, African diaspora, beautiful modern images of dark skin and saturated color and gold.
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While experimenting with color, especially working with Spike Lee movies, she was able to grow.
The Oscar-nominated custom designer recently completed work for Rudy Ray Moore biopic Dolemite Is My Name, starring Eddie Murphy. The Oscars is set to air on Sunday, Feb. 24.
