Oscar-nominated designer Ruth Carter takes us on a guided tour of her exquisite fashions and explains their authentic African origins.

Even before Black Panther premiered in theaters, costume designer Ruth Carter saw her Instagram feed blowing up with fans emulating the film’s style. That’s unlikely to change anytime soon. Director Ryan Coogler’s record-breaking film is easily the best-looking Marvel movie to date, in large part because of Carter’s dazzling vision of fashion in Wakanda. Carter’s prestigious résumé includes Oscar-nominated designs for Malcolm X and Amistad, along with costumes for beloved films like Selma, Serenity, and Love & Basketball. But Black Panther presented a unique challenge: creating the look of an African society that was both untouched by Western influences and more technologically advanced than any nation in the world. As Carter told Yahoo Entertainment, she turned to ancient African tribal designs for her inspiration, then remixed those elements to create a futuristic, cutting-edge fashion aesthetic that, not incidentally, makes everyone in the movie look fabulous. It’s no wonder the film is already showing its influence on the fashion world. Carter spoke to Yahoo about creating the film’s many distinct tribal looks, her source for the royal family’s stunning jewelry, the inspiration behind Michael B. Jordan’s sexy Killmonger street look, and the secret superhero element she worked into Letitia Wright’s Shuri wardrobe.

Yahoo Entertainment: The concept of Wakanda as an African nation that was never colonized by the Dutch or British is so powerful. How did that inform your design choices?

Ruth Carter: I discovered so many things about Africa that I didn’t know — like, the cloth that we normally see in many African-inspired things, the wax cloth, was brought in from the Dutch. There are influences of the British; when you see a Nigerian wedding, you’ll see a Nigerian traditional drape and a guy with a top hat on. [laughs] So you have to dig deeper and go to the indigenous tribes of Africa. You’re not a real historian, you’re just kind of the temporary historian for the picture, so you’re looking at beadwork and you’re looking at carvings and you’re looking at masks. And you’re being inspired by patterns. There are a couple of patterns that I saw repeated throughout the continent: one is like a checkerboard, another one is a triangle.

And I looked at books on African ceremonies, since ceremonies reminded me of precolonization. So for example, the Dogon tribe were the first astronomers. They do a ceremony once a year where they adorn themselves in these brilliant raffia skirts and wood-carving masks that shoot up to the stars — they’re really tall. And they do these moves that sweep the earth. I was fascinated by that. So Ryan wanted the Jabari to wear grass skirts during battle, and the Dogon was the perfect place to start with the inspiration. We used the wood carving design for the armor for the Jabari. So when we see Winston Duke (as M’Baku), he really is representing the Dogon tribe of ancient Africa.

View photos Winston Duke as M’Baku. Photo: Marvel Studios More

And then the Dora Milaje were inspired by many indigenous tribes of Africa. The color was the brilliant red of the Maasai. When you see these pictures of them with their beadwork, you see this red that is just so prominent and so strong, and really beautiful with these bald heads, and they stack beads, and it’s just phenomenal. So I upped the color of the design to be a much more brilliant red so they could have this part of Africa that was undeniable in its brilliance and in its color. Also their neck rings were inspired by the Ndbele tribe of South Africa. Ryan really wanted to use them, and it was his idea to have these neck rings and these arm bands to represent this form of adornment that we see throughout Africa. Using them as armor just felt very natural. But Ryan also said he wanted them to feel like jewelry, especially Danai [Gurira]’s. When you see Danai in the opening scene in Nigeria and she impales the guy behind her and she walks straight [toward the camera] — you see this gold just glimmering, and it’s very regal.

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