Ruth E. Carter On Building The Costumes In Sinners And The Nods To Black Southern Style – Essence

Ruth E. Carter doesn’t just design costumes, she builds worlds. With a career spanning over three decades, Carter has become one of Hollywood’s most respected storytellers, using fabric, texture, and color to illuminate Black life on screen. Whether through the vibrant collegiate style of “School Daze,” the regal futurism of “Black Panther,” or the haunting realism of “Malcolm X,” her work transcends wardrobe; it archives culture. Known for her precision, research, and deep emotional insight, Carter approaches every project as an opportunity to honor history and community with authenticity.

“I just want everyone to know how much I care about our history and our stories,” Carter tells me. “I’m a girl who was raised by a woman from Virginia, and I respected that. I went to Hampton University, and I studied my history and the history of other people who lived in Virginia. It became my life’s mission to tell these stories in an authentic way.”

In “Sinners,” the design titan once again proves why she’s in a league of her own. The film, set in 1930s Mississippi and layered with supernatural tension, required not just historical precision but spiritual and emotional resonance. During our conversation, Carter opens up about everything from color symbolism and Southern folklore to the emotional details stitched into every look. Her passion for world-building remains as strong as ever, and her costuming in “Sinners” continues her mission of honoring Black stories with care, intention, and artistry.

Below, we speak with Oscar-winning costume designer Ruth E. Carter about her approach to building the visual world of “Sinners,” her ongoing collaboration with director Ryan Coogler, and how her deep-rooted love for Black history continues to shape every stitch of her work.

ESSENCE: Can you walk me through your initial concept conversations with Ryan Coogler? 

Ruth E. Carter: Ryan Coogler is the most generous, kind person when it comes to introducing you to materials and new art. The first conversation was about the blues and what it meant to Black people, especially those from Clarksdale, Mississippi. Most were disenfranchised. They didn’t have the right to vote. They didn’t even have money. If they worked on a plantation, they were given plantation money. So the conversation about those details and what the film meant to him was the first motivation and inspiration for the story.

What mood boards, references, or inspirations helped shape your early ideas?

[Ryan] recommended a couple of books that we should read. One was “The Story of the Blues.” The other was a photo collection by Eudora Welty, who traveled through the South, particularly the Mississippi Delta, and took pictures of people in their normal everyday life.

From there, you start collecting images: blues players, people with guitars or banjos, sitting on porches, strumming, children listening. I usually print them out. We’re constantly putting up images of this time period: cars, fields, and cotton. You’ve created the world right there in the production office, and it’s inescapable. For all of us, it’s important to examine what people went through during that time. What they had and what they didn’t have.

One of the rules I had with my team was: when we were fitting background [characters], you couldn’t make alterations. I didn’t want the clothes to fit perfectly. I wanted the pants turned up at the bottom. I wanted things to feel like you’re growing into it. That looks more lived in. It looks more real.

Sinners is rooted in a very specific time and place: 1930s Mississippi. How did you approach historical sourcing for the costumes? Were there particular archives, photographs, or cultural references you drew from to ground the story in authenticity while leaving room for its mythic elements?

I went back to a lot of sources that I’ve used throughout my career because I’m constantly researching the Great Migration and similar periods. If I’m doing something in 1940s New York, I want to know where people came from—what their grandparents were doing, if they were sharecroppers. I’m always dipping into different time periods to build a full picture.

The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson was a magical book for me. It’s full of short stories about people’s conditions when they went to the North, which also helped me understand what life was like for them in the South—why they were leaving, what they were leaving behind. One More River to Cross [was another book I pulled for reference on], sharecroppers and blue-collar workers. I then combine everything into a filing system so that my team can access it. I pull together all of these images to build out the world authentically.

I also spoke to historians. There’s one at Tulane University. He was the head of the African American Studies department. I talked to him specifically about Hoodoo, because that’s big in New Orleans, and once I understood more about the context of Voodoo and Hoodoo, I could channel that into ideas for Annie’s character.

“Sinners” took place over a single day. How did you use costumes to show character development and shifts in position without major wardrobe changes?

Michael B. Jordan dressed in and out of costumes two, three, and sometimes four times a day. We had to keep copious notes on when jackets came off and were put back on.

A key moment is when Stack is being bit by Mary. At that point, Michael wanted to play the vampire with just the vest on. When they try to save him, they lay him on the floor with his shirt open. Someone makes a comment, “How you feeling in there?” and Michael, on his own, turns around and goes, “Oh.” He puts the vest on and says, “I’m fine.”

We had conversations about how to transition into a costume change within a single day. It’s more serious than if you had several days in a story because when they go to edit, it all has to connect.

Smoke and Stack, though twins, take very different paths. You’ve mentioned in previous interviews the color symbolism, with red representing Stack and blue representing Smoke, to represent their characters both physically and interpretively. But beyond color, what other costume details helped distinguish the two?

Smoke is in blue. When I found the denim flat cap, it helped [put everything together for] me. He had that working-man element. From there, I brought in the blue shirt, and his houndstooth four-pocket suit had a grayish-blue tint, more casual in style. His clothes fit him a little bigger. He has a holster underneath. He’s wearing a tieless shirt with a high collar, almost an old-fashioned buttoned-in collar. He’s more of a brawler, an everyman. He’s less concerned about his clothes than Stack is. 

Stack, on the other hand, was more tailored, more fitted in red. He’s up to speed with the fashion. He wears a turn-down collar with a tie. He’s a former pimp—he’s got the collar bar, the tie bar, the matching pocket square. His shoes were bright burgundy red with a shiny toe. He’s also seen wearing a watch chain that was custom-made by David Yurman using one of their vintage links. 

Annie, Delta Slim, and Grace are also seen wearing a combination of red and blue. You could even classify Mary’s pink dress as a connection to Stack’s red. What was the significance of those color choices, and was there a symbolic allegiance to either Stack or Smoke?

The only time Grace wears red and blue is when she’s painting the sign; she has the bandana and the jumpsuit. We just loved that outfit. But we meet Grace in yellow, we meet Sammie in yellow, and they’re the standouts. Everybody else is in derivatives of blues and reds.

I always felt like this was an American story, and I was looking at a lot of colorized photos of the South. I kept seeing red and blue, especially in workwear. If you add the church, the white collars, and the significance of white in relation to religion, it all ties together. [With all these components], I knew this would be a really strong red, white, and blue story.

I tried to control how we brought in red because of the blood. I didn’t want too much red because of Stack, so you see more blue than anything. That also played into how the film looked. In some scenes, everybody in the room is in blue. When you go into the grocery store or when people are walking on the street, you see a lot of blue. It’s very cool-toned and grayed out. We made sure everyone looked sweaty and hot. It felt like the South, but it also felt like an American story.

Annie’s costumes feel almost like armor, rooted in spirituality. Beyond the use of “Haint Blue,” were there other symbols, patterns, or details you wove into her wardrobe to honor Hoodoo traditions and ancestral memory?

When you first meet Annie, Smoke is crouched at the gravesite of their child, and she’s in the doorway. You get a full view of her costume. I always wanted her to be armed with things that were part of her everyday life. She has a leather waist belt with a pouch for a knife, a bottle with healing oil, or even pickle juice like she poured on Stack.

She wears a long raw silk skirt that we dyed blue—it had little sequins on it. They didn’t sparkle, but I knew they were there. Over that, she had a long fringe. I didn’t want to go down the same road of what we’ve seen before, no shawl or turban. It wasn’t about playing into tropes. It was about making her feel real. She also had prayer beads under her shirt. They weren’t a fashion statement—they were her protection. In our communities, we all know that person who isn’t quite practicing Christianity, but you respect them. 

Mary’s character navigates complex racial dynamics, passing as white in a society segregated by race. Her wardrobe reflects this with refined silk pieces in pastel pinks, often associated with femininity, creating a stark contrast to those around her. How did you use her clothing to explore the privileges, pressures, and internal conflict she faces?

Yeah, it’s so funny. We actually made her a red dress, and we had the pink knit dress; it seemed like the faded pink was more in line with her character than the strong red. Once that settled in, we knew pink was key for her.

When she comes to the juke in that silk, nobody else is wearing fabric like that. It looks rich and expensive. I kept her jewelry minimal, partly because of how we were shooting, but also to emphasize what Annie’s jewelry meant. Even at the train station, I said, no purses, no luggage for the Black women. No one is walking out of the South with Louis Vuitton. We used sacks. One woman had a box; I poked holes in it and stuck a feather boa through like she had her chickens. I just wanted to show the beauty of people who had very little but took care of what they had.

The juke joint felt like a character in its own right. How did you approach dressing those scenes to celebrate Black joy, history, future and past, and community?

During fittings, I’d take photos and build a mood board that I brought to set for hair, makeup, and lighting. We’d all read the scene, and I needed everyone to be prepared.

We had a Zoulie dancer in this massive costume with a mask. The guy wearing it was from the community it came from. He had to wear a helmet with a stem to support his height. In the villages, that costume gets even taller, but we scaled it down so we could film it. [Current day Pearline] and her past spirit had cowrie shells on, and it was like they were dancing together. 

There were people dancing who felt like future spirits—avant-garde, kind of Erykah Badu energy, with slatted dresses and headpieces. Then you go into the kitchen and there’s a girl booty-shaking in a little cheerleader-style skirt and bomber jacket, right next to a past spirit in a raffia skirt doing the same move. It connected the music and the dance across time.

We had Papa Tito, who plays the Islam, a rare African instrument that the banjo was patterned after. A Maasai warrior moved through the background. Then we go out to the bonfire and see this beautiful feathered headdress. It felt mystical, eerie, out-of-this-world. 

Is the juke joint scene inspired by the “Sugar Shack” painting by Earnie Barns? The internet has taken off with this correlation.

That painting is very elongated, and it feels very woodsy, like the juke, and the colors that people have on,  they’re having a good time. It feels very spiritual. I can say we didn’t use it as a reference, though. I did have his book, so maybe it was subconscious. So it’s not a bad reference. I’ll take it.

There’s a delicate balance in the vampires’ looks, aged but not anachronistic, haunting without feeling theatrical. How did you strike that balance, making their clothing feel historically layered rather than like traditional costumes?

There’s always an anachronism somewhere. We try to fight against them and say, “This is what people expect to see, but this is what we’re going to present.” We did that with “Black Panther,” and we did that here. You look for the truth, the hard truth that people shy away from.

There’s a yin and yang between Christianity and Hoodoo that coexist, even if people don’t want to admit that. And the metaphor of a vampire as a colonizer—that’s real too. So when we created Remmick’s character and the other vampires, there was a story there.

Jack, who played Remmick, wanted to show this wild man, running from the sun, with smoke coming off his skin. Then he gets into a dark cabin with poor Appalachians who are Klansmen. They all become vampires, and when they re-emerge, they’re dressed for the party. It’s not metaphorical, it’s about people who want to look presentable, who want to take what we’ve got. They want to steal our joy. Jack wanted new shoes and a shirt. He wanted to be in disguise. That’s how we approached it. They were trying to fit in, and their clothes reflected that.

I didn’t want the costumes to stand in the way. I wanted them to recede so that the brilliant actors could shine through. All of the vampire costumes had a form of deconstruction. So I tried to start out as simply as possible and build from there.

I have to ask about the post-credits scene. We see Mary and Stack decades later, specifically in the 1990s, talking with elder Sammie. The 1990s were such a standout period for Black fashion. Why did you choose the Coogi sweater and Cartier glasses for Stack and the bamboo earrings for Mary in particular, and how do those pieces speak to who they’ve become?

Ryan wanted the Coogi sweater as an ode to Biggie Smalls. We were going to give him a big denim railroad jacket over it. That’s the 1990s Ryan remembered as a boy; he was heavily influenced by rap. The Cartier glasses were also part of that trend. I found a collector in Los Angeles who had the Coogi sweater and was willing to loan it to us.

The reference for Mary’s character was Paula Abdul. We looked at a lot of her outfits, and that cropped leather jacket with the dome sleeve was very big then. And how can you do the 1990s without the bamboo earrings? You can’t, it’s just quintessential.

Also, older Sammie, played by Buddy Guy, wears his signature polka-dot tie. He told me he’d promised his mother that he’d buy her a polka-dot dress before she passed away. That tie connects him to her. All of this is generational. It feeds into the emotion [of] the actors and the audience. Maybe you had a Coogi sweater, bamboo earrings, or you see yourself in Buddy Guy’s polka-dot tie. These emotional connections made Sinners special for everyone.