Wild Style

IN OVER THREE DECADES AS A COSTUME DESIGNER, Ruth E. Carter has drawn on a rich variety of influences, subcultures, and historical eras to outfit everyone from Angela Bassett in What’s Love Got to Do With It (1993) to Denzel Washington in Malcolm X (1992). Borrowing style tips from hip-hop, Afrofuturism, sneakerhead culture, and the Black Panthers, her costuming is tinged with sociopolitical intent as much as it exhibits joyous self-expression. Take Rosie Perez’s fire-engine-red dress in the opening credits of Do the Right Thing (1989), symbolizing the febrile and explosive energy of a simmering summer day; the too-tight collared shirts on David Oyelowo in Selma (2014) that gave him Martin Luther King Jr.’s neck fold; or the militant stylings of the eccentric (2015).