Oscar winner Ruth Carter brings AIA24 to a cinematic conclusion

Two-time Academy Award winning costume designer Ruth E. Carter was the final keynote speaker at AIA’s Conference on Architecture & Design 2024, where she discussed her career, how design can produce excellence across mediums, and her connections to architecture.  

Carter spoke on Saturday, June 10 as AIA24 was wrapping up for the weekend. Still, a large crowd gathered to hear insights from the acclaimed designer, who has worked extensively with industry legends such as Spike Lee, Steven Spielberg, Ava Duvernay, and Ryan Coogler.

She was introduced by Robert Easter, FAIA, NOMAC, recipient of AIA’s 2023 Whitney Young Jr. Award, chair of the Department of Architecture at Hampton University, President of KEi Architects, and perhaps most saliently, her cousin.  

“You can win two Academy Awards and your family is still going to tell everyone about how they knew you in diapers,” said Carter.  

The first half of Carter’s address included anecdotes about specific films on which she worked.  From designing iconic costumes across Spike Lee’s filmography —including Do the Right Thing, Clockers, School Daze, Crooklyn and Malcolm X—to working intimately with Tina Turner and Angela Bassett on the set of the Turner biopic What’s Love Got to Do with It to immediately telling Spielberg yes after he asked her to design the historical epic Amistad.  

Carter dove a little deeper into her experiences with Coogler on Black Panther and its sequel Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. Arguably the most celebrated work of Carter’s career, she won two Oscars for her costume design on those movies.  

For the Black Panther movies, Carter looked at African tribes and based many of the outfits in the movie on photos of 12 different tribes across the continent.  

“We created designs inspired by specific tribes, but we needed to upgrade those looks and create something that felt a little more contemporary [for the movie],” she said. “So much detail was put into those costumes, I knew we had something special.”  

When designing headwear for Queen Ramonda, played by Bassett, Carter utilized 3D printing technology.  

“[3D printing] wasn’t something used in costume design at the time,” she said. “We went to an architect, a professor at UCLA, and showed her the shape of headwear for Queen Ramonda. The architect put it into a computer, created algorithms and had a 3D printer create the shapes we needed.”  

Carter discussed the meticulous work put into designing the costumes for all of the major characters in the Black Panther series, including Chadwick Boseman, the late actor who played the titular character in the first film.  

“I was jumping out of my skin when we finalized the costumes,” she said. “It seemed like it was just a normal day in the office for everyone else, I was thinking to myself ‘can anybody see this?! Then it went on to make $1.5 billion dollars.”