Love the look of Black Panther's Wakanda? Meet the woman who designed its costumes.
If you've seen Marvel's new movie Black Panther, you know that one of the best things about it is its use of costumes and sets not just to create the fictional world of Wakanda, but also to tell little stories about its history and culture in every single frame. Just looking at this movie, which opened to the second-biggest four-day box office in film history, is half the fun. That's why for the first episode in a post-Black Panther world, we wanted to talk to Ruth Carter, the designer of the movie's costumes, from that sleek superhero suit, to the Dora Milaje's battle gowns, to the plethora of other costumes that tell you, at a glance, which part of Wakanda certain characters are from. And that's to say nothing of the moments of high fashion, when T'Challa and his allies step out onto exciting spy missions. Though Black Panther is Carter's biggest movie yet, she's been designing costumes since the 1980s, having designed the costumes for almost every one of Spike Lee's films and received two Oscar nominations for her work on Lee's Malcolm X and Steven Spielberg's Amistad. Carter joins Todd to talk about telling the story of Wakanda through clothing, collaborating with great directors, and why every superhero movie is dependent on one workshop in Europe. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices