How Ruth E. Carter’s Design Philosophy Is Reshaping What We Teach Young Creatives

In June 2025, a researcher named Cydni Meredith Robertson stood in front of five tiny dresses made of silk, cotton, taffeta, organza, and silk velvet that Ruth E. Carter had created for the movie Selma to symbolize the four girls who perished in the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church and the lone survivor. The dresses are ideal for Sundays. They are devastating. A young girl passed by, pointed, and remarked, “Ooh, pretty dresses.” Robertson almost started crying as she stood there taking in the significance of what she was observing. That moment, captured in her reflection for the Fashion Studies Journal, encapsulates a fundamental aspect of Carter’s work that practically no design school has yet figured out how to teach: it combines devastation and beauty in a single stitch, making both feel true at once.

For Black Panther in 2018 and Wakanda Forever in 2022, Carter became the first Black person to win two Academy Awards for Best Costume Design. She began her career with Spike Lee’s School Daze in 1988 while attending Hampton University, an HBCU in Virginia. Since then, she has costumed over 70 movies and TV shows, creating what Robertson refers to as a “Afrohistoricist” body of work, which is based on the notion that authentic design starts with historical excavation rather than trend research. Malcolm X’s oversized, patterned Zoot suits were specifically chosen for their symbolic meaning in the 1940s: racialized politics of fabric during wartime rationing, cultural assertion, and defiance. Carter was aware of all of that prior to selecting a single swatch.

This methodology—research first, design later, always in service of the story—is beginning to permeate design education in ways that are actually changing what the field views as fundamental. According to Robertson, Carter functions as a “fashion griot,” referencing the West African custom of the storyteller who uses art to preserve and transmit history. The art form in her case is clothing. She has stated that the non-negotiable first step in working on Black Panther was comprehending the various African tribes, not the superhero suit, the box office forecasts, or the pre-existing sketches from the Marvel visual development team. The tribes. Their jewelry, colors, and attitudes toward silver versus gold, as well as how they used clothing to express their social standing and sense of belonging. The design didn’t start until that research was finished.

The pedagogical shift is noteworthy for young creatives who are absorbing this philosophy through her exhibitions, her virtual keynote at the Costume Society of America Conference, and her structured digital course created in collaboration with PLC Detroit. Technical skills such as draping, pattern-making, textile knowledge, and construction have long been the focus of design education. None of that is being disregarded by Carter. She is introducing the notion that a garment’s authority stems from its knowledge, which most curricula have tended to overlook. Queen Ramonda’s 3D-printed Isicholo crowns in Wakanda Forever were not ornamental. They were constructed using in-depth research on traditional headwear worn by Zulu married women in South Africa, filtered through the logic of Afrofuturism, which honors ancestral aesthetics while envisioning what they might become in a civilization that has never been colonized. A stylist doesn’t make that choice. It is a historian’s choice conveyed through the artistry of a fabricator.

As Carter’s influence grows through design schools, exhibitions, and online learning environments, it seems as though she is actually imparting a self-authorization philosophy. She has stated unequivocally that she always wanted to be the first, not out of a sense of competition but rather out of a quiet conviction that the stories she was sharing were important and worthy of praise. She advised graduating students at Suffolk University’s 2019 commencement to take risks, be unpredictable, and find validation within themselves rather than waiting for it from traditional industry structures. Black students entering design fields that have historically marginalized their perspectives and histories are especially affected by this message, which effectively tells them that having a thorough understanding of their own culture is not a niche interest but rather their greatest competitive advantage.

It’s still unclear if educational institutions will take Carter’s framework seriously enough to alter the way their curricula are actually organized, or if her influence will continue to be inspirational rather than structural. However, the case for teaching design the way Carter practices it is already complete in the Indianapolis Children’s Museum, those five dresses, the young child who noticed something lovely, and the researcher who saw everything beneath it.