When Ruth E. Carter designs a costume, it’s more than wardrobe—it’s worldbuilding. She doesn’t just dress characters; she dresses culture, memory, and resistance. With a career spanning 30+ years, Carter has shaped how we see Black stories on screen—and with her latest work on Ryan Coogler’s 2025 film Sinners, she reminds us yet again: fashion is never just fashion. It’s freedom. It’s survival. It’s a sermon.
Sinners:
Set in 1932 Mississippi, Sinners follows twin brothers, Smoke and Stack (both played by Michael B. Jordan), who return to their hometown to open a juke joint. What begins as a hustle for joy turns into a supernatural showdown, as the twins discover the town is overrun by vampires. But these aren’t your typical bloodsuckers—these vampires stand in for the parasitic forces of white supremacy, capitalism, and cultural erasure. It’s horror, yes—but under Carter’s direction, it’s also a fashion odyssey.
Carter threads the sacred with the sinister. For the townsfolk, she leans into the real textures of Black Southern style—tailored three-piece suits, handmade dresses, fedoras, and headwraps that double as armor. These aren’t just period-accurate looks—they’re lived-in, soul-soaked garments. You can feel the history in the hem, the resistance in the stitching. “There’s elegance in struggle,” Carter once said. And in Sinners, that struggle is styled to perfection.
The juke joint is where her vision explodes. It’s not just a backdrop—it’s a sanctuary. Think feathered headbands, zoot suits that swing when the bass drops, rich prints layered like gospel harmonies. These looks aren’t about looking pretty; they’re about making a declaration: We still dance. We still shine. We still exist.
Meanwhile, the vampires arrive dressed in dusty frock coats, brittle lace, and Victorian silhouettes frozen in time. Carter draws a stark line: the undead cling to the past, while Black folks evolve, transform, live. Their style is stagnant—hers is sacred.
Dressing for Deliverance
What Carter achieves in Sinners feels nothing short of prophetic. She turns costuming into cultural commentary. Her designs whisper to the ancestors while speaking truth to the now. The fashion in Sinners doesn’t just tell us who these characters are—it tells us what they’ve survived.
Every pressed collar, every Sunday-best slip, every juke joint heel is a form of protest. These characters are styled for battle—spiritual, generational, and emotional. And even in the darkest moments, their elegance is unwavering. That’s not fantasy—it’s legacy.
From Wakanda to the Woods
If Black Panther was a masterclass in Afrofuturism, Sinners is its Southern Gothic cousin. Where Wakanda gave us royalty untouched by colonization, Sinners honors the regality that bloomed in spite of it. Carter pulls from a different archive here—the Black South, where even with limited resources, people dressed like liberation was always one thread away.
It’s a beautiful through line in Carter’s work: from Shuri’s tech-wear to Stack’s juke joint suit, she centers Blackness as both innovation and inheritance. These clothes don’t just belong in film—they belong in the fashion canon.
Dressing the Diaspora, One Thread at a Time
Ruth E. Carter is more than a costume designer—she’s a storyteller, a spiritual stylist, a fashion historian for the diaspora. Her work doesn’t scream for attention—it commands reverence. With Sinners, she weaves a new mythology where Black elegance is eternal and every stitch is sacred.
She’s not just dressing characters. She’s dressing legacy. And that, in itself, is divine.
