Ryan Coogler’s “Sinners” follows twin brothers Smoke and Stack (Michael B. Jordan) as they return to the Mississippi Delta to open a juke joint, only for Irish vampires to interrupt their plans. While the film has plenty of the genre details of a horror film, costume designer Ruth E. Carter saw the horror “as a metaphor.”
In approaching her designs, the Os-car-winner focused on the Mississippi Delta and how “people turn their pain into joy. That rang so clear for me to depict.” Migration patterns were also taken into consideration in her work. “I started thinking about the plantation system and how blues [musicians] were rotated around to different plantations in the South.” Reds and blues were key to the film’s palette.
Here, Carter shares her approach to some of the film’s main characters and moments.
Smoke Stack Twins
In the film, the twins return from Chicago in the early 1930s, which inspired Carter to turn to photos of Chicago gangsters from the era. “Wool was the constant fabric in suits,” Carter says, admitting she was concerned about the heavy fabric since the film was shooting in the summer. She adds, however, that Jordan never complained once about wearing wool, all of which she made for him.
Sammie
Sammie, the preacher’s son, represented the sharecropper, but he also represented hope. Carter explains, “His color palette was not in the red and blues of the rest of the cast; he was more organic and down to earth.” Sammie’s clothes showed wear and tear and were rooted in the brown and gold tones. “His clothes were a little bit more weathered,” she adds. “His costume had a lot of character built into it. That was wonderful because it showed this boy whose guitar strap wore his vest down, and who wanted to look like Stack by getting a fedora.”
Another notable detail was Carter’s observation that people were barefoot. “It was important to add a lot of historic details,” she says.
Post-Credit Scene
In one of the film’s post-credit scenes, Sammie has moved to Chicago and is a musician. He’s visited by Stack and Mary (Hailee Steinfeld). Stack wears an authentic Coogi sweater called the Gambler. “That’s the costume that doesn’t get asked about enough,” Carter laughs. She tracked down a collector in Los Angeles who had an en- tire warehouse of the sweaters, which were popular in the 1990s and made fa- mous by the rapper Biggie Smalls.
Steinfeld’s high-waisted jeans and bustier look were inspired by Paula Abdul. “Ryan wanted her to look like Paula,” says Carter.
Piercing the Veil
The film’s showstopping moment happens at the juke joint, when Sammie’s singing conjurs musicians from across the centuries, from Africa, Asia, rappers and rockers. With all the different looks, Carter needed to keep everything within the context of the storytelling — but it took a long time to prep. “I had tripods with boards and fit- ting photos while we were shooting other scenes so they could see what the Zaouli dancer was going to look like.”
Cinematographer Autumn Arkapaw’s work “guided you through the emotional arc of what it was trying to say,” Carter says of the sequence. “We see this electric guitar player. It’s iconic. It carries us around to the Zaouli dancer, who has this mask. We see the girl with the cowry shells. It keeps us informed.”
