March 13, 2023
Ruth E. Carter Makes Historic Win at Academy Awards, Collects Second Oscar
Ruth E. Carter‘s big wins have extended the list of Black women history-makers.
After winning an Oscar for Best Costume Design at the Academy Awards on March 12, Carter became the first Black woman to score two of the prestigious awards.
According to Today, the award, which was presented to Carter for her costume work on Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, followed her previous Oscar win for the original 2018 Black Panther film.
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“Thank you to the Academy for recognizing the superhero that is a Black woman,” Carter said.
Paying tribute to the late Chadwick Boseman, Carter asked the film’s original Black Panther to watch over her mother, Mable Carter, who died at age 101, one week before Carter received her Oscar.
“She endures, she loves, she overcomes, she is every woman in this film. She is my mother. This past week, Mable Carter became an ancestor. This film prepared me for this moment. Chadwick: please take care of Mom,” Carter said.
Carter saluted her Marvel family for their efforts with reshaping cultural representation, thanked the film’s director, Ryan Coogler, and voiced her appreciation for the many dedicated artists who helped manifest the Wakanda and Talokan costumes.
In the press room, Carter expressed her hope to inspire young designers.
“I dealt with adversity in an industry that sometimes didn’t look like me, and I endured,” Carter said. “So I feel that this win opens the door for other young costume designers that, you know, may not think that this industry is for them. And hopefully, they’ll see me and see my story and think that they can win an Oscar, too.”
Carter was able to deliver on one of the most challenging assignments of her career, as the garments had to work both in and out of the water.
“We put it underwater, and everything just went up. I had to remake things that were tested. I had to weigh them down, and sometimes they were too light, other times they were too heavy,” she told Variety.
Carter has been nominated for the award four times, which included her work on 1992’s Malcolm X and 1997’s Amistad.