How Netflix’s ‘Self Made’ Shows Characters’ Growing Wealth Through Costumes
Discovering the search for Netflix’s new four-part collection “Self Made: Impressed by the Lifetime of Madam C.J. Walker” was one thing costume designer Karyn Wagner describes as “being in heaven, and a smorgasbord of design.”
Set in 1908, the story follows the title character, born Sarah Breedlove and performed by Octavia Spencer, who learns about caring for her hair and, in opposition to the percentages, turns into the primary feminine self-made millionaire as she invents a line of salon merchandise for African American ladies.
Wagner created partitions of cloth swatches: silks, cotton, wools and linens. There was additionally a “wall of inspiration,” she says. “I’d love going to the woods to seek out nuts and pine cones that I might flip right into a hat,” she explains.
Studying the script, Wagner highlighted geographical, emotional and dialogue clues that might inform the costumes. She spoke to director Kasi Lemmons (“Harriet”) about who Madam C.J. was emotionally and what her arc was.
Wagner additionally discovered inspiration within the work of W.E.B. Du Bois. She studied his 1903 ebook “The Souls of Black Folks,” which included photos from an exhibit Du Bois had held on the Paris World’s Honest. “It confirmed pictures of prosperous African People,” Wagner says. “He needed to get individuals’s minds away from the poor sharecropper picture of the African American.”
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Wagner selected to make use of vivid colours when creating Madam C.J.’s costumes. “The brand new aniline dyes from the Victorian period had been vivid,” she factors out.
As Madame C.J’s product line takes off and she or he lands extra buyers, she begins to journey. Her character shifts from sporting the plain cotton cloth that she would have purchased within the basic retailer, and coloured with vegetable dye, to dressing extra elegantly as she courts buyers. “I needed to indicate her wealth and class as a result of she turns into this worldly traveler,” Wagner says of the ribbon and trim that begin to seem in her apparel. “She may need introduced that again from China or Paris.”
The “strolling go well with,” which features a vest, hat and weird footwear, showcases that look. At this level in her life, Madam C.J. has simply began to show a revenue. She needs to launch her manufacturing facility and wishes cash. “She’s a lady in a person’s world — a lady of colour,” Wagner says. “She needs to talk to the truth that she has arrived. The vest is sort of like a person’s jacket, however the cloth is hand-embroidered and really female. The massive hat and her two-toned footwear communicate to her wealth — that she has sufficient footwear in her closet that may be cleaned or ruined.” Poor individuals would put on black footwear.
She meets buyers and males who put on micromosaics introduced again from travels to Italy, once more to represent wealth. In distinction, males equivalent to Sweetness (Invoice Bellamy), her husband’s cousin by no means had an schooling, stakes declare on the neighborhood with loud colours.
Blair Underwood performs C.J., her husband, and since no pictures of him exist, Wagner had inventive license. C.J. was a person who would purchase fits when wanted however wasn’t desperate to spend on his wardrobe. “He was cautious along with his cash,” Wagner says. “He paid for his fits outright in money and didn’t wish to owe anybody.” The designer backdated the look of the three or 4 fits he owned. “He didn’t care if he was out of trend,” she says. “He was going to put on them till they wore out.”
That idea illustrates the house between Madam C.J. and her husband; his dated fits had been a mirrored image of this considering. “She’s transferring ahead and staying present,” Wagner says. “The hole between the costumes grows additional, as does their emotional state.”
