DESIGNERS : Spike Lee Veteran Turns to Tina

Ruth Carter, costume designer for the Tina Turner film biography “What’s Love Got to Do With It,” views her subject’s look as one of the most strikingly original African-American fashion images to emerge from the 1960s and ‘70s.

“Tina wasn’t doing a Supremes thing. They were wearing long, glamorous evening gowns. She wore micro-miniskirts. She wore bone-straight white woman’s wigs when black people were wearing Afros and saying, ‘Say it loud, I’m black and I’m proud.’

“She was a sexy, lioness beauty,” says Carter, who designed 90 costume changes for Turner (played by Angela Bassett), hundreds of others for Tina’s ex-husband Ike Turner (played by Laurence Fishburne), band members, backup singers and other cast members.

Yet, Carter says, Turner’s look never filtered to the masses. “I look through my ‘70s books, and I can’t say there was a strong direction toward a Tina Turner look. Most people couldn’t wear clothes like that. It was unique to her.”

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Turner’s life story isn’t the first high-visibility film Carter has costumed. She received an Academy Award nomination for her work on “Malcolm X,” becoming the first African-American costume designer to receive the distinction.

There are few black costume designers, Carter says. “I could name them on one hand. Most of the time we get hired to do black films, but white designers get hired to do black and white jobs. Maybe we’re hired to do black films because directors think we had grandparents who lived in Mississippi in the ‘50s and can relate, but anybody can do research.”

Carter, 32, grew up in Springfield, Va., and studied theater arts at Hampton Institute in Hampton, Va. Although there weren’t any costume design or costume history courses there, Carter says she “self-proclaimed” a major in costume design, learned from library books and started designing for the school’s dance, theater and opera productions.

After graduation she found internships at a theater company in her hometown and at the Sante Fe Opera. She came to L. A. in 1986 and was hired at the newly opened Los Angeles Theatre Center.

Director Spike Lee gave Carter her first movie job after seeing her work there. She did the costumes for five Lee films, including “School Daze.” Other credits include “House Party 2,” “The Five Heartbeats” and “I’m Gonna Git You Sucka.” She also designed costumes for several TV pilots including “Seinfeld.”

Turner took a strong interest in the costumes Carter used for her movie character--however, not until Carter completed work on the scenes that deal with Turner’s marriage. “I think the beginning was too painful for her to be around,” says Carter. But Turner was “very hands-on” in scenes that deal with her life after 1976 when she left Ike Turner and started her own career.

Four days before shooting scenes of Turner’s comeback performance at the New York Ritz Theatre, Turner sent Carter pictures of herself in the black leather dress she had worn onstage.

“We had scheduled a leather dress, but it was different,” recalls Carter. At Turner’s urging, Carter had the dress remade, and Turner went shopping for the correct shoes and sent to Germany for a replica of the wig she had worn.

With the ‘70s revival going strong in today’s fashion, could “What’s Love Got to Do With It?” and Tina Turner’s predilection for bell-bottoms and fringe jackets have an impact on fashion?

“No,” says Carter. But, while Turner’s distinctive style has never swept the mainstream, Carter does see influences. She considers model Naomi Campbell, who has worn long straight wigs and a high fashion look, to be the ‘90s heir to Turner’s style.

“Tina provided a beautiful image for black women to identify with that was not necessarily politically motivated,” Carter says.

Turner’s wigs, many of them blond-toned in recent years, and her taste for designer dresses, especially Bob Mackie and Azzedine Alaia, have always set her apart from many stage performers.

Tracking current fashion, Carter says the urban/athletic/hip-hop/Afro-centric look favored by today’s young black music acts, actors and comedians--from Whoopi Goldberg’s dreadlocks to the hip-hop group, Another Bad Creation, and their oversized clothes--have had enormous crossover appeal, a fact not lost on show biz entrepreneurs.

She mentions “HBO’s ‘Russell Simmons’ Def Comedy Jam,” taped in New York, as a particular bounty of black hipness.

It is not only because host Martin Lawrence and the various acts embrace the loose, street-smart style of hooded sweat shirts, oversized jeans, baseball hats and Timberland boots.

At the end of each show, which is taped in New York, audience members come onstage and dance, showing off the latest city styles.

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In March, Simmons, a rap music mogul, opened Phat Farm in Soho, offering a sort of baggy version of Gapwear to upscale urbanites. “Five years ago, you couldn’t find any hip-hop in Soho. Now it’s an accepted style,” says Carter.

Carter thinks Spike Lee is a front-runner in bringing the urban look to the suburbs.

In “Do the Right Thing,” Lee wore baseball jerseys, baseball caps, oversized jeans and Nike athletic shoes, all considered mainstream today.

“People suddenly saw the Brooklyn lifestyle. People noticed that things were happening on the streets,” she says.

She’s now at work on Lee’s next feature, “Crooklyn”, about a family in Brooklyn. It’s a real change from Tina Turner’s story, says the designer. “It’s ‘70s everyday realism,” she says.