00:00Hello Essence, I'm Dana Blair and right now I have the honor and the privilege of bringing
00:16you a special sneak peek from the costume headquarters for the remake of Roots. Let's
00:21take a look. Okay so Ruth you've pulled together several different generational collections. Can
00:29you take us through say from the earliest time period to the most current within the work?
00:34Roots starts, it's four nights as you know. It starts with the 18th century. It was like an open
00:41neckline, you know a pointed bodice. Sometimes they wore what's called the stomacher here. The
00:46women wore what we call false hips. This is like the original waist trainer. This is the original waist
00:52trainer, exactly. However the slaves they didn't always wear you know corsets and everything because
00:56a lot of them worked in the field. But they did have the shapes and and you know they used fabrics
01:02that you know were just remnants that were available or the plantation owner would actually buy a big
01:09ream of fabric. Usually it's the most coarse cheapest fabric possible and a lot of things were made out
01:16of it for them to wear like skirts and aprons. So you'll see with slaves a lot of pieces that are
01:23worn by different people in the same fabric or the same shape or the same check. So you're constantly
01:28looking for something like you're constantly seeing inspiration wherever you go. For sure it's an
01:33obsession. And for each time period like I see like what four or five costumes here but how many
01:39actors and actresses did you have to dress? Well there's a quite a big cast you know every night
01:45there's say 50 cast members and then also there's probably about 2,000 extras. So we are constantly
01:53morphing into each night what the slaves wore in 1750 they can't still be wearing in 1860. So they
02:01need a new set of clothes after 100 years. Wow. Yeah and so that's what happens. The next time period is
02:07called like the Regency period and during this night we used a lot of what we call it's a wash and
02:15repair because that's what would happen. Slaves were only given one outfit per year. One outfit
02:20per year. One per year. Sometimes they were given something to wear for the winter. Their winter
02:25costume would look you know a little bit heavier in fabric and sometimes they were given shoes but
02:29they were never given shoes in the summer. They also wore these fee shoes as more of a modesty
02:35piece you know because the Regency period had also a very low neckline and so when you were
02:41working and serving you definitely had to use a little bit of a modesty piece and there was also
02:46an ordinance where you had to cover your hair because so especially in Louisiana they had a
02:52law that said you had to cover your hair because the Creole women were being mistaken for the free
02:58women and then eventually these tignons as they called them became very elaborate and beautiful and
03:04actually added to their beauty. This is fascinating to me. Okay so take me to the next phase if you will.
03:10Oh this is beautiful. Well this is what people remember the most I think. Right. This is the 1860s
03:15it's the big hoop that goes under the skirt. I couldn't imagine having to work and wear this.
03:21Yeah they're very light. It's light? They're very light. The hoops are just a wire that goes on underneath.
03:26Again it was one house dress that you wore for the year especially if you were working in the field
03:34or you got a special dress for a special occasion. When you look at the original roots from 39 years
03:41ago and present day how did you approach creating these pieces to where they were reflective of the
03:47original if you will but also still had your interpretation your flair. Well I remember the
03:51original roots. I didn't see it again because I didn't want to be influenced by the original one.
03:56I wanted this roots to be its own so I remembered enough of it though to know that to pay homage to
04:04it would be to follow the historical look of it you know to the letter and I think now we are a lot
04:10more sophisticated and so we want to see more so I dug a little bit deeper into the detail of each period
04:18so that this wouldn't be the same roots this would be a much more involved one. Okay so take me on to the
04:23next period. Once a year and that was Christmas the slaves were able to exercise their cultural
04:32identities, have a party, play the drums. If you've been to other countries, thorough countries you see
04:38men that wear skirts and you know long caftes. Long before Kanye did it. So we reinterpreted some of the
04:48pieces from the early America into more of an African way and we thought they could paint their skirts.
04:55Right. The men could wear a skirt over his shoulder. You know a lot of things were raw but we felt like
05:01found pieces could create something very interesting and that's what we presented. Yeah.
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