Tyler Perry’s The Six Triple Eight tells the unbelievable true story of a troop of women who defied prejudice and misogyny to serve their country when we needed it the most. Led by a powerful performance by Kerry Washington, Perry directs a unified ensemble to show the strength and perseverance of Black women. This is the kind of rousing, crowd-pleasing film that you could put anyone in front of, and you will find an engaged and emotionally invested audience.
Costume designer Karyn Wagner has a unique job with Perry’s film. She has a limited amount of time to establish backstory with the visuals of The Six Triple Eight, but the closer you look to the styling and construction of the clothes, the more you appreciate them. Yes, there is a lot of green, but each young woman wears their uniform with a distinct sense of self and duty. Perry’s film is such an honorable tribute to the history of these women, and Wagner’s work reflects duty and dedication.
The Contending: Before Lena enters basic training, I loved seeing her with Susie and Emma at home. There are a lot of bright colors and floral prints. What was important to you in terms of Lena’s life before she enters her service?
Karyn Wagner: “When we see Lena before she leaves for basic training, I wanted to lean into her innocence and the idea that Susie and Emma have made her the focal point of their lives. Everything they do, they do for her. There is conversation about how they want to raise enough money to send her to college and their dismay that they can’t provide that avenue for her. This is also the time she falls in love for the first time, and I wanted that to be sweet for the audience, because what comes after is hard morally, physically and spiritually for Lena, Charity and the rest of the 6888. That, and the rest of the movie is literally a sea of Army Green. I wanted color, big color. I felt this also reflected America at this time as a much more innocent, patriotic frame of mind country, then, say, now. And the last point I wanted to bring up is that even though America is fighting in the war, the war is not being fought on American soil (as opposed to the British we see later on, whose costumes are much more subdued color-wise) and these brighter colors reflect the emotional distance as well as the U.S. government’s “Beauty is Duty” campaign, in which women were encouraged to always look their best so that soldiers on leave could “remember what they are protecting.”
TC: When Lena meets Dolores, Elaine, and Johnnie Mae on the train, I kept looking at the differences between their clothes and immediately thought of their home lives. How did you want to indicate these stories with a short amount of time? The red Lena’s outfit is to die for.
KW: “Ah! Thank you for the kudos! The costumes for this scene were extremely important to me because they had to tell the entire history and personality of these women, essentially in one change of outfit. All of these characters, except Lena, were based on amalgams of real women and the tidbits that we could find about them in our research.
Bernice is from New York and quite sophisticated. She was a Lindy Dancer and made a living as such. I wanted her outfit to reflect the culture of Harlem as a music and renaissance center. I found a swatch of fabric in the Victoria and Albert Museum online collection that was themed in pale green, blue and white and proceeded to work with a fabric printer to change all the colors to browns and yellows [to] simplify its business and to change the white musicians to black ones. The cut of the dress is the most sophisticated of the young women as well and her heels are the highest. I made the cashmere coat with a vintage collar to complete look both striking and sumptuous.
Elaine, by contrast is a PK (preacher’s kid) and on the surface is all demure lady like grace although the V-necked bodice indicates a bit of something under the surface (instead of buttoning up to the neck). I based the print of this dress on an actual fabric sample from the forties that was sweet and charming–not at all socially challenging–and kept the colors very soft and pastel.
Delores was the intellectual, put together well, but with a mind that was very much elsewhere; in her books and education. The nod to her New Mexico origins is born out in the jacket she wears, which has a very southwestern vibe. These jackets were, in fact, very popular at this time in history.
Johnny Mae is the Southern contrast to the women. She is poor and has probably borrowed clothing from her mother or other relatives in order to have something halfway decent to wear. Her designs are back dated to the late twenties and early thirties and the fabric print is based on a scrap of feedbag fabric I had been hoarding for a while. Feedbag fabric is, as the name implies, cheaply printed cotton that was sewn together and filled with animal feed, coffee, flour and other household necessities. A more economically challenged family would go to the hardware store, pick out the supplies they needed in matching fabric they liked and then, when the bag was empty, they would take the bags apart and repurpose it for clothing, curtains, even upholstery or quilts. She wears a battered straw hat in winter, as opposed to the other girls’ felt hats and wears ankle sox with worn flat shoes because she cannot afford stockings and likely walks everywhere.
Lena’s costume tells the story of her patriotism, love for Abram and her desire to “fight Hitler”. I imagined a fabric with a print of the flags of the allies and worked with the printer to design something that also nodded to the illustrations of Marcel Vèrtes, who defined fashion illustration at this time in history. (Think “Shocking”, Schiaparelli); quite painterly. Her costume is red, white and blue and the lines of it are solidly traditional values, very middle class. The capper of this outfit was when I found one vintage airplane button and had it cast into a full set and painted red. This tiny detail seemed to me to embody the care and detail that when into getting dressed at this time in history.”
TC: When we meet Captain Charity Adams, it’s such a striking moment. How did the costuming assist with our first impression of her? We rarely hear clothing or costumes clearly mentioned in the script, so I kept thinking of Adams’ words when she said, ‘Your uniform must be perfect.’
KW: “When we first meet Charity Adams, her uniform is tailored to perfection. By contrast, the uniforms of the newly enlisted fit very badly. I wanted to make the point that the army used, as Charity says, pencil shaped white women as their model and the curvier shapes of these women meant that if the waistband fit, the hips didn’t. The girls purposely had a very ill-fitting change for this scene partially because the script called for it, but also because the fit made the actors feel uncomfortable which helped them with their characters. It helped them view Charity as intimidating. We had great fun picking these changes. There were some serious giggles and the question of “how much is too much?” got asked more than once. As you may well be aware, people of color were often not allowed into department stores and if they were, they had their own floor. They were not allowed to try anything on but had to guess if it would fit. Consequently, every family had at least one person who knew how to sew very well. Later on, Johnny Mae’s uniform comes under discussion again and we find out that Elaine is the person who knew how to do these alterations.
Every uniform was tailored to every single actor and background actor in the movie. There was an entire department within the department that did fitting with the background actors and tailored each piece. I wanted it to be as perfect as I could get it, as perfect as Ms. Adams would have wanted it.”
TC: How did you want to show the difference between how male soldiers wear their uniforms versus the women of The Six Triple Eight?
KW: “As Ginger Rogers famously said, “I did everything Fred Astaire did, only backwards and in heels.” The women of the 6888 had a great deal to prove. They were constantly hounded by press. The movie brings it up, but the black press was embedded with the 6888 and probably documented nearly every minute of their time. They looked to the 6888 to represent their race well, and white reporters were equally ready to discover their flaws. I thought a lot about W.E.B. DuBois’s 10% when I thought about the responsibility and thankless task these women were assigned and expected to fail at. So, I think for me, while it was about the difference between the male and female soldiers it was even more about the black versus white soldiers.”
TC: What kind of research did you do on Eleanor Roosevelt and Mary McLeod?
KW: “My background is in Art History, so if there’s one thing you can safely say about me is that I am a serious image junkie! I found a lot of photographs of them both separately and together and looking at them all gave me a sense of their taste and style. They both had a sense of stateliness and history about their clothing. They seemed to know that they were living in important times and changing the world. As women with immense personal power and access to even more power, they both wore clothing that was well made and meant to last. Neither of them wore clothing that was acutely stylish or even up to date, but rather a bit back dated yet classic. Eleanor’s were meant to make her friendlier and more approachable, whereas Mary’s were more under-the-radar power suits. I know that sounds like an oxymoron, but her suits were quite powerful, but played down with lace collars and a corsage, usually an orchid.”
TC: With so much time spent in uniform, did you have any concerns in terms of color palette?
KW: “Army Green anyone?
There are subtle differences in uniform colors and believe you me I worked hard to exploit that wherever I could. After we wove the wool and made the uniforms, I felt that the uniformity was perfect for the marching, because the one block of color made them very powerful. But when it came to the cast’s individual looks, I made sure to make character choices where I could. Elaine, for instance, never wears pants. She’s too proper. Johnnie Mae, on the other hand, was a mechanic and the color of that uniform coverall was a bit different. We used the camel-colored sweaters and sweater vests we had made to break things up. The jackets were also a slightly different color. I also orchestrated their looks so that each one favored pieces the others did not, and no two wore the same combination on the same story day. Adams and Cambell were officers, so their uniforms where completely different colors, but there again I made sure that they never wore the same combination on the same story day.”
TC: If you could steal something from your own design of The Six Triple Eight and place it in your closet, what would it be? I love a lot of the heavy coats and boots throughout this film, and Abram looks great in his white tux at the beginning.
KW: “Ooohhh, that’s a hard question! I obsessed over every detail–my crew was so good-natured and patient. I think maybe the jacket, blouse and a skirt? Or maybe the pants and Ike jacket? The Ike Jacket is the short cropped one. I defiantly wish I had one of the knitted jeep caps; we tracked down a maker who had the last working knit cap knitting machine still working from WW2. After our order she retired herself AND the machine!”
The Six Triple Eight is streaming now on Netflix.