“From my perspective, they’re not costumes. All the things was genuine and is one thing we’re nonetheless sporting in the present day,” stated Osage clothes marketing consultant Julie O’Keefe of collaborating with costume designer Jacqueline West and 20 Osage artisans to craft appears to be like for “Killers of the Flower Moon,” in theaters now.
Primarily based on David Grann’s 2017 nonfiction e book “Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Beginning of the FBI,” the Martin Scorsese movie tells the tragic true story of members of the oil-rich Osage tribe who have been murdered underneath suspicious circumstances through the Nineteen Twenties. It stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Lily Gladstone, Robert De Niro and Jesse Plemons.
Authenticity in illustration of the Osage was essential to Scorsese, stated West. “As soon as per week I might discuss to Marty, and I sensed his one want, and the rationale he wished to shoot on the Osage nation and contain chief Standing Bear and the tribal authorities, having dinners with them and getting their enter, was to create a sure belief.”
“Killers of the Flower Moon” costume designer Jacqueline West, left, and Osage clothes marketing consultant Julie O’Keefe.
Eric Charbonneau
O’Keefe, who grew up on the Osage reservation in Pawhuska, Okla., had the suitable expertise — first working at an area costume store that had been round because the oil growth, then finding out style merchandising and dealing in product growth in Washington, D.C., and returning residence not too long ago when she started shopping for for the First Individuals Museum store in Oklahoma Metropolis.
She began as a marketing consultant to West, however ended up staying on via the complete manufacturing, utilizing lots of the artists she’d established relationships with via the museum to make items for the movie.
“After the film, I went on to work as an Indigenous marketing consultant on ‘American Primeval’ and satisfied Netflix to place 40 % of their finances — costume, prop and set — into artisans, together with teepee makers…I spotted I had stumbled right into a mission of eager to showcase Native artisans,” O’Keefe stated.
For “Killers of the Flower Moon,” Supernaw, a widely known Oklahoma silversmith, crafted lots of the distinctive scarf slides worn by Osage males. One is formed like a coronary heart, one other a half moon with a star, “which is a Native church image,” O’Keefe explains. “Completely different slides inform totally different tales.”
Blankets are virtually a personality in and of themselves within the movie. Non-Native owned Pendleton recreated 1,500 designs from the ’20s for the manufacturing, right down to the genuine ’20s labels. However the ribbon-work blankets, together with one worn by Mollie (Lily Gladstone) have been made by Marie Lookout.
“Past the Scene” at Apple Studios.
Eric Charbonneau
“The Lookouts are well-known for ribbon work,” stated O’Keefe. “Lots of them have been made with French ribbon that we traded for. That blanket has 27 yards of ribbon on it…You put on ribbon blankets to honor somebody, to point out up as a diplomat or delegation doing enterprise, or to honor the household on household days,” she stated.
Molly Murphy Adams was liable for making three hand-beaded blankets in simply 5 weeks’ time.
“Molly Murphy Adams, who’s Oglala Lakota, could be very well-known for museum high quality bead work,” O’Keefe stated, pulling out a tuxedo jacket from her personal closet to point out off beaded patches made by Murphy Adams. “Whenever you go into her studio, she has all of those beads that she’s collected organized by nation and yr…And you need to love the ingenuity of artists. Once I walked in, she had the two-yard wool material I’d given rolled over a pool noodle and 40 needles pre-threaded with all of her beads that have been going like a machine.
“It’s these expertise that everybody complains that we’ve shipped abroad however if you happen to look in your communities in each single state on this nation, you’re gonna discover Native artists. They’re nonetheless utilizing their arms producing these items. And plenty of it’s generational set at a kitchen desk. That’s the material of who we’re right here in america, and we overlook it.”
That craft is what O’Keefe is dedicated to showcasing extra broadly via movie, TV and now retail. She’s partnered with designer and professor Jessica Harjo and some different Osage artists and curators to open a pop-up store referred to as Indigichic in Tulsa, Okla., that includes up to date Native American artisans’ work.
“What we have been wanting was an immersive expertise…specializing in the 39 nations of Oklahoma, style and equipment,” O’Keefe stated, including that Gladstone wore one in all Harjo’s attire to the Osage premiere of the movie.
Indigichic in Tulsa, Okla.
Certainly one of objects within the retailer is a hand-painted parfleche belt by Katelynn Pipestone. “If you wish to see the Louis Vuitton of Indigichic, that is it,” O’Keefe stated. “We’re eager to showcase all these wonderful artisans who’re doing issues that may be worn in a up to date method. That belt belongs on the pink carpet.”
Indigichic will probably be open till Jan. 13, and a few museums have expressed curiosity in internet hosting the pop-up sooner or later.
Apple Studios, which backed the movie, has an exhibition of the movie’s costumes at its Culver Metropolis, Calif., campus titled “Past the Scene,” which incorporates 17 of the Osage appears to be like, and is open Nov. 28 to Dec. 1 by reservation at killersoftheflowermoonexhibit.com.
And O’Keefe is dedicated to persevering with to pay her expertise ahead.
“Natives have been ready a really very long time to have the correct illustration in Hollywood. And this venture has all of the genuine bells and whistles you’d ever need as a result of that’s the degree that Marty put in it. He surrounded himself with individuals which can be really dedicated to authenticity with integrity, and I believe that’s now the place Hollywood is standing…We need to be represented the best way we ought to be. And so they need to symbolize us that method. The perfect historical past tellers are artists, and there’s a new world for Hollywood to divulge heart’s contents to embody these artists.”