How the ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’ Osage Clothes Guide Is Paying It Ahead

“From my perspective, they’re not costumes. All the things was genuine and is one thing we’re nonetheless carrying in the present day,” stated Osage clothes advisor 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 ebook “Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Start 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 in the course of the Nineteen Twenties. It stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Lily Gladstone, Robert DeNiro and Jesse Plemons. 

Authenticity in illustration of the Osage was essential to Scorsese, stated West. “As soon as every week I’d discuss to Marty, and I sensed his one want, and the explanation he needed 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.”

O’Keefe, who grew up on the Osage reservation in Pawhuska, Okla., had the best expertise — first working at a neighborhood gown store that had been round for the reason that oil growth, then finding out vogue merchandising and dealing in product growth in Washington, D.C., and returning residence lately when she started shopping for for the First Individuals Museum store in Oklahoma Metropolis.

She began as a advisor to West, however ended up staying on by means of your complete manufacturing, utilizing lots of the artists she’d established relationships with by means of the museum to make items for the movie.

“After the film, I went on to work as an Indigenous advisor on ‘American Primeval’ and satisfied Netflix to place 40 p.c of their funds — 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. “Totally 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, all the way 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.

“The Lookouts are well-known for ribbon work,” stated O’Keefe. “A whole lot 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 indicate up as a diplomat or delegation doing enterprise, or to honor the household on household days,” she stated.

Molly Murphy Adams was answerable 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 indicate 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 it’s important to love the ingenuity of artists. Once I walked in, she had the two-yard wool cloth 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 abilities that everybody complains that we’ve shipped abroad however should you 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 numerous it’s generational set at a kitchen desk. That’s the material of who we’re right here in the US, and we overlook it.”

That craft is what O’Keefe is dedicated to showcasing extra broadly by means of 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 known as Indigichic in Tulsa, Okla., that includes modern Native American artisans’ work.

“What we have been wanting was an immersive expertise…specializing in the 39 nations of Oklahoma, vogue and equipment,” O’Keefe stated, including that Gladstone wore one in all Harjo’s clothes to the Osage premiere of the movie.

One among 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 superb artisans who’re doing issues that may be worn in a recent manner. That belt belongs on the crimson carpet.”

Indigichic will likely 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 right illustration in Hollywood. And this mission has all of the genuine bells and whistles you’ll ever need as a result of that’s the degree that Marty put in it. He surrounded himself with folks which are really dedicated to authenticity with integrity, and I feel that’s now the place Hollywood is standing…We wish to be represented the best way we must be. They usually wish to signify us that manner. The most effective historical past tellers are artists, and there’s a new world for Hollywood to speak in confidence to embody these artists.”