Only three weeks after opening, Hidden Figures is still going strong, grossing over $64 million at the box office so far and garnering critical acclaim. The film tells the untold story of three African-American women — Katherine G. Johnson (Taraji P. Henson), Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer) and Mary Jackson (Janelle Monáe) — who worked as mathematicians at NASA and made history with the launch of American astronaut John Glenn into Earth’s orbit in 1962. All of this is accomplished while tearing down racial and gender stereotypes during the civil rights era.
Of course, the movie’s period-perfect outfits also garnered a lot of attention. Responsible for the cast’s costume design was Renee Ehrlich Kalfus. She proved that the work of a costume designer is far from just playful imagination; it requires a level of dedication and historical accuracy. “The fact that [this story] was untold — we all came to it just plain not knowing about it. How did we not know this? It’s a remarkable thing,” Kalfus told Yahoo Style on first joining the team for the movie.
To research the era and the types of dress the characters needed, Kalfus delved into NASA archives and footage, and explored photos taken in the South during the civil rights era, family albums, and vintage Ebony magazines.
“First you do the extensive research,” Kalfus told Yahoo Style. “That time was well-documented. It was the early ’60s. We had a specialist from NASA. We used yearbooks. We had Katherine’s home pictures. We had all the protests and the march. We were able to research that time. That’s where it starts.”
Equipped with info on the time period, she was able to conceptualize and bring to life the wardrobes of Johnson, the math genius; Vaughan, NASA’s first African-American female supervisor; and Jackson, the agency’s first African-American female engineer (who also was the first African-American to take classes at Hampton High School, an all-white high school, to receive credits that would make her eligible to become an engineer).
With strict and conservative dress codes for women in the NASA programs — skirt lengths were regulated and no jewelry was allowed except for one pearl necklace — Kalfus had to find the balance between abiding by the rules of the time while still highlighting style. “I wanted to bump up [their style] so that you admired these women, and you want to be that person on the screen,” said Kalfus.
It was those choices that challenged Kalfus to distinguish Johnson from her co-workers on the NASA task force team, a group of white males who dressed uniformly and conservatively. Those who have seen the movie will recall Johnson’s first day on the job, when she’s handed a trashcan — having been mistaken for the janitor and not the math genius that she was. “She was a single mom with three kids working at NASA full-time, and she sewed her own clothing,” Kalfus remarked. “She went from demure to a more definitive, stronger character. She always knew the numbers. Now she got the chance to stand out.” Kalfus wanted to ensure that Johnson’s distinction wasn’t made just by the color of her skin but by her style choices at work too.
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