Killers of the Flower Moon Costumes Bridge the Gap in Indigenous Representation

Since its invention, cinema has shaped every aspect of culture. Although its influence can sometimes be incalculable, there are easily recognizable ways in which the power of this media is fully on display. For example, some of the biggest fashion trends from every era were inspired by specific films. But limiting this medium's influence solely to the glamorous façade would be a mistake. The truth is that Hollywood has played its part in influencing not only how we look on the outside but also how we look at the world around us. Cinema can act as a tool for either liberation or propaganda. Sadly, many films fall into the latter. That's no more apparent than in how some of the most famous Western films have upheld colonialist and white supremacist beliefs by portraying Indigenous communities as a universal caricature and failing to show systemic genocide.

Despite the full breadth of the Indigenous diaspora, films have largely failed to move beyond a singular story about Native American people—until now. This past October marked the release of the critically acclaimed film Killers of the Flower Moon, a screenplay adaptation from David Grann's book by Martin Scorsese. Starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Lily Gladstone, the film is set in the oil-rich plains of Oklahoma during the 1920s and chronicles a series of murders among the Osage Nation. The subject of the film alone flies in the face of an industry that has long refused to center the stories of anyone who's not white—much less shine a light on the country's long history of genocide toward Indigenous communities. This film puts that rarely told story front and center and shows us who the Osage people are fully. It's through the film's costumes that we can see something that has long been missing from Hollywood: Indigenous perspective.

With this film, Scorsese tried to break from the long history of Hollywood Westerns that center the white gaze by enlisting the help of the award-winning costume designer Jacqueline West and cultural adviser Julie O'Keefe. So many films fail to show the full humanity of marginalized communities, especially Native American ones, yet the costumes in this film bring this story to life. In a way, it's fitting that this film shows an intentional shift in how Indigenous populations are portrayed through costumes, considering that the Osage massacres occurred only 25 years after the Lumière brothers screened the first projected film in Paris. The histories of Native American communities and film have long been tied together. West and O'Keefe illuminate that bridge through their work on the project. 

Ahead, you'll hear from them both about how they got into costume design, how much research they put into reflecting the Osage Nation accurately, and the importance of learning about history. Keep reading to learn more about the film, and then be sure to watch it at a local theater or stream it on Apple TV or Prime Video. 

Let's start from the beginning. How did you get into costume design?

Jacqueline West: Well, my mother was a fashion designer, but the last thing she wanted for me was the fashion business. I went to Berkeley to go to medical school, and shortly after that, I decided to change my major to art history, but there's not a lot you can do with that. While out of Berkeley, I opened my own clothing store, which happened to be next to a very iconic restaurant that all the filmmakers in the Bay Area frequented—it's where Coppola, Phil Kaufman, Spielberg, Lucas, and everybody hung out. It led me to meet all these filmmakers, including Phil Kaufman, who, after being a customer in my store, asked me to help with costumes for the film Henry  June. And that's all she wrote.  

What about you, Julie? How did you discover that you wanted to work in fashion merchandising? 

Julie O'Keefe: I grew up in Pawhuska, Oklahoma, on the Osage reservation with my grandparents. When I was a junior in high school, they had a career day. Looking back, I hope more school systems do that now, especially for rural communities when you don't know what's out there that you can do. But on this day, a woman who owned the local dress shop in town came and spoke about how she had studied fashion merchandising at Oklahoma State University. After hearing her speak, I begged my grandparents to let me have a job even though I didn't have a driver's license then. They said okay, so long as it didn't interfere with school. I went to work at the local shop. At first, I was washing windows, but after about a year, they took me to Dallas to help purchase junior's clothing for the store. That's how I first learned how wholesale worked, how clothing is made and where they're made, and about sizing, buying, and all of that. After that, I went to school for fashion merchandising.

How did you make the jump from working in fashion merchandising to becoming a cultural advisor in traditional Native American apparel?

JOK: After school, in my 20s, I went on vacation to Washington, D.C., and I ended up never coming back (chuckles). It was interesting to be a small-town girl working in a bigger city. I worked at a high-end design shop. It dealt with all types of clientele, from the Kennedy family to sheiks from Saudi Arabia, because all of the diplomats are based in D.C. From that experience, I learned all about how to import antiques. Eventually, it led me to hone in on sourcing and producing Native American clothing for various projects, including the First Americans Museum and, more recently, the film. Honestly, I've never even thought about the movie industry at all. But I used all those skills I'd cultivated to work with Martin and Jacqueline. 

JW: Now the movie industry can't do it without her!

Yes! For both of you, it seems like you were slightly nudged by others to get into costume design. But what was the moment that you realized you loved telling a story through clothing? 

JW: For me, it was working on Henry  June. I had been reading all of Anaïs Nin's diaries when I was in school at Berkeley, and clothing was such a big thing for her. She talked about character and how the smallest detail can reveal someone's inner riches, and that line has sung to me my entire career. I was intrigued by the idea that giving an actor a small hanky, a certain hat, or a suit and tie [that] can provide them with a hook for their character. Because my mom has this love of film and costumes and I grew up around that, costume design was an obvious segway to me. 

Julie, as someone who grew up in the Osage Nation in Oklahoma, what power do you feel clothing holds from a community perspective? What story can clothing tell us about those who have not always had the ability to tell their own stories? 

JOK: Well, for the Osage perspective on our clothing, you have to go into the materials and the history of the clothing. Because I understand how textiles are made, I always incorporated that into how we created costumes for this film. If you look at everything within the movie, you know that all of the Osage citizens are dressed in clothing that tells the history of this community. For example, we included many looks with French ribbon, which was traded with us and came into our clothing in the early 1800s. It was a period when everyone was coming into our country, so the textiles you see represent the Osage Nation's story. 

Since this film is a period piece, how did you source the materials for the costumes? What was the research process like? 

JOK: We spent a lot of time researching everything for these costumes, especially when it came to the textiles, to ensure everything was accurate. For example, to source this brown fabric (a military cloth) that everyone wore during that era, I went to Monticello to see Lewis and Clark's records at the research center in Charlottesville. When I was reading through the records, I saw they had yards of the material left, so we could secure it to incorporate it into the costumes for the men and women in the film. Even with other materials, like the Pendleton blankets worn in the movie, there's a rich history where the textiles tell their own story inside the story. The community used to trade those blankets, and often, they were gifted in wedding ceremonies. But it's just a real detailed history reflected in the garments. 

JW: Adding to that, for a lot of the costumes, we re-created on dolls in workrooms and drew from the 150-year history of the traditional Osage apparel. You can see in various costumes in the film that the Osage garments were decorated with multiple embellishments that were attained through trading. For example, dresses were adorned with calico French ribbon on the shoulders or German silver pins and little brass beads at the hemlines. We wouldn't have been able to re-create any of these costumes without Julie telling us where we could source these things and how exactly they had to be made.

One thing that sets this film apart from other Westerns is that you both spent a great deal of time ensuring that the costumes did not depict Native American communities on-screen inaccurately. How did you collaborate to ensure the film's attire was accurate? 

JW: It was so natural once we met. One of the producers called me into a trailer and said, "The Osage chief is sending you a consultant." I had never worked with a consultant before. I'd only ever worked with a director and had done so much research at that point that I was worried. But once I met Julie, I realized what kind of person she was and that she was sent to help me get this right. The chief sent her to ensure I portrayed her people the way they wanted.

It is such a seminal story for the Osage. It's so tragic and heartfelt that I knew it had to be correct because we're depicting them. It couldn't be a Native American cliché because nothing about the Osage is cliché—they have their own art, their own culture that's very distinct. As I learned with every Native American nation that I've studied, they're all unique. You can't have a bunch of cookie-cutter fringe walking around on the screen. That's not right. We wanted the audience to feel what they were going through by depicting all the various ways of dressing—from modern for the time to the Osage traditional apparel to the various combinations of both.

Would you say having to dig deeper to unveil the stories through clothing is what compelled you to be a part of this project? 

JW: What drew me to this movie was really the story. You never learned this story in school. It's embarrassing for the white man to tell this story unless you get somebody who is dead set on getting this right, like Martin Scorsese. That's why he hired so many of the crew he did, including Julie. When she first came on set, they told me I'd only have her consulting on the project for 10 days, but I went to my supervisor and said, "You have to do something to keep her." For the team and especially for Lily Gladstone [playing Mollie Burkhart], it was so important to have the Osage community be a part of this project, to have someone on board who could ensure there were no missteps. 

One of the ways that the film wanted to avoid those missteps was by bringing you on as a costume consultant. How did this opportunity come about for you? 

JOK: Before COVID-19, I had a project where I was working on an entire line of culturally appropriate goods for the First Americans Museum. At that time, I got a call from Chief Standing Bear at that time. He said, "Are you going to put your résumé in for Killers of the Flower Moon?" I was like, "I don't know anything about the movies. I don't think so." But they said, "Julie, please consider it. Put your résumé in. Send it off, and they'll decide what to do." After that conversation, I sent it in but didn't hear after COVID-19 shut everything down. I just figured it was not going to happen. I had never been on a movie set or worked on a film, and the industry was at a standstill anyway. But then everything powered back up, and I got the call. I've always been willing to take on a task, but I don't know anything about it. I believe that the interesting part of life is the interesting part of work, so I took the chance. 

Since this is the first film you've worked on, what have you learned from the process? 

JOK: When I started the first 10 days, I thought, "This will be a piece of cake." However … many of the nuances are in our clothing. For instance, how blankets and shawls are folded for men and women tell you about a life event. You can look at as many photographs as you need to while researching costumes, but really, it's about how these pieces are being used in that situation that's happening at the time. I didn't fully understand it until I was on set that first day. We were filming the funeral scene for Minnie [played by Jillian Dion]. She was in the casket, and they asked me to fix the way the blanket was laid to fix it and put her in there to accurately reflect how it would be when we have one of our funerals. It was different moments like that that I was on set and realized how important the costumes are to telling the story. 

As someone who grew up in the Osage Nation in Oklahoma, what did it mean to you on a personal level to be brought on to be a part of this project? 

JOK: Growing up, I knew Native Americans were always depicted exactly the same in films. With this film, it's the first time that a bar has been set in years. The only other film I can recall that aimed to depict us accurately was Dances With Wolves, but that was years ago. Now, we're standing at a place where a story that's difficult for us to talk about for ages is going to be told. That's when I really understood the importance of why Chief Standing Bear wanted me to be a part of this project—to combat the long history of negative stereotypes that surround Native American communities.

You can feel that authenticity throughout the film. This is refreshing because so many Western films have centered colonialist narratives that uphold negative stereotypes and negate the genocide of many Native Americans over land and resources. Without giving too much away, how do you feel this film deviates from that pattern? In what ways does this project honor the true story of the Osage Nation?

JW: Well, I hope there was nothing stereotypical about this film because we did our best to make it accurately depict the Osage Nation! We're all accustomed to the typical portrayals of Native Americans in Hollywood movies during the '50s and '60s, which has long influenced costume design. I remember working on another project once and having to fire a team member because they brought me a grosgrain ribbon to imitate beads, which was inaccurate. When I told them that it was, they said, "Well, that's how it has always been done in Hollywood." But I knew that was not the story we were trying to tell with the costumes. It had to be right for the project and for this one too. I believe that every individual item you're wearing reveals something about your inner self, and we had to reveal the inner Osage in this story by the choices we made with the costumes. Luckily, Julie helped me with a lot of those choices, and it meant so much to me to make sure that our work couldn't be cliché. The Osage have a unique story; their clothing had to be handled similarly. 

Julie, how do you feel this film deviates from the long history of propagating stereotypes around the Native American people through cinema? How does this film represent the full diaspora of the community? 

JOK: One of the things that I really understand clearly now is the dedication to authenticity that started at the very top with Martin—he surrounded himself with the very best people to come in on the project with a commitment to telling an authentic story with integrity. It's refreshing to see this approach because Native Americans want to get our stories out there. We've wanted to have a voice in our representation. And I don't just mean the Osage nation. I mean all the 567 nations within North America. The reality is we are ready for Hollywood to hear us, and because of this film, I believe Hollywood is ready to listen.

I went from working as a consultant on Killers of the Flower Moon to another television show where everyone was just as dedicated to trying to learn how to do this right. That's the part that I feel most encouraged about, that there are so many people in this industry who are committed to authenticity. When you have the heart to do that, you will have one of the most spectacular stories out there. Our histories are interesting and informative and set a tone for how we can continue to create bridges for people who don't necessarily want to listen. Guilt is there for everything that happens, and that's very hard for people to grapple with. But the truth is that these stories are compelling; they work. With the success of this film, I'm sure more people will follow suit. At least, I hope Hollywood does. 

Would you both say that people take away from this film that clothing can help us see so much more of the story than we might see at first? 

JW: Yes, but also, I would say that I hope they take home that there are layers of history, too, that have not been revealed to us as non Native Americans. I hope it causes more people to dig deeper as David Grann did in his book, which the film was adapted from, Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI. Our American education is lacking. It needs to change. Yes, we learn a little bit about the Sioux, Lakota, Cheyenne, and Navajo nations in school, but you don't understand about the Osage. There are so many other stories to be told of other nations that people need to know about. We can't learn from these stories if we don’t know them. We can't learn how not to be now if we don't even know how things used to be. 

JOK: What she said!