How the 'Killers of the Flower Moon' Authentic Osage Costumes Were Created

I got a phone call from a producer

saying that Martin Scorsese would like to meet with me.

When I got off the phone, I ran upstairs to my husband.

I started jumping up and down.

He said, This is as good as it gets.

Now, you do this one and then you can quit.

I'm Jacqueline West.

I'm the costume designer of Killers of the Flower Moon.

My name is Julie O'Keefe.

I'm Osage, and I was the lead Osage wardrobe consultant

on Killers of the Flower Moon.

Today, we're gonna be taking you

through our creative process

on how we came up with the costumes for this film.

[crowd cheering]

Stop, stop, stop.

I had heard about Killers of the Flower Moon

when I was doing The Revenant with Leo.

It was already in the center of his mind.

Jackie's team called me and asked if I would come in.

And when I saw all of these floor-to-ceiling storyboards

of how Jacqueline had set up all the research

for traditional men,

traditional women like Lizzie Q, modern clothing,

I really knew then the level of authenticity

and the bar that had been set.

She understood us,

and that is when I knew that it was going to be

really a successful collaboration with us.

The Osage were rich enough to afford home movies.

At $1,800 a minute,

the only other people really who could afford them

were maybe the British Royal Family.

So they were a wealth of information for me.

So it kind of started there with collecting,

like Julie said,

I probably had 2,000 pieces of research on my walls.

What Julie helped me with when she arrived was sorting out:

Who would be the best people to make the specific items

that are specific to the Osage?

The community took great pride

and the fact that we were focusing down

on the authenticity level,

and they took pride in being a part of this.

And so the people that we used to do this and the artisans

are actually people that understand this history very well,

and they're carrying that on through their generations.

You've asked for additional monies of $752

to pay a medical bill for an abscess.

Yes, sir.

As we start talking about Mollie

and her traditional wardrobe,

I'd like to just shout out Pendleton Blanket Company

in Pendleton, Oregon

because they knew which colors they had sold to the Osage.

They also had the loom charts for how they wove the blankets

and what the stripes looked like then,

and they reproduced them,

probably 1,000 blankets for the movie.

Blankets and shawls for women,

when you see how they're wearing those,

it's telling you about a life event that is happening.

So you'll see in the movie different ways

that everything is folded.

So let's say, for instance,

this is a blanket where she's wearing this to go in

and see Pitts Beatty, the guardian,

and so she's going in to talk business.

So she's gonna wear this in a traditional style.

Now, there are two ways that you can put this on

for a formal way to wear it,

and the fringe can go inside.

But from the research photos that Jacqueline had pulled,

these particular sisters wore their fringing on the outside.

So for this one, she's wearing it in more of a formal style.

If she were going to wear it in more,

where she needed to use her arms more or her hands,

it would be folded under one arm,

and it would be flipped back

so that she's able to use her hands.

The same for the shawls.

For the most part,

this is how Mollie was always photographed.

We have here two Wabanka pins,

which is saying that she's married.

Single is a grandmother,

two is you're married, and three you are single.

When you move up here,

you see she has on her black choker bead necklace,

which was really a staple in Osage clothing at the time.

And to this day, the silhouette that you see here

has not changed in over 150 years.

The technology of the materials has changed,

but it has not changed, and we wear this today.

Then, up here, she's wearing a traditional earring,

and this is called ball and cone.

And these are turned by the silversmith

and these are also worn in dresses and different things.

But for Osage, we don't put them on our clothes,

we put them on our ears, our men wear them.

This is very luxurious 'cause she has four.

A lot of times, you'll only see a single.

This is just a show of luxury, an opulence.

[man speaking foreign language]

[crowd cheering]

An Osage delegation in the early 1800s

went to Washington D.C.,

and this was the military coat of the time.

The Osage chief admired it

on one of the high-ranking officers

in Jefferson's entourage.

When he admired it, Jefferson said,

Take that off and give it to the chief, right,

as a peace offering.

But the Osage are quite statuesque as a people.

The coat was too small for the chief.

He took it home and gave it to his daughter,

and she happened to be getting married

and decided that would be her wedding dress, so to speak.

So it became decorated with French ribbons,

a lot of trade items with the finger-woven belt.

They probably added a lot of gold braid and gold ribbon.

This is real ribbon from the 1920s that we used.

She layered it with traditional Osage

and took something that was quite military and warlike

and turned it into this beautiful outfit for her wedding.

And forevermore, it became the Osage wedding dress.

This is Mollie's costume,

but typically this was for an arranged marriage.

Starting here with,

here's a choker bead necklace under here.

Under this coat, you would have maybe two shirts,

you would have a set of pins,

you have one finished finger-woven belt,

and it goes on around and the tails hang in the back.

Then you have a skirt under here.

But also in this particular scene,

we have an Osage ribbon work blanket.

And so this is something of true luxury.

This particular blanket

has something close to 22 yards of ribbon in it.

You see a cut and fold pattern that is happening here,

and you see this hand.

Hands, a lot of times, are on our blankets.

They're not on our skirts,

but she's giving this away as a treasure to someone.

And so if you see the hand and it's right under here,

that means either the hand of my family

or the hand of my friend.

But if you see right here, it's the hand of my enemy.

When you come to the belt here,

this is quintessential Osage,

and it's called Osage finger weaving.

It's unfinished because the family that you're giving it to

is going to finish the tails on this.

This hat,

when the first delegation went to the East Coast,

was probably admired,

and a top hat came back with the wedding coat.

But to make it her own,

the women of the tribe decorated it with hackle feathers,

dyed hackle feathers,

and French silk ribbon, and German silver right here.

And it became this magnificent fashion item.

It was really Vogue Magazine worthy.

[man speaking foreign language]

So if you see on the back here,

she's got this beautiful piece of French ribbon

that is still used within our clothing today.

When you see us in our traditional clothing,

we'll always have a piece of ribbon on the back

and she has this antique broach that's holding it.

This, often from their travels or trips to New York,

they would buy these beautiful roaches from Tiffany's

or from wherever they went,

Paris, antique stores.

And sometimes the Big Hill Trading.

And sometimes Big Hill Trading, yes.

There was Big Hill Trading in Fairfax

and they were like the first department store in Oklahoma

that it was to the Osages.

Anything you could get, a Tiffany's counter,

Haute couture clothing,

anything that an Osage wanted or dreamed of,

it was in the Big hill

if you couldn't get to New York or Paris.

He always used to tell the white man

just to call him Jimmy,

but I always called him by his proper name.

[man speaking foreign language]

I had never heard of the Osage

until I worked in Oklahoma on a Terrence Malick movie.

It's always gonna stay with me.

This movie, the friendships that I've made with the Osage,

they're in my heart.

It's a sacred story,

and I'm so glad it's finally being told.

A day doesn't go by that I don't think about the experience.

For me, it was an opportunity to help tell a story

about a really tragic part of history

that's very difficult for Osages

to talk about with each other.

I look at these pieces as part of my life

'cause these are incorporated and ingrained into Osage life.

This movie became a feel, even though it's an epic movie,

of a community project.

I worked in the costume department

that we had people that worked within set,

and within language, and historians.

We had an entire team of Osages that were really invited in

and asked to come in

because Marty truly wanted authenticity.

This is a recipe to how to tell a successful,

authentic story

and to actually represent Native Nations in Hollywood

the proper and right way.

And for me, that is everything

because this story doesn't just help my tribe,

it helps all of us in any country.

Thank you, Vanity Fair, for having us.

And we hope that you enjoy Killers of the Flower Moon.

[lighthearted music]