Costuming ratchet aesthetics: Ruth E. Carter and the Black femme body in B.A.P.S. (1997)

This article examines Ruth E. Carter’s costume design for B.A.P.S. () as a critical intervention in cinematic representations of the Black femme body. While Carter’s acclaimed work on films such as Malcolm X (1992) and Black Panther (2018) has been widely celebrated, her designs for B.A.P.S. – which capture the hyperstylized fashions of 1990s urban Black femme communities – remain largely absent from costume history and scholarship. I argue that Carter’s designs in B.A.P.S. exemplify what I term the ‘ratchet aesthetic’, an excessive, hypervisible style language emerging from southern Black urban contexts that rejects respectability politics and embraces Black femme erotic freedom. Through close analysis of key costume sequences, I show how Carter’s manipulation of silhouette, fabric and colour narrativizes Nisi (Halle Berry) and Mickey’s (Natalie Desselle-Reid) transitions between forms of labour, social class contexts and racialized gender performances. Situating the film within histories of Black femme representation, I contend that Carter’s ratchet aesthetic reframes the hyperfeminine excess often pathologized in mainstream media as a site of political possibility and joy. The article further traces the afterlives of B.A.P.S. costumes in popular culture – from The Real Housewives of Atlanta to contemporary music videos and drag performance – demonstrating their enduring resonance as symbols of aspirational style, queer play and working-class Black femme visibility. In foregrounding B.A.P.S. within Black feminist and performance studies, this study expands conversations about costuming’s role in shaping cinematic histories of Blackness.