<http://schema.org/articleBody>
" How do you convincingly\u00A0transform five accomplished actresses\u2014including rising style star Lupita Nyong&amp;#039;o\u2014into warlords&amp;#039; wives, abuse victims and rebel soldiers? Such was the challenge for Clint Ramos, costume designer for\u00A0Eclipsed on Broadway.\u00A0Using\u00A0photos and\u00A0documentaries of\u00A0the Liberian Civil War as his research, Ramos dug up\u00A0Salvation Army finds and sought out authentic West African fabrics to get\u00A0the women of Eclipsed into character in the most accurate and respectful way possible. The result included\u00A0a tattered Rugrats shirt for Nyongo&amp;#039;s innocent girl persona, head wraps for the mother figure, crop tops and jeans\u00A0for the female warrior to carry her AK-47 with. Ramos&amp;#039; thrift shop scavenging\u00A0and fabric search\u00A0paid off in the end. Earlier this month he\u00A0took home a Tony Award for Best Costume Design of a Play,\u00A0Eclipsed&amp;#039;s\u00A0only win that night, and became\u00A0the first person of color to ever win in that category. (Ramos is a native Filipino.)\u00A0He wasn&amp;#039;t the only one to make history at the awards show, either.\u00A0Actors\u00A0of color won\u00A0all four musical acting awards\u00A0for the first time ever, proving Broadway, unlike Hollywood, was finally starting to take\u00A0diversity seriously. It also helped that Eclipsed, which was nominated for six awards including Best Play, gave Broadway its first all-female African American cast and creative team.\u00A0 The play,\u00A0written\u00A0by Danai Gurira, tells the moving story of five women caught in the atrocities\u00A0of Liberia&amp;#039;s civil war in 2003. The production is poignant to begin with, but the fact that its cast (Lupita Nyong&amp;#039;o,\u00A0Saycon Sengbloh, Zainab Jah, Pascale Armand and Akosua Busia), writer and director (Liesl Tommy) are\u2014for the first time\u2014all black women\u00A0adds even more significance.\u00A0 After earning raving reviews at the Public Theater in the fall of 2015,\u00A0Eclipsed\u00A0moved to\u00A0Broadway this March and finally\u00A0finally closed its curtains\u00A0this past\u00A0Sunday. But\u00A0before taking that final bow,\u00A0BAZAAR.com caught up with Tony-winning Ramos on\u00A0the historic production and his well-deserved\u00A0win.\u00A0  Harper&amp;#039;s BAZAAR:\u00A0So how does it feel to win a Tony? Clint Ramos:\u00A0&amp;quot;It feels wonderful but now I feel like a lot of anxiety over it I guess. I feel like I can&amp;#039;t relax like I always have to do good work now. I can&amp;#039;t suck anymore!&amp;quot; HB: How did you go about putting the costumes together for Eclipsed? CR: &amp;quot;The way I approached the clothes was I just wanted it to be accurate, almost like a documentary.\u00A0I was just going for the most realistic naturalistic thing I could possibly do. A lot of it was like the photographs, because it was a photographed war. It was a war that was watched by the whole world\u2014by the UN, by the US, by our European allies\u2014so there were a lot of photos that showed what the women looked like. I based a lot of those clothing on how those women looked. We adjusted once we knew who the actors were, but all of it is based on research. I thought that would be the most logical way to approach the clothing, but it&amp;#039;s also because the play is based on real life, I thought it was the most respectful way I could honor the lives of these women.&amp;quot; HB: Where did you source the clothing from? CR:\u00A0&amp;quot;In the research you see a mixture of Western clothing, specifically American clothing, because a lot stuff we don&amp;#039;t want ends up there.\u00A0So\u00A0I went to Salvation Army and a lot of thrift stores and then the African fabric had\u00A0to be really specific and so I sourced that at the African fabric stores in Brooklyn, Atlantic Avenue and a couple in Harlem. It had to come from West Africa because the prints in West Africa are different than the prints in East Africa or South Africa.&amp;quot; HB: Compared to other shows you might&amp;#039;ve worked with, what was it like dressing an all female cast? CR:\u00A0&amp;quot;I initially approached it with some apprehension because with an all-female cast in a play about women, especially about women who are being abused sexually, I didn&amp;#039;t know how they would react to a man dressing them. But thankfully, I have relationships with most of these actors because I&amp;#039;ve worked with them before. It was a collaboration in the fitting room. These are fantastic actors. Three of them were nominated for Tony&amp;#039;s and they&amp;#039;re really devoted to their craft. They all, across the board, set their vanities aside and just said, &amp;#039;Let&amp;#039;s just go to work,&amp;#039; and they were on board with honoring these lives of these women by just being totally accurate.&amp;quot;  HB: How was\u00A0working with Lupita?  CR:\u00A0&amp;quot;I was nervous at first, because she&amp;#039;s just coming off of her Academy Award win and she&amp;#039;s also a style celebrity, so I didn&amp;#039;t know what to expect. But all of my fears were just allayed because, A, she&amp;#039;s a super beautiful human being and B, she is a devoted actor. I think part of the reason why she wanted to do Eclipsed is that she had wanted to go back into really deep acting work where she could immerse herself in a role. She was completely egoless. Every single thing that I said to put on, she put on, and we would talk about it. But there were a couple of items, like the\u00A0Rugrats shirt, that really struck a chord.\u00A0When she put it on we both gasped. We were like &amp;#039;There she is, that&amp;#039;s The Girl. We found her.&amp;#039; Because she\u00A0plays a 15-year-old girl, we wanted to convey that without being obvious. What would that 15-year-old African girl wear?\u00A0When you see that shirt you can form a story\u2014she could&amp;#039;ve been hanging out with friends while wearing that when the soldiers invaded the village. You can attach your own feelings to it, especially an American audience because it is an American cartoon character. But Lupita was wonderful. She trusted me, and I took that trust very seriously to calibrate her look. One of the things that I wanted to do was honor who Lupita is and also not distract.&amp;quot; HB: How did you differentiate between characters&amp;#039; costumes on the show? CR:\u00A0&amp;quot;In talking to Danai Gurira, who wrote the play, and Liesl, the director,\u00A0we really went into\u00A0each character. It also helped that each character had their own distinct thing.\u00A0So there&amp;#039;s Lupita, who&amp;#039;s the innocent girl. She&amp;#039;s\u00A0dressed in the children&amp;#039;s clothing until she&amp;#039;s assimilated into the compound and she starts to dawn\u00A0on the matriarchal figure, who always dressed matronly. Her\u00A0wrap skirts always go past her knees\u00A0and her head is always wrapped because a lot of the older women wrapped their heads then, even though she&amp;#039;s only 25. Then there&amp;#039;s the warrior, who is\u00A0based on a\u00A0real lieutenant of that war. In the research, they&amp;#039;re all wearing jeans and all of these fancy tops\u2014it&amp;#039;s almost like they&amp;#039;re going clubbing. It&amp;#039;s amazing, the juxtaposition of the clothing and the firearms they carry. They&amp;#039;re always in crop tops or halter tops, really tight jeans, jewelry,\u00A0the weave is on point, and then they carry AK-47&amp;#039;s or grenade launchers. There&amp;#039;s Mother Peace who&amp;#039;s always in white. She&amp;#039;s also based on a real figure, a noble peace prize winner\u00A0named Leymah Gbowee. And then there&amp;#039;s Bessie,\u00A0the clown, who&amp;#039;s the pregnant one. She&amp;#039;s sort of the comic relief but she breaks your heart in the end\u2014she&amp;#039;s basically just\u00A0trying to find an identity. All of the clothing are provided by the vultures, who basically rip off these clothes from dead bodies, so, that&amp;#039;s what they have to work with.&amp;quot;  HB: What would you say some of your biggest challenges were? CR:\u00A0&amp;quot;I think the biggest challenge, for me, was how could we make these characters not seem like foreigners. I wanted us, an American audience, to relate to these women. I wanted to make them look familiar. I think the use of American t-shirts\u00A0or familiar\u00A0logos\u00A0helped that a lot. Of course the biggest challenge was portraying the clothing so it doesn&amp;#039;t look like a costume. The sweat stains and the distressing of the clothing needed to be really on point; they needed to be super accurate. So we had to do a lot of tests on the different levels of sweat and bodily fluids, and the wear. Most of the clothing, most of the wrap fabrics, were new, some of the tops and jeans were new, so we had to batch together jeans and distress them.&amp;quot; HB: A big facet of the Tony&amp;#039;s this year was a presence of diversity, especially with Eclipsed, Hamilton, Shuffle Along\u00A0and other shows with actors of color being highly nominated. As the first person of color to win a Tony for Costume Design of a Play, how did that accomplishment feel for you? CR:\u00A0&amp;quot;I actually didn&amp;#039;t know that I was the first person of color to win in this category until two days ago. It feels great. It&amp;#039;s great that this year was a very diverse year. The theater is not a popular venue for young artists to pursue, you know? Part\u00A0of the problem is that artist of color don&amp;#039;t see themselves having a place in it. I think they think of it as an elitist art form. When you look at majority of the audience who go to the theater, they&amp;#039;re very wealthy and very homogenous in terms of race. But\u00A0what&amp;#039;s wonderful about having so much diversity visible\u00A0is that it actually inspires artists of color to see themselves in a theater\u2014to create young Lin-Manuel Mirandas or young Audra McDonalds, and maybe even young designers of color. And out of the 36 or 26 nominated designs, only two\u00A0were of color.\u00A0I mean, we both won! [Ed note:\u00A0Hamilton&amp;#039;s Paul Tazewell won Best Costume Design of a Musical.]\u00A0But\u00A0I still think there&amp;#039;s work that needs to be done.&amp;quot; HB:\u00A0And you&amp;#039;re the\u00A0fourth Filipino ever to win a Tony which is also a big deal.  CR:\u00A0&amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s crazy! And that&amp;#039;s anxiety that I was talking to you about earlier. It means so much for a small country like the Philippines\u00A0to have\u00A0international representation. I don&amp;#039;t take it for granted. It&amp;#039;s a big responsibility.&amp;quot; Watch the cast of Eclipsed react to their six Tony nominations.\u00A0        "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.harpersbazaar.com/culture/film-tv/news/a16232/tony-winner-clint-ramos-lupita-nyongo-eclipsed-costume-design/>