The costume specialist tells Dominic Carter about his work and helping up underrepresented artists
Best known for his work on the Black Panther movies, Phillip Boutté Jr. is a multi-award winning concept artist and artistic director who specialises in costume design. And when he isn’t busy working on films and music videos, he’s lifting up the next generation of BIPOC [black, indigenous, people of colour] talent with his company 9B Collective.
Ahead of his appearance at LightBox Expo, we caught up with him to learn more about his art and his story.
Hi Phillip, how did you get started as an artist, and what has your career been like so far?
My path to being an artist was a roundabout one. I began my career in the entertainment industry early at the age of three. I was a working actor until around 16 or 17, so I’ve always had a strong passion for the arts. I drew often as a hobby and decided in high school that I wanted to pursue illustration as a career path. At Cal State Long Beach [university], I studied illustration and I minored in film, which led me to becoming a production designer. While doing this, I found costume illustration at San Diego Comic-Con.
At the request of my mentor, Robin Richesson, I showed my portfolio to a panel of costume designers and they encouraged me to join the Costume Designers Guild, Local 892. I got my first job, The Mummy 3, a month later and have been working as a concept artist ever since.
How has your art developed, and what has driven those changes? My art has progressed partly because of life experiences and just a necessity to survive in the field and get better. At first, I translated everything linearly and I thought I might go the route of children’s books or animation. But then I started doing costume illustration and working with costume designers. That led me to trying to paint and draw more like designers such as Theadora Van Runkle or Eduardo Castro.
From there, I got jobs that were more conceptual like Man of Steel. On that job, I was lucky enough to work with Warren Manser, Ed Natividad, Keith Christensen, Constantine Sekeris and Matt Codd. All super polished and professional, and they helped me up my game.
My work looked much more realistic after that job, and then I began changing my style to fit the needs of whatever film I was working on. I knew I had to be flexible and adapt to what would work best to communicate or sell the costume. My training in school taught me a variety of mediums and styles, and those skills served me well to adapt, learn and grow.
What are th
