Renee ehrlich kalfus biography of michaels

When Renee Ehrlich Kalfus signed on as costume designer for the Fox release “Hidden Figures,” she was excited to help tell this seldom-heard story of black, female math prodigies who assisted NASA’s early efforts to compete with the Russians in the space race of the early 1960s.

Still, she recognized that, since the film was set before the bell-bottom explosion of the late ’60s, she was not just dealing with a more uptight aesthetic, but also one that reflected the strictly enforced dress codes of a government agency and the Jim Crow South.

To research the era, she not only pored through NASA archives, but dove into the wealth of photos taken in the South during a period of political and social upheaval, explored family albums, and scanned back-issues of Ebony magazine.

“It was a great way to see details, down to hairstyles and lipstick colors — even girdles,”