As you likely know by this stage of awards season, filmmaker Steve McQueen based his heart-wrenching slave drama on the autobiography of Solomon Northup, a free black man who was kidnapped and sold into slavery for more than a decade. When it came to designing the costumes for stars Chiwetel Ejiofor, Lupita Nyong’o, and the other actors who played slaves, though, 82-year-old Oscar-nominated designer Patricia Norris had little on which to base their wardrobes. Since there are little photographs of slaves available—mostly etchings—Norris, a self-proclaimed history nut, relied on her research and some educated guessing to meet McQueen’s sartorial goal of making the wardrobe look as real as possible.