Welcome to this year’s edition of Last Cinema Standing’s Countdown to the Oscars, where we will break down each of the 23 categories, analyze the films, and make some guesses at their awards prospects.
Best Costume Design
The nominees are:
Barbie
Killers of the Flower Moon
Napoleon
Oppenheimer
Poor Things
Barbie
Costume designer Jacqueline Durran went all in to make Barbieland a reflection of the dolls we all know as they might appear in the world Greta Gerwig creates. On the one hand, it’s a tremendous feat of reproduction, as Durran and team bring to life classic Barbie doll styles from the past. On the other hand, this is more than just a copy-and-paste job. These costumes sing and dance and come to life in ways only truly original work ever could. This is Durran’s ninth nomination. She has two previous wins for Anna Karenina and Gerwig’s previous film, Little Women.
Killers of the Flower Moon
It’s the authenticity that jumps off the screen in Killers of the Flower Moon. Audiences would be able to sniff out a fake, and more importantly, anything less than the real article would fail to reflect the lived experience of the Osage people at this story’s center. Of course, Martin Scorsese and Jacqueline West would never allow that to be the case.
West brought into the process Osage art consultant Julie O’Keefe, who helped ensure the costumes would ring true both to the people and the time period. Osage families who still live in the area brought era-appropriate items that had been worn by their family members at the time for West to use in the production. The fabrics, textures, and colors are all true to the world of the Osage people of the 1920s, and that truth imbues the film with an honesty that could not be achieved otherwise. West is a five-time nominee who has never won this award.
Napoleon
There is usually one nominee in the category that bowls you over with the sheer scope of the work being done. War movies are uniquely suited to imparting this particular feeling because battle sequences featuring thousands of soldiers require thousands of costumes. In the case of Ridley Scott’s Napoleon, those costumes must portray the military attire of several different nations from the specific era of the Napoleonic Wars. Everything must read properly on screen yet still be functional enough to withstand the rigors of this kind of shoot.
This is not even to mention Josephine’s (Vanessa Kirby) gowns at court or the clothes of the French populace, ranging from the moneyed class to the peasants. Costume designers Janty Yates and Dave Crossman ensure that not a stitch feels wrong. Yates has one previous nomination and win in this category for Scott’s Gladiator, while this is crossman’s first nomination.
Oppenheimer
I’m not going to sit here and pretend I understand all the nuances of how these nominations shake out. I can’t say that I fully understand this nod. Costume designer Ellen Mirojnick, on her first collaboration with Christopher Nolan, does fine work bringing the period of the film to life, and there is a special skill involved in designing for the black-and-white sequences, as opposed to the color sequences.
I would be tempted to chalk this up to box-checking for the widely popular Oppenheimer, but the Costumers Branch is not usually susceptible to that, nominating essentially whatever they feel like, regardless of larger acclaim, which is how it should be. So, I trust the experts to understand a nuance that I’m not fully getting. A longtime collaborator of Jan de Bont and Paul Verhoeven, this is Mirojnick’s first Academy Award nomination.
Poor Things
Holly Waddington has been the costume designer for just four feature films in her career. I suspect that number will grow rapidly after the wild success of her work on Yorgos Lanthimos’ fantastical Poor Things. In some ways, the costuming reflects traditional period tropes – grand gowns, heavy suits, and the like – but because the story is a fantasy, Waddington is not tied to any specific eras or locations. She makes the most of that freedom and offers viewers a thrilling melange of styles that perfectly suit the characters and their world.
The final analysis
This will come up again when we talk Production Design, but I feel like Barbie and Poor Things are kind of splitting the same lane here, racing toward the finish line. Though Barbie is of course a juggernaut that made more than a billion dollars at the box office, Poor Things undeniably has more heat as we approach the awards. This is one of the perils of a summer release, though no one in the Barbie camp is crying about it.
It is a little strange, though. It feels like all the wind left the sails for Barbie when Gerwig missed out on a Best Director nomination and Margot Robbie missed out on Best Actress. Even with eight nominations, the two women most responsible for its success were both snubbed (to be clear, Gerwig is nominated for Adapted Screenplay and Robbie is one of the film’s nominated producers). The excitement seemingly just drained from the Barbie crowd and funneled into Poor Things.
Now, Poor Things is a gorgeous film on every level, but it’s a little surprising that it was able to steal so much heat from a blockbuster smash that was also a critical favorite. But, at least for me, that seems to be where we are. I’ll go with Poor Things for the win, though any of that, Barbie, or Killers of the Flower Moon would make me quite happy.
Will win: Poor Things
Should win: Barbie
Should have been here: Priscilla
A note about my favorite snub: It’s a little surprising Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla Presley film could not sneak into the race here. Coppola and frequent costume designer Stacey Battat always put such magnificent work into the costumes for the director’s films, and so much of the story of Priscilla is told through the clothes, which at first seem like a luxury but quickly become another form of imprisonment. It’s a lovely achievement.
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