The Last Cinema Standing Countdown to the Oscars is your guide to the Academy Awards. We will cover each of the categories in depth, talk about history, what the award truly means, and predict some winners. Check back all month as we make our way to the big show, one category (each as important as the next) at a time.
Best Costume Design
The nominees are:
Cruella
Cyrano
Dune
Nightmare Alley
West Side Story
The Academy loves big, bold, bright designs and plenty of them when it comes to this category. Voters want the effort up on screen. That is why it is so rare to see a non-period film nominated here. Going back to the year 2000, just three truly contemporary films have been nominated in this category – we will exclude Black Panther, which combines elements of science fiction and futurism. La La Land was a Best Picture frontrunner and crafts behemoth, making its nomination almost a foregone conclusion.
The other two were The Devil Wears Prada and 102 Dalmatians, and what both these films have in common is a setting in the world of high fashion. To some degree, both films are about fashion and its impact on the lives of the characters involved. This year, there is a single nominated film that fits that bill, and conveniently, it shares a main character with one of those previous nominees. So, we shall start our deep dive there.
Cruella - Starring Emma Stone in the title role, Cruella charts the rise to fame and fortune of the fashion forward Disney villain who would go on to terrorize all those puppies in 101 Dalmatians (and the aforementioned 102 Dalmatians). While not contemporary by any means, the film’s 1970s setting makes it the most modern of the nominees and affords it the opportunity to play with style and costume in a way the other films cannot.
Costume design is central to the plot of the film, with Estella/Cruella forging a career in the fashion industry through sheer panache and inventiveness. As such, the costumes by 11-time nominee and two-time winner Jenny Beavan must earn the acclaim given to them in the world of the story. They do and then some, with Beavan going above and beyond to craft iconic look after iconic look for every character, but especially for the two stars, Stone and Emma Thompson.
West Side Story - In 1962, Irene Sharaff won the Oscar for Best Costume Design (color) for the original film version of West Side Story. Now, nearly 60 years later, Paul Tazewell, mostly known for his stage work, will attempt to repeat that feat for Steven Spielberg’s reimagining of the story. Tazewell has a Tony Award for his stunning Hamilton costumes, an Emmy for The Wiz Live!, and could very well win an Oscar this year. But if not this year, then likely sometime in the near future, meaning the only thing preventing him from an EGOT is that the Grammys do not have a costuming award.
Working on just his third feature film, Tazewell brings heart and soul to the rough-and-tumble world of Upper West Side New York during a time of transition. The detail work in the ensemble costumes are magical, but the styles truly come alive in the fashions donned by stars Rachel Zegler as Maria and Ariana DeBose (a Tazewell collaborator on Hamilton) as Anita. In particular, the yellow dress worn by Anita in the “America” number will be burned into the memory of anyone who has seen the film.
Nightmare Alley - Luis Sequeira, who was nominated for his previous collaboration with Guillermo Del Toro on The Shape of Water, probably is running toward the bottom of the list when it comes to the win, but I wanted to point out a couple things about his stunning work on this film. First, the seamless transition from the low- to high-society settings that takes place at about the halfway mark is not nearly as easy as Sequeira makes it look. Recreating a 1930s carnival would be a herculean effort in its own right, but to take us from there to the world of the rich and powerful without skipping a beat is miraculous.
Second, if anyone has been paying attention to their cinema listings, you will have noticed the film is being presented in both its original color format and a black and white version, Nightmare Alley: Vision in Darkness and Light. We will talk more about this when we dissect the Cinematography category, for which this film is also nominated, but it bears mentioning here. Costuming for color and for black and white are two distinct arts, but Sequeira’s designs play equally well in either format, somehow still exploding off the screen with style and flare even when drained of their pigment.
Dune - The devil is in the details when it comes to the science-fiction world of Dune, and Jacqueline West and Bob Morgan epitomize that commitment to world building with their iconoclastic take on the distinctly militaristic threads of Denis Villeneuve’s space epic. These are not the traditional, personality-free uniforms of so many sci-fi armies that have come before, but rather costumes that prioritize form and function in a way that makes perfect sense in the deserts of Arrakis.
A frequent Terrence Malick collaborator, four-time nominee West never takes the same approach twice in films as disparate as The New World, The Social Network, The Revenant, and this one. Meanwhile, longtime costume supervisor Morgan gets his first feature credit as costume designer and proves why he has been such a valuable asset to film crews all these years.
Cyrano - It was a little surprising on nomination morning that Joe Wright’s generally well liked and handsomely mounted musical adaptation of the classical French play earned just this one nod. In a different world, one could imagine the Peter Dinklage-starring romance garnering a host of other nominations both above and below the line. Alas, in this world, recognition for the film’s deserving costumes will have to suffice.
Set in 17th century Paris, these are the kind of beautiful, intricate period costumes the Academy can sometimes go for, as was the case with 21st century winners such as Anna Karenina, The Young Victoria, The Duchess, and Marie Antoinette. Speaking of which, co-nominee Jacqueline Durran is a previous winner in this category for Anna Karenina, as well as for her work on Little Women, among her eight total nominations. Massimo Cantini Parrini earned a surprise nomination last year for Matteo Garrone’s Italian Pinocchio adaptation.
It also should not escape our mention that like West Side Story, a previous adaptation of this work also won this category. That would be the 1990 French film Cyrano de Bergerac, which played quite well with the Academy of the day. In addition to winning for Best Costume Design, that 1990 version also was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film, Best Art Direction, Best Makeup, and Best Actor for Gérard Depardieu. Proof, perhaps, that it’s all in the timing.
The final analysis
The Academy’s tastes have changed very little over time when it comes to Costume Design. Consider that of these five nominees, four are remakes and the other is a prequel. From those, two (West Side Story and Cyrano) are remakes of stories that previously won this category, and another (Cruella) is a prequel to a previously nominated film. For completeness’ sake, the original Nightmare Alley premiered prior to the introduction of the Costume Design Oscar, and David Lynch’s 1984 Dune was generally not well liked, so its omission at the Oscars is hardly surprising.
If this year’s Dune is going to be a crafts juggernaut like Mad Max: Fury Road before it (a comparison we have made previously in this series), it will win here. Fury Road won six Oscars, all in categories where Dune is nominated and among the favorites (the two Sound awards it won are now combined into a single Oscar). Interestingly, of those categories, this is the only one being presented on the live broadcast, meaning if Dune is going to run away with this thing, we’ll know before the show even starts.
In a fun twist of fate, the person most in a position to stop the Dune train in its tracks is Cruella designer Beavan, who took home one of her two Academy Awards for her work on Mad Max: Fury Road. Sci-fi movies have an easy time getting nominated here but difficulty pulling off the win because despite the scope, voters often see a sameness in the costumes. Cruella does not have that problem, and Beavan’s fun, wholly original work has an excellent chance of carrying the day.
Will win: Cruella
Should win: Cruella
Should have been here: Licorice Pizza
Next time: Best Cinematography
