There’s a saying among Oscars Kremlinologists that the Academy doesn’t reward the best acting—it rewards the most acting. It’s a sentiment that, at least part of the time, applies to the costume design category too: for voters, when it comes to style on screen, bigger is usually better. (Bigger skirts, bolder colors, brasher patterns; if it makes your eyes pop, chances are the Academy will love it.)
When it comes to costumes, though, the Academy’s favor is also guided by another factor: history. Looking at the past decade of nominees as a sample, 48 out of the 50 movies up for the golden statuette were either fantasy or period films—the exceptions being La La Land in 2016 and Everything Everywhere All at Once last year, in case you were wondering—and all of the period films that took the prize home were set at least 50 years in the past.
This year’s crop of best-costume nominees isn’t doing much to buck that trend. Four out of the five films nominated feature historical settings, the most recent of those being Oppenheimer’s conclusion in the early 1960s, when the physicist is granted a medal by President Lyndon B. Johnson. And it’s difficult to believe that Barbie’s nomination came about for its scenes in present-day California, as opposed to the fabulously kitschy Barbieland confections dreamed up by costume designer Jacqueline Durran (who actually won her second best-costume Oscar in 2020 for Greta Gerwig’s previous film, Little Women—set in the late 19th century).
In all fairness, it’s not hard to see why period and fantasy costumes are at the forefront of the awards season conversation: we simply notice them more. Along with the production design, the clothes are the most visible way in which a film transports us to another decade or century (or to an alternative reality, in the case of the fantasy films that tend to populate the other slots in the best-costume lineup). It’s also a tale as old as Oscars time: after the category was first introduced, in 1949, its first few decades were dominated by Edith Head, who received a record eight awards and 35 nominations throughout her career for the breathtaking gowns she crafted for the likes of Grace Kelly in Rear Window and Audrey Hepburn in Funny Face. There’s no doubt that Head deserves her place in the pantheon of costume history. But in 2024, do those parameters—which celebrate beauty above all else—still constitute what makes costuming great?
Of course, this isn’t meant to denigrate the immense undertaking that is bringing a period piece to life through costume. Using this year’s nominees as an example, there’s little you could say against the seriously impressive work by Janty Yates and Dave Crossman for Napoleon, which counterbalanced Ridley Scott’s deliberately woolly interpretation of the French emperor’s life story with meticulous historical accuracy in the clothing. The pair have spoken about the intensive research that informed the many thousands of uniforms they crafted for the film’s epic battle scenes, and there are few costuming moments this year as dazzling as the recreation of the imperial robes and gilded olive wreath crown in Jacques-Louis David’s iconic painting of Napoleon’s coronation. (The monumental canvas, which hangs in the Louvre, was described by the artist himself as “not a painting: one walks into this picture”—and Yates and Crossman’s efforts in the film have a similar effect.)
Jacqueline West’s work on Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon deserves special mention, too. Again, the emphasis was on historical accuracy, but the efforts to reconstruct a sartorial tradition that has been woefully underrepresented and overlooked were fascinating. One of West’s first moves as costume designer was to bring on board Julie O’Keefe, an Osage art consultant, with whom she pored over family portraits and heirlooms from Osage families of that period, and then built an authentic wardrobe of looks for the film’s Indigenous characters—balancing a thoughtful use of archival pieces with jewelry crafted by contemporary Osage artisans.
And while Oppenheimer’s period costuming may be a little more subtle than the others, first-time Oscar nominee Ellen Mirojnick showcased a striking ability to marry clothing to narrative, as the louche jackets and pleated pants of Cillian Murphy’s wardrobe in earlier scenes give way to sharper, more austere silhouettes over the film’s three-hour runtime. And that’s without mentioning that fedora, which begins as a sign of Oppenheimer’s formality and pride, and then—post Trinity test—comes to represent the distance he feels from those who surround him; those who are unable to understand the weight of the world that sits on his shoulders. (He’s pretty much the only character in the film that wears one, excepting Albert Einstein—a man with his own, separate understanding of the pressures that come with being a totemic figure in history, for better or worse.)
My only question is: Can’t we also reward those bringing the same spirit of inventiveness to film in a contemporary setting, or at least those in the more recent past? Can’t we think about costumes not merely as tools to situate us in a time and place, but equally as something that provides deeper insight into character? Or even just take into consideration those films that have impacted the way people in the here and now get dressed in the mornings?
Take, for example, Saltburn, which—to this writer, anyway—was one of the year’s great costuming achievements. Overseen by Sophie Canale, the outfits managed to capture each archetype its glittering cast represented with aplomb: the Valentino and Jenny Packham gowns beloved by Rosamund Pike’s snooty matriarch; the Effy from Skins-meets-Sienna Miller sleazy boho looks preferred by Alison Oliver’s wayward Venetia; the Bode-before-Bode-was-Bode embroidered shirts and sweater vests worn by Archie Madekwe’s arriviste cousin Archie. Bonus points, too, for the fact it’s actually prompted a handful of real-life trends: the Y2K-era revival may have been underway well before Saltburn hit screens, but the undone preppiness of Jacob Elordi’s wardrobe as Felix Catton—the “neo-posh boy aesthetic” of his boarding school rugby shirts and wing-tip collars, as The Telegraph described it—visibly trickled its way down through the fall 2024 menswear shows. Yet Canale’s only nomination this awards season was for excellence in contemporary film at the Costume Designers Guild Awards: an award she rightfully won.
And that’s without mentioning some of the more egregious oversights from previous years. The ingenious Y2K-era stripper fashions of Hustlers by Mitchell Travers spring to mind, and I’m still salty about Tár getting overlooked last year: Bina Daigeler’s pitch-perfect outfitting of Cate Blanchett in The Row, Lemaire, and Jil Sander was a fashion chef’s kiss. (We’re still seeing the ripple effects of Lydia Tár’s wardrobe on the runways to this day.)
Which brings me to the film I’d most like to see earn the gong this year: Poor Things. Sure, it’s set primarily in Victorian England, but Emma Stone’s wardrobe as the woman-child Bella Baxter is also expressive in a way that most period costuming isn’t. That’s (almost) entirely down to Holly Waddington, the brilliant British costume designer for whom the film serves as something of a breakout moment—but according to an interview she gave to the New York Times, it also has a little to do with director Yorgos Lanthimos’s approach to making the film. While recognizing its historical setting, he was keen for the costumes not to feel like they were from a period drama or a science-fiction film.
The results are wondrous: a delightfully discordant fever dream that covers high fashion nappies, boots inspired by André Courrèges, and a puff-sleeve wedding dress suggesting both restriction and a strange kind of freedom. It’s wonderful, and wonderfully wacky—and in a touch of kismet, feels perfectly aligned with the instincts of Nicolas Ghesquière, the Louis Vuitton designer whom Stone counts as a friend and who has outfitted her for most of the red carpets she’s stepped out on this awards season. (Just take the peachy, puff-sleeve Vuitton gown she wore to the BAFTAs.)
It’s informed by history, sure, but it also rebels against it. It’s attuned to the shifting sands of contemporary fashion, while not beholden to it. And it represents the kind of eye for period costuming the Academy should be rewarding: the kind that’s unafraid to be iconoclastic. The tremendous skills and logistics involved in outfitting a historical film should never be overlooked, but neither should the costume designers working to give those traditions a radical spin—nor those creating thoughtful costumes for contemporary stories. Maybe—just maybe—in future years, they can all be given their due?
