Best Costume Design: Ranking Every Oscar Nominee
We’ve reached another difficult category, folks. Aside from one or two missing nominations, the Best Costume Design category this year is stacked to the brim with talent. We’d argue the costume nods are usually well picked, and rarely will you find a terrible nominee. Either way, this ranking felt highly difficult. Our top two felt just right, but the remaining three battling for third were challenging to split apart. We did our best. What we looked for was which costumes are, first off, well made, which garments tell a visual story (this is film after all), and the difficulty of these outfits (variety included).
Here are your nominees for Best Costume Design, ranked from worst to best.
Biggest snub: 1917
Out of all of the nominations 1917 got, we are absolutely stunned that this isn’t one of them. It ticks off all of the Academy’s soft spots (period piece, war film, attention-to-detail). Then, you can take into account how many outfits were made, and how singular each and every get up is (to match the soldier wearing these uniforms). Appropriate aging was applied, plus the dirt and debris that stain these clothes. Yeah. We’re baffled. If 1917 was being granted so many nominations, it makes zero sense that this isn’t a category it was considered for. It could have even won.
5. The Irishman: Sandy Powell, Christopher Peterson
The sharpness of these suits that the elite mobsters wear are snazzy. There’s the odd curve ball (Tony Pro’s underdressed summer gear), but otherwise The Irishman is great at being fancy. That’s kind of the gist of it. It excels in its mission, but it is a fairly specific mission. Okay, so we get some casual wear for the boys when they get older, and the loved ones get dressed up for specific occasions. Everything does look nice. We just had to place a film last, and The Irishman isn’t versatile enough (compared to the other nominees) to rank higher.
Our review of The Irishman
4. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood: Arianne Phillips
What The Irishman does with prestige, Hollywood achieves with cool. The Hollywood attire here is all awesome, and each outfit tells a story (Rick Dalton being hip but professional, Cliff Booth giving zero cares about his appearance, and etc.). Hollywood gains some points in two areas: accuracy (for instance, all of the Sharon Tate outfits that are nearly identical to the real thing), and variety (all of the different circles seen, and even the on-set costumes). Hollywood is fourth, because the other three films managed to push their costumes further, but Hollywood still slays.
Our review of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood
3. Joker: Mark Bridges
Joker won the three-way-tie because of its ability to go the extra mile. It’s got variety (the different classes of Gotham, the varying clowns, the Murray Franklin set’s costumes, etc.). It’s got style (the cleanliness of the elite’s suits and gowns, versus the torn-apart, tattered clothing of the poor). Then, you have Arthur Fleck himself. You have his everyday attire, which tell a major story (his go-to clothes that he always wears, how worn out some of his garments are). The kicker is when Fleck reinvents himself with his mismatched, striking red suit, clearly put together by separate pieces found (or donated). There are a lot of interesting tidbits you can spot by looking at the clothes in Todd Phillips’ Gotham City.
Our review of Joker
2. Jojo Rabbit: Mayes C. Rubeo
All of the uniforms look like they took ages to piece together. These alone are nomination worthy. However, it’s the other stuff that places Jojo Rabbit second here. The outfits of the German public are fascinating to take note of, especially mama Rosie’s unique combinations. There is precise care taken for some of the minor roles, including Elsa in hiding. As comedic and silly as Jojo Rabbit is, it’s still a period piece film, and all of the necessary precautions to create the time-travel illusion are needed. The costumes here succeed on this front, as they tell a deeper story underneath the film’s jokes on its surface.
Our review of Jojo Rabbit
1. Little Women: Jacqueline Durran
Where do we even start? The March girls’ everyday peculiar outfits when they are having fun? The costumes worn by the children as they act? The separation between the aristocratic wear and the looks of the lower classes? The brief-instances of wartime outfits? What about the formalwear? The amount of clothing going on in Little Women is impossible to summarize in one small paragraph, and every single instance owns the screen. There are many different types of outfits here, let alone the amount of actual outfits themselves. We can’t even imagine the preparation taken for this film when it comes to how each character was clothed. It seems lazy to award a period piece film of this nature the top prize, but, well, have you seen Little Women? This is a no brainer for us. Little Women wins Best Costume Design hands down.
Our review of Little Women
Who we want to win: We made our point very clear about Little Women, probably.
Who we think will win: This may be tight. Depending on how the Academy wants to spread out its awards for Best Picture nominees that won’t win many awards, this could either go to Little Women or Jojo Rabbit. Unless the Academy wants to use this as fuel for Once Upon a Time in Hollywood to win Best Picture. Your safest bet is Little Women, though. It’s not just the kind of film the Academy usually awards: it’s one of the better recent examples of this kind of costume design.
Tune in tomorrow for our next Academy Award category! We’re reviewing every single nominee.
Andreas Babiolakis has a Masters degree in Film and Photography Preservation and Collections Management from Ryerson University, as well as a Bachelors degree in Cinema Studies from York University. His favourite times of year are the Criterion Collection flash sales and the annual Toronto International Film Festival.