Oscars Best Costume Design breakdown: ‘Wicked’ leads with its undeniably gorgeous costumes
When it comes to the craft categories at the Oscars, Costume Design is fairly self-explanatory.
As with the Art Directors Guild, the Costume Designers Guild (CDG) nominates films in three distinct categories for a total of 15 nominations. Thus, all but one of this year’s Oscar nominees for costume design have already been nominated by their guild peers. The Critics Choice Association (CCA) and BAFTA have four nominees in common with the Oscars, although they are not the same four.
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The Costume Design category often has many familiar names since it’s a smaller group within the Academy with frequent and repeat nominees. Period pieces and fantasy films often do pretty well in this category, which may be why last year’s winner, Poor Things, combined those two genres to win the category with relative ease.
Frontrunner: Wicked
It’s been only three years since Paul Tazewell received his first Oscar nomination for designing the costumes for Steven Spielberg‘s West Side Story, another musical. While that was about creating realistic ‘50s New York costumes, Jon M. Chu‘s musical is about making bold and colorful costumes for the main characters and all the background actors. Costume design is on a similar plane as production design, dealing with the film’s overall look, and more than a few times over the years, a movie might win both. That was the case last year with Poor Things, and before that, in 2018 with Black Panther, and then George Miller‘s Mad Max: Fury Road a few years before that. Wicked is likely to win the CDG Award in the “Sci-Fi/Fantasy” category, with its main competition being Dune: Part II, which the Academy didn’t nominate.
When it comes to the Gold Derby experts and editors, it’s not even close, as every single one of them has predicted Paul Tazewell to win his first Oscar for Wicked.
Potential spoiler: Nosferatu
Linda Muir has been designing the costumes for Robert Eggers‘ movies since The Witch in 2015. Still, her period costumes for Eggers’ take on the vampire story also fit into the fantasy category, giving it a slight edge over all three other contenders. The gothic costumes, combined with the production design and cinematography, give Eggers such a stark and distinct look that has helped it receive many crafts nominations. However, it didn’t get much love for anything above the line.
Underdog: Conclave
Some have wondered why a movie mainly consisting of similar costumes for various cardinals and a few nuns was nominated this year. Again, it goes back to what German costume designer Lisy Christl‘s work brings to the overall visuals of Edward Berger‘s Vatican-set thriller. Christl was first nominated for her costumes for Roland Emmerich‘s Anonymous, though she might be somewhat of an outlier in Hollywood and not as known as some of the other nominees. This is also one of the three nominees with a connected production design nomination and has received nominations for its costumes from CCA and BAFTA to help it along. It might even win the CDG Award for contemporary film, but that has to contend with another musical, Emilia Pérez, which also missed an Oscar nomination.
It will be nigh impossible for any of the other four movies to beat the costumes from Wicked this year, and this will likely be one of two main categories won by the musical.
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