Oscars 2016 Category Breakdown: Best Costume Design

Every year before the Oscars I break down each of the 24 categories. I do this to familiarize everyone with the category, how it typically goes, voting-wise, historically and also as a precursor to my picks article, allowing me to get most of the heavy lifting out of the way beforehand.

What I do is go over each category’s history, give you all the previous winners and nominees, then list the current year’s nominees. And then I’ll go over how each of the guilds (if there is a corresponding guild) have voted, how that corresponds to the Oscars (some guilds mean a lot to how a category will play out. Others mean nothing). It’s basically everything you need to know in order to make an informed decision when you make your picks on Oscar night. And then I also rank the nominees at the end in terms of where I see them in terms of their likelihood to win. So you know what the general favorites are.

Today is Best Costume Design. An all-frills category.

If there’s one thing this tells us, from the past few years… if you haven’t heard of the movie, it ain’t winning. The Invisible Woman is nice and all, but no one knows what that is. So that’s an initial way to figure out the category.

And, to look quickly, since I don’t put too much stock into what CDG does:

• 2015, Mad Max: Fury Road won Fantasy and won the Oscar.
• 2014, The Grand Budapest Hotel won period and won the Oscar.
• 2013, 12 Years a Slave won Period and lost the Oscar.
• 2012, Anna Karenina won Period and won the Oscar.
• 2011, W.E. won Period and lost the Oscar.
• 2010, Alice in Wonderland won Fantasy and won the Oscar.
• 2009, The Young Victoria won Period and won the Oscar.
• 2008, The Duchess won Period and won the Oscar.
• 2007, Sweeney Todd won Period and lost the Oscar.
• 2006, Curse of the Golden Flower won Period and lost the Oscar.
• 2005, Memoirs of a Geisha won Period and won the Oscar.

Before that, the categories were all messed up.

They’re 7/11 in the years that matter. They’re good, but they’re not the automatic people to listen to. They also announce really late, so we won’t be using them for the purposes of this article. Mostly just using them to confirm or alter what we think going into Oscar night.

Oh, and BAFTA —

• 2015, Mad Max: Fury Road
• 2014, The Grand Budapest Hotel
• 2013, The Great Gatsby
• 2012, Anna Karenina
• 2011, The Artist
• 2010, Alice in Wonderland
• 2009, The Young Victoria
• 2008, The Duchess
• 2007, La Vie en Rose
• 2006, Pan’s Labyrinth
• 2005, Memoirs of a Geisha

They’re 9/11.

BFCA:

• 2015, Mad Max: Fury Road
• 2014, The Grand Budapest Hotel
• 2013, The Great Gatsby
• 2012, Anna Karenina
• 2011, The Artist
• 2010, Alice in Wonderland
• 2009, The Young Victoria

They’ve never missed.

BAFTA and BFCA both went to Jackie.

CDG this year was:

Period — Hidden Figures

Fantasy — Doctor Strange

Contemporary — La La Land

Best Costume Design

Allied

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

Florence Foster Jenkins

Jackie

La La Land

This was an interesting year because they didn’t go for the frilly period stuff at all. Not that anyone really saw Love & Friendship or whatever the other one was that had those costumes… The Dressmaker, I think was the other. But you figure the actual costume designers would go for that sort of stuff. But hey, the two to three nominees we all figured ended up on there, so it’s about where it usually is.

Rankings:

5. Allied — Normally I’d give this higher than fifth, but with one measly nomination, does this stand any chance at getting votes? This film was universally ignored. This and The Light Between Oceans are the two movies from 2016 whose receptions throw me for a loop. But whatever. I’m putting this below Fantastic Beasts because at least there they think “period, fantasy, costumes” and maybe throw it a vote. This — what do they have to remember from this movie? Let it win. Not worth your time thinking about. You know the last time a World War II movie won this category? That’s right, never. Not even right after World War II happened. So keep it fifth.

4. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them — It’s a fantasy film with big costumes. They’ll consider it, but it won’t win. A few votes will go its way, but not nearly enough to take it seriously in the category. Harry Potter has only been nominated in this category once, and this won’t be the one that wins it. Fourth choice, and it might have been fifth if not for that alarming statistic about World War II movies in this category. Though I’m also thinking this might squeeze up to third in the end. We’ll see.

3. Florence Foster Jenkins — Because the costumes are pretty garish. If there was anything this movie was guaranteed to be nominated for outside of Meryl, it was the costumes. Costumes second, makeup third and production design fourth. In that order. This needed some sort of precursor win to make a better showing. I don’t think people cared about this movie enough to throw it enough votes for it to win. Even though they think of this category as being about the showiest costumes, look at the previous winners. Mad Max — showy in a particular way. Grand Budapest. Gatsby. Anna Karenina. The Artist is actually an outlier as a winner. Alice in Wonderland. The Young Victoria. The Duchess. Very period, but in recent years they’ve been rewarding auteurs for bold work. Or standbys, when you think about it. Wes Anderson, Baz Luhrmann, Tim Burton. They tend to do well in these categories. My point is, this movie — what is there that’s memorable enough to where they’d want to vote for it? Not a whole lot. Third choice, only because the other two seem like instant no-gos. This is a two horse race with a clear favorite.

2. La La Land — The sweep vote is one thing. Plus you have the Artist situation where it wins costumes because, you know… musical. But honestly, this was one category I see it losing without much fanfare. Of the 14 awards its nominated for, it’s gonna lose at least one of them, since it’s nominated for Song twice. It should lose Sound Editing. It should lose Best Actor. It should probably lose Original Screenplay, though that’s up for discussion. At this point you need to both think logically about the categories — where does it make sense for it to win — and also think about how many awards it’s really going to win. This seems like one it could lose pretty easily. Picture, Director, Score, Sound Mixing and Editing seem pretty locked. Song seems almost assured, but not a given. Actress looks like a good bet at this point. Cinematography is open, but probable. That’s eight right there. The two left that are really up for discussion are Costumes and Production Design. I’m locking it into 8 awards with the possibility for 10. I’m thinking 8-9 is the final tally, and this is one that helps swing that vote. I don’t think it gets there, and I’m not making it the favorite, but you need to take the sweep vote seriously in a category like this while also recognizing that they do tend to vote elsewhere in fringe categories like this in order to spread the wealth where it makes sense.

1. Jackie — Speaking of making sense, what film makes the most sense in this category if not Jackie? It won two precursors (and CDG is irrelevant because their winner wasn’t even nominated), and features recreations of one of the mot famous outfits in history. It should win this category easily. It’s everything this category was made for. This is the favorite. Who are we kidding?

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Tomorrow, we go over Best Actress.

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