Oscars 2019 Category Breakdown: Best Costume Design

Here’s how this works: every day leading up to the Oscars, I break down each of the 24 categories. The goal is to both familiarize everyone with the category itself (how it works, what its history is and how you go about figuring out what’s gonna win) while also making it easier to reference when I write my giant article with picks and everything. A lot of the leg work is already here. But really, the goal is to see if there’s anything to look for leading into Oscar night that could be a shortcut to me picking the category.

What we do is — I give you all the winners of the category throughout history, go over all the recent trends if there are any, discuss the precursors and whether or not they matter, and then we talk about this year’s category and how we got to it, and then just look at where we are and rank the nominees in terms of their likelihood of winning (at the current moment in time. Of course, things can and will change going into the ceremony). It’s all pretty simple. I’ve done this every year. Everyone should know the drill.

Today is Best Costume Design. AKA This Is Not a Frill.

It’s a tech guild, so we’ve got the guild, BAFTA and BFCA to look at The guild is CDG, and here’s them historically vs. the Oscars:

• 2018: Black Panther won Fantasy and won the Oscar.
• 2017, The Shape of Water won Period and lost the Oscar to Phantom Thread.
• 2016… this was one of the few times CDG was way off. Hidden Figures won Period and wasn’t nominated for the Oscar. Doctor Strange won Fantasy and also wasn’t nominated. La La Land won Contemporary and lost the Oscar. (Fantastic Beasts won.)
• 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 to Great Gatsby.
• 2012, Anna Karenina won Period and won the Oscar.
• 2011, W.E. won Period and lost the Oscar to The Artist.
• 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 to Elizabeth: The Golden Age.
• 2006, Curse of the Golden Flower won Period and lost the Oscar to Marie Antoinette.
• 2005, Memoirs of a Geisha won Period and won the Oscar.

We can’t go earlier than 2005 for any reliable information. But, from what we have here, they’re 8/14, which is solid enough.

Here are BAFTA’s winners in those years:

• 2018, The Favourite
• 2017, Phantom Thread
• 2016, Jackie
• 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 10/14.

BFCA:

• 2018, Black Panther
• 2017, Phantom Thread
• 2016, Jackie
• 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 only missed once, in 2016. So I think we’re set.

Best Costume Design

The Irishman

Jojo Rabbit

Joker

Little Women

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

I think I mentioned this when nominations were announced, but this is the first time EVER that the Costumes category is entirely comprised of Best Picture nominees. It’s never happened. And even when there were two Costumes categories for black-and-white and color, there were never five Best Picture nominees between either of them. That’s crazy.

Otherwise, most of this category is as expected. Joker got on without any precursor anywhere, which is extremely rare. Though given the overall support for the film, not that surprising. (Also, it’s Mark Bridges, who won for The Artist and Phantom Thread, so that’s also probably part of it.) Mostly I’m curious as to why the guild didn’t nominate it. I’m guessing that’s a situation where it had to go on Period and not elsewhere and it couldn’t get the votes over other things. Still, no BAFTA, no BFCA either. Weird. But whatever, here we are and really the big talking point for me is 5/5 Best Picture nominees for the first time ever.

Precursors are limited for us. BFCA went off the board and gave their Costume award to Dolemite Is My name, which didn’t get nominated. And at CDG, only two of the Oscar nominees (Jojo and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood) were nominated there. And Jojo won, so at least there’s that. But really, we’ve got like, no help going into BAFTA, and so I’m just gonna guess my way through this and see what BAFTA ends up doing in the end to change our plans. In the end, I don’t suspect my final rankings to be wildly different from this. But hey, one never knows.

Rankings:

5. The Irishman — Saving a BAFTA win, I can’t see how anyone can consider this a major contender for this. You’d think Sandy Powell having done the costumes would be a factor, but she’s been nominated 15 times now and only has three wins to show for it. Granted, one was for The Aviator, but still. These costumes weren’t exactly ‘showy’, and there really hasn’t been a winner where the costumes look as plain as these ones do. I can’t see it happening.

4. Joker — This becomes fourth by default. The big Joker suit is showy enough that it might get some consideration, but the period is the 80s. On that alone, it should probably be considered fifth choice, since outside of fantasy movies (like Black Panther) or the one odd contemporary movie that won (Priscilla, Queen of the Desert), there’s never been anything more recent than the 60s in a long time. It’s hard for me to think they’re suddenly gonna go for something this recent. But hey, one never knows.

3. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood — It’s 1969 Hollywood. It has a chance. However, the costumes aren’t that showy, and while I can see it winning for Production Design, I’m not sure Costumes are also in the cards. It lost the guild, and I’m not expecting it to win BAFTA, but given how flimsy this category could be (unless the obvious winner wins), this feels like it has as good a chance as any at this moment in time.

2. Jojo Rabbit — It’s got the guild win, and since we’re only gonna get two precursors’ worth of help this year, that’s as good as anything. BAFTA will tell the tale, so if this wins, then it becomes top choice. If Once Upon a Time wins, this probably bumps down to #3. Otherwise, we’ll keep this at #2 and see what happens. You’ve got the Hitler costume, the paper suits, Sam Rockwell’s war outfit, everything Scarlett wears (including the shoes), technically those robot outfits… it makes sense as a potential choice. Will it happen? Not sure. Gonna stick with my gut for the moment, though, and say it’s no higher than second choice until it wins BAFTA (and even then, I have questions).

1. Little Women — It’s the most period of the nominees. It’s frills. It’s women in dresses in the 19th century. This is the choice if you’re going by the perceived/standard choice for the category in most years. I have to assume it’s gonna win BAFTA, and am gonna consider it the favorite until it loses there. Nothing particularly feels like the runaway winner at the moment, since I can easily see this getting ignored for votes, but if you’re thinking about how people just looking at this category on a ballot would vote, you have to think most people would say either this or Once Upon a Time. But we’ll see what BAFTA says on Sunday.

– – – – – – – – – –

http://bplusmovieblog.com