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It's time to say goodbye to 1998 and move on to the next Supporting Actress Smackdown year, 1986. However, before that, let's take a look at the Best Costume Design race that saw Sandy Powell receive her first double nomination, a face-off of Elizabethan fashions, two movies whose only nod was in this category, and a riff on midcentury sitcoms. The ceremony's host, Whoopi Goldberg, even modeled pieces from each nominee, opening the show in Queen Elizabeth I drag.
All in all, it's a rather conventional costume design lineup seeing as it's entirely composed of period work. However, some of these individual achievements deserve special attention for their playful glamour, radical visions of marginalized histories, and parodical referentiality. The nominees were:
- Colleen Atwood, Beloved
- Alexandra Byrne, Elizabeth
- Judianna Makovsky, Pleasantville
- Sandy Powell, Shakespeare in Love★
- Sandy Powell, Velvet Goldmine
Starting with the winner, Shakespeare in Love was Powell's first victory after two previous nominations for Sally Potter's Orlando and Anna Worley's The Wings of the Dove. Considering the overall success of John Madden's Best Picture champion, this result may feel a bit perfunctory, but that's no reason to disregard the designer's achievement. Indeed, this is one of the best Elizabethan wardrobes ever captured on film, a delicious mix of fact and silliness, theatrical fantasy, and a good dose of absurdity. Unlike some of the designers she was competing against, Sandy Powell has always shown a brilliant understanding of fashion history. As a result, her stylizations, no matter how wild they may be, always have a solid foundation.
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The designs are goofy and often gorgeous, but they feel real. They're a lie that tells the truth. Furthermore, there's an internal logic to the spectacle in which the eccentricity of an artist's imagination explodes outwards into the world. The colors are bright, but their saturation is both a feast for the eyes and a delineator of class. Within a narrative where social barriers are so significant, Powell makes textile choices into a visual element that separates the rabble from the nobility. For instance, blue was for the lower classes, and it's noticeable how, in an early scene, Gwyneth Paltrow's Viola is a shot of azure in a sea of crimson and gold. Later, her boyish disguise is blue - a further signifier of class transfiguration.
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These dynamics help make the stage into a land of endless possibility, where transgressions are allowed under the veil of dramatic fakery. Besides the actors, only the Queen can wear whatever she wants. Taking this idea to the extreme, Powell dressed Judi Dench in peacock feathers for a crucial scene. Still, my favorite costuming choice is how, when pressured by the script, the designer decided to forego any sense of strict historical recreation. For the debut performance of Romeo and Juliet, Powell didn't dress the cast in Elizabethan lines. Instead, she paid homage to Zeffirelli by having the actors model a bright rainbow collection of Italian Renaissance costumes. It's an excellent detail for people with an eye for historical fashion and Shakespearean cinema. Plus, it's stunning.
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In contrast with Powell's whimsical but disciplined take on Elizabethan wear, Alexandra Byrne's work in Elizabeth suffers from a lack of internal logic. Her most extensive flights of fancy represent a valuable interpretation of 16th-century English fashion as seen through a prism of Bollywood-adjacent aesthetics. This clash of cultures was something director Shekhar Kapur was looking for, preferring to see Western history as myth rather than gritty reality. Notice how he shot inside cathedrals rather than palaces, turning the world of Queen Elizabeth I into a grandiose spectacle of titanic proportions. Everything is bigger than life. Fittingly, Byrne plays with Sari fabrics and anachronistic jewelry, impossible colors, and fantastical stylization.
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However, this approach can become distracting when it's not done with consistency. Sometimes, the costumes copy portraits, while, in the following scene, they're more akin to a fairytale vision. The chronology of the main character's evolution is further twisted out of shape by the costuming decisions. The only tangible follow-through is the drainage of color until Cate Blanchett only wears pale shades and black. By far, the sartorial highlight of Elizabeth is the last stage of that transformation. Referencing the famous Armada portrait, Byrne recreates the actual garments but renders them white, making her star look like a ghost of herself, a marmoreal symbol rather than a person.
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After this detour into Byrne-land, we return to the kingdom of Sandy Powell and one of the best costume design achievements of all time. Truth be told, a dream of mine is to write a book on the costumes of Todd Haynes's Velvet Goldmine. I love them so much! They're a kaleidoscope of references, dandyism, glam, and social commentary that hits like the most potent drugs. To lose oneself in the beauty is easy, but Powell's genius can be found in the repetitions, the echoes, the way she gilds glitter rock with signs of decay. Notice Jack Fairy's oxidized costume jewelry, how characters trade clothes, everyone in search of an identity they can put on like a discarded costume.
For Jonathan Rhys Meyers's Maxwell Demon, that can go as far as re-wearing the same jacket he had on when meeting a lover for the moment they say their last goodbyes. Costumes are how aliens pretend to be people. For Ewan McGregor's Curt Wild, clothes are a way to shapeshifting through icons, going from a prismatic reflection of Iggy Pop to Lou Reed to a tragic facsimile of Kurt Cobain. Costume is the defining agent of one's mercurial personality. For Christian Bale's Arthur, changing one's duds is how he finds himself, transforming into different versions to adapt and survive. Costume as self-actualization and defense mechanism.
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Back in college, I spent many a free period chatting with a professor about the costumes in Velvet Goldmine. We both concluded that the most exciting and challenging costumes weren't necessarily the extravagant explosions of glam, but what the characters wear in the depressing 80s passages. Toni Collette's chameleonic Mandie has entranced me for years, especially her modest garb in the more recent scenes. The outfit is black, simple to a fault, but her wrist twinkle with old bracelets. Those pieces of cheap ornament are an umbilical cord connecting this version of the character to who she was once upon a time. Have any other bracelets ever shone with such a sense of loss?
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The ache of loss, past sufferings, and present ghosts are central themes in Beloved, Jonathan Demme's adaptation of Toni Morrison's homonymous novel. Set during the Reconstruction Era and focused on the fractured family of a former enslaved person, the film's costumes must set the specificities of the milieu while illustrating both the characters' individuality and the porous membrane that separates the world of the living and the dead. Without her usual assortment of bells and whistles, Goth mannerisms, and theatrical flourishes, designer Colleen Atwood had one hell of a challenge when tackling the material. However, it's a testament to her talent that this film's wardrobe represents one of the high points of an illustrious career.
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Two aspects of Atwood's work deserve special admiration. First, there are the sagacious ways in which the designer evades clichés of period costumes. There's a sad tendency to portray the disenfranchised, the poor, and those on the margins of society as figures wearing rags and little in the way of beautiful clothes. Respecting her characters more than many other costumers, Atwood goes against such ideas and shows how people with nonexistent wealth can appreciate and cultivate beauty nevertheless. Even the poorest garments in Beloved are full of personalized details, be it a homemade appliqué, some creative seaming, or the visual richness of printed cottons. Then there's the titular ghoul's introductory costume, an unforgettable sight of mourning wear made otherworldly by odd pops of color, tiered skirtings, and the whisper of a net veil that seems to attract more insects than it repels.
Finally, we have Judianna Makovsky's designs for Pleasantville. Gary Ross' fantasy movie unravels inside the magic world of a 1950s sitcom in which two contemporary teenagers find themselves trapped. From rigid monochrome to blossoming color, the costumes evoke a very traditional idea of Eisenhower America, complete with all the typical iconography. One must commend Makovsky's use of pattern and texture to give vibrancy to the early black-and-white scenes. Her handling of character development is also admirable. Joan Allen's discontent housewife goes from cupcake silhouettes to more tailored versions of suburban lady-like elegance. Without overstating it, the costume designer helps the actress convey how this woman changes, a televisual archetype melting into a natural person.
While Velvet Goldmine would be my winner, AMPAS awarded Shakespeare in Love, which would be my runner-up. 1998 was the year of Sandy Powell. She also costumed Hilary and Jackie and The Butcher Boy. As for my dream ballot, it would be a bit different from the Academy's. While both of Powell's pictures would stay along with Beloved, I'd add Cousin Bette and 54 to the roster. There's much to love about Gabriella Pescucci's perfect recreation of 1840s French fashions in the Balzac adaptation, and the movie's changes to the source opened up chances for some Burlesque fun. As for 54, Ellen Lutter's costumes are sex crystalized in club attire. If not an Oscar, the designer deserves some Humanitarian award for bedecking Ryan Phillippe in an endless array of tight jeans and shiny short shorts.
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Honorable mentions go to Mary Zophres's comedic stylings in The Big Lebowski, including a Busby Berkely-inspired number and the perfect slacker cardigan. Kirsten Everneg's costumes for Slums of Beverly Hills are another highlight of comedy through clothing. At the same time, the duo of Blade and Dark City feel like black-clad preludes to The Matrix's era-defining coolness. On the opposite end of the sartorial spectrum, Jenny Beavan mixes fairytale romanticism and the Renaissance with aplomb in Ever After. The last film to highlight is The Last Days of Disco, Whit Stillman's arch paen to disco's death rattle at the start of the 80s. Sarah Edwards's costumes surprise for how austere and sleek they are, feeling like a yuppie variation of dance-floor euphoria. However, her creations are more valuable for how little they differentiate the characters. They all may see themselves as distinct individuals, but the camera purveys a tragic sameness. It's a critical quirk that makes all the difference.
What films would make your personal Best Costume Design ballot?