Oscar Volley: Costume Design Needs More Modernity

Team Experience is discussing each Oscar category as we head into the precursors. Here's Elisa and Cláudio to talk Costume Design...

Will MAESTRO bring Mark Bridges back into the Oscar fold?
CLÁUDIO: To borrow an idea from Nathaniel, let me introduce the conversation with an imaginary outfit. Please think of me in a Priscilla powder blue suit tailored to Ferrari Italian perfection. There's a Wonka scarf in there, too, and Tomas' bearish coat from Passages on top. On my wrist, Felicia's pearls from Maestro, on my feet pink rollerblades from Barbie. For other accessories, I shall pick a revolutionary rosette from Napoleon to pin to my lapel and a pair of Victorian sunglasses from Poor Things. To complete the ensemble, Oppenheimer's hat with a Killers of the Flower Moon beaded band, everything topped by some showgirl-ready plumes straight out of Shug Avery's wardrobe. Do I look even more clownish than Melissa McCarthy and Brian Tyree Henry at the 91st Academy Awards? But I also look fabulous...maybe…

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Contemporary Costume Watch: "Passages"

by Cláudio Alves

Like it happens every year, as the awards season dawns, I complain that voters should pay more attention to contemporary narratives when recognizing design achievements. In 2023, their reluctance will be especially aggravating since there's such a deep well of costuming excellence within modern contexts. Take Khadija Zeggaï in Passages, for example. 

Ira Sachs' latest feature finds Franz Rogowski playing a Paris-based German director entangled in a bisexual love triangle of his own making. As Tomas, the actor is a sartorial tease whether he's in mesh or ratty green knits, while Ben Whishaw is more modest as his artist husband, Martin. Finally, Adèle Exarchopoulos is Agathe, a teacher who dresses like a young Bardot at the height of the Nouvelle Vague - all tight fits, high hems, and lingerie as outerwear. Across the board, fashion defies heteronormative tenets, everything is unisex and sexy to the nth degree. Clothes articulate tricky character dynamics while offering editorial-worthy queer spectacle…

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Best Costume Design is all about Big Hats

by Cláudio Alves

It's always interesting to find links between otherwise disconnected pictures, whether in the context of a film festival or just the calendar year. Sometimes, the awards season can suggest interesting threads uniting films by virtue of competition-born comparison. Note that one need not be very intellectual about this, and it's always good to have some fun about the race. This year, for example, I couldn't help but notice how three of our likely nomination leaders are bedecked in exuberant millinery, with Killers of the Flower Moon taking the cake as 2023's best hat movie. Or, at the very least, 2023's most hats movie.

And, as we all know, when it comes to the Academy, "most" often trumps "best." Not that Jacqueline West is locked to win Best Costume Design for the Scorsese movie. After all, even in hat terms alone, there's stiff competition from Barbie and Oppenheimer…

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Jacqueline Durran: From Kubrick to Barbie

by Cláudio Alves

Two-time Academy Award winner Jacqueline Durran is undoubtedly on the path to another Oscar nomination, maybe even a third victory. The British costume designer brought the pink paradise of Barbie to life, delighting audiences with a mixture of archival recreations sized-up from doll scale and original creations in line with Greta Gerwig's reality-hopping narrative. The movie is a delight for costume lovers everywhere as soon as its first scene when it contrasts the graphic modernity of the 1959 swimsuit-clad Barbie with the attire of midcentury girlhood, their look defined - perchance shackled - by domestic aspiration. Then comes a series of classic Mattel outfits, a flurry of rosiness, and our welcome to BarbieLand. It's a colorful explosion of femininity as understood by kids' imaginations... 

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Queering the Oscars: The Delicious Costumes of "The Talented Mr. Ripley"

Team Experience has been looking at LGBTQ+ related Oscar nominations. Tonight we're serving lewks!

By Christopher James

For a movie with iconic nude scenes, the costumes of The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999) are just as memorable and titillating. It’s fitting that the Oscars honored the incredible work of costume designers Ann Roth and Gary Jones for the film, which should’ve shown up in more categories than the five it was nominated for. Though the actual Oscar went to Lindy Hemming’s period-specific and gloriously gaudy work in Topsy-Turvy, we’re still cheering on the sidelines for Ripley.

Let's count down the 10 queerest looks from the movie...

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