Oscar Makes Vintage Picks

For the last 40 years, modern-day clothes just haven’t wowed academy voters when it has come to costume design, no matter how cleverly they were used. But the particularly diverse field of movies last year raised the prospect that Oscar nominations would go beyond the usual period and fantasy films.

Academy members, however, held true to their voting record. All of Tuesday’s nominees designed historic or fantasy clothes. Nominee Judianna Makovsky assumed she might not be a contender for “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” because the movie featured many modern costumes. “I was a little in shock this morning,” she said when reached at her Los Angeles home. Makovsky, whose first nomination was for 1998’s “Pleasantville,” said contemporary clothes typically don’t impress academy voters. She was thrilled to break the nomination news to her mentor in Italy, Milena Canonero, who also was picked for “The Affair of the Necklace.” Other nominees include Catherine Martin and Angus Strathie for “Moulin Rouge,” Ngila Dickson and Richard Taylor for “The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Rings,” and Jenny Beavan for “Gosford Park.”

Beavan, who earned her eighth nomination in 18 years and won her sole Oscar in 1986 for “A Room With a View,” created 1930s-era, upper- and servant-class clothing for a large and discerning cast of actors. “The great thing about the nomination is that it is voted on by other costume designers,” Beavan said from London. She was planning to celebrate Tuesday night with her 16-year-old daughter, Caitlin, “in quite a gentle way,” she said. “I’ve got to work tomorrow.”

The preference for period costume has been something of a sore spot among designers, though they know they’re not alone. “Great work in all fields can be neglected at award time,” said Hope Hanafin, a Los Angeles costume designer who is co-chairing the upcoming Costume Designers Guild awards. The guild awards were created four years ago in part to help spread recognition to a broader range of costume design work. Unlike the Oscars, the guild award categories distinguish between contemporary and period or fantasy work, in film and in television.

Oddly, winning an Academy Award doesn’t always hugely boost a costume designer’s career. Albert Wolsky, who won Oscars for “Bugsy” and “All That Jazz” and snagged five nominations, notes that Oscar didn’t make him an overnight celebrity.

“I never felt that all of a sudden, it changed things for me,” said Wolsky, an L.A. resident and co-chair of the guild awards.

The same is true for Beavan, who said that winning the Oscar “helps you in slightly curious ways,” such as helping her obtain work permits outside of her native England.

Directors of lavish costume movies appreciate Oscars, but bank on experience in the wardrobe department, Hanafin observed.

“The people who are nominated most often and receive the awards already have substantial careers,” she said, “so they would be getting the work anyway. That’s different from a breakout performance by a director or an actor. It is rare that those breakout films have the opportunity for breakout costumes, because of the [limited] scope of them.”

The detail in the big-budget costume epics comes through in a sample of last year’s movie costume designs that are being readied for public display at the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising in downtown L.A. starting Monday.

“In a movie, you just don’t see some of the intricacy of these costumes,” said Robert Nelson, FIDM museum director. Visitors can see the star-shaped rhinestones that adorn Nicole Kidman’s corset and shoes in “Moulin Rouge.” They can appreciate the subtle blend of textures and colors in the tweeds for Beavan’s “Gosford Park,” or marvel at the intricacy of the armor in “Lord of the Rings.”

And they can, as always, believe a little more in the characters and the fantasy that these clothes help create.

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