Watch 4 exclusive interviews with Best Costume Design Oscar nominees: ‘Babylon,’ ‘Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,’ ‘Elvis,’ ‘Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris’
The final stretch of the 2023 Oscar season has started with voters casting their ballots for the winners of the 95th annual Academy Awards. All season long, Gold Derby has been interviewing dozens of the nominees, including four contenders for Best Costume Design. Click on each designer’s name below to watch each of these 20-minute interviews.
Damien Chazelle’s “Babylon” is an epic film about Hollywood’s transition from the silent film era to talkies that required more than 7,000 costumes, featured 200 speaking parts, and necessitated months of research and design work. Zophres shares, “I’ve never really been given that opportunity and I can think of only a handful of movies that have been made in the last 10 years that were this way in scope.” For the lavish and outrageous party scene that opens the film, the costume designer had to balance “bold” color and functionality for main character Nellie LaRoy (Margo Robbie).
Ruth E. Carter, “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever”
Set in the aftermath of “Black Panther” as well as the events of “Avengers: Endgame,” “Wakanda Forever” finds the title nation reeling after the offscreen death of T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman) and grappling with a new threat from the undersea world of Talokan. The film marks another collaboration between Carter and the film’s star Angela Bassett. She comments on their relationship, “We are just very comfortable with each other… She looks in the mirror, she gives herself the once over, she’s trying to actually think about how she’s going to play the role as she’s adorned in the costumes and that really does help me to understand how she’s going to stand or how she’s going to move or walk.”
Baz Luhrmann’s “Elvis” stars Austin Butler as the titular music icon and follows his life trajectory from childhood to becoming a rock and movie star in the 1950s to his death in 1977. For her costumes, Martin had to balance the recreation of iconic looks for Presley with developing various designs for the different decades the film chronicles. She explains, “Baz was really clear that he wanted each of the decades we described to be distinct and to support each of the eras… With the 50s, because Elvis’ style, what was deemed rebellious, or punk, or sexually confronting in 1950, has now been absorbed into the lexicon of classic men’s dressing.”
Jenny Beavan, “Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris”
“Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris” follows a working-class London widow (Leslie Manville) who pursues her dream of owning a House of Dior haute couture dress by saving enough money to travel to Paris. While Dior lent the film a number of pieces from their heritage collection, Beavan had to create about a dozen herself, emulating 1950s Dior. She did take liberties with the two dresses that catch the character’s eye the most: the first, called “Temptation,” which was “based on an actual, real Dior dress” that featured “a soft tulle” deep red fabric, and the second, called “Vénus,” a green “slightly old fashioned” dress “with the silvery appliqué, embroidery, on it.”
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