Oscars 2025: Best Costume Design

The way we dress reflects our personality and mood; it’s one of the first things other people notice about us, so it plays a crucial role in shaping our identity. For actors and actresses, getting into the right costume helps them get into character — many have revealed in countless interviews how they learned to move, perform, and embody their characters thanks to what they were wearing, whether it was regal capes and gowns, some kind of uniform, or an everyday outfit far removed from their personal style. And despite its pivotal role, the Academy didn’t introduce an Oscar for Best Costume Design until the 21st Academy Awards in 1949. Shocking, isn’t it?

But we live in a time where this award exists, thankfully! This year, the nominees are wonderfully varied: from the rich, ecclesiastical attire in Conclave, to the heavy armour in Gladiator II, to the fabulous gowns in Wicked or the 1960s counterculture style of Bob Dylan and Joan Baez in A Complete Unknown, we analyse the hottest costumes.

Listen, if anyone knows about costume design, it’s Arianne Phillips. She’s worked across film, music, fashion, and advertising — she’s done it all. She designed tour costumes for Madonna for six of her world tours and has been nominated by the Academy three times before (James Mangold’s Walk the Line in 2005; Madonna’s directorial debut, W.E. in 2011; and Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood in 2019). Oh, and this is the sixth time she’s worked with director James Mangold, so it’s easy to see that creativity is through the roof when they collaborate.

To bring Bob Dylan’s style to life, as well as that of Joan Baez and Sylvie, Phillips has worked closely with Levi’s to recreate the Nobel Prize-winner’s signature 501 jeans from the cover of his album The Freewheelin’ — and good news for those living today: Levi’s will be releasing them as a capsule collection! From being an unknown, bohemian artist to becoming a global sensation, Bob’s style also adjusted to his new status. At first, we see him wearing worn-out shoes, boxy jackets, and graphic shirts, but by the end, he’s suited up in slim-fit two-pieces, dark shades, and a more polished look overall.

With ten nominations, Jon M. Chu’s Wicked is in the top three of this year’s Oscars. With an outstanding cast, production design, and music, the costumes also needed to be up to par. And Paul Tazewell didn’t disappoint. Even though he started in theatrical productions (including The Wiz, related to Wicked), he moved to cinema with pretty big assignments like Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story (2021) — for which he received his first Academy Award nomination. Now, he’s taken on this new challenge like a champ, earning a second nomination.

Speaking to InStyle, Tazewell reveals the intricate, labour-intensive work that went into crafting so many costumes, but especially for the two witches of Oz: Glinda and Elphaba. From using the Fibonacci sequence to create Ariana Grande’s bubble gown to finding the right textile to make Cynthia’s college uniform (a bit darker, which set her apart from the rest), Tazewell proves why he deserves so much praise.

The Canadian costume designer and director Robert Eggers have known each other for a long time; she’s worked with him on almost all his films — The Witch (2015), The Lighthouse (2019), The Northman (2022), and now Nosferatu. It’s for the latter that she’s received her well-deserved first Academy Award nomination.

Her approach was heavily based on research; she delved deep into the fashion history of Germany in the 1830s, where the story takes place, to make accurate designs. However, she also wanted to dress the characters based on their personalities, stories, and identities. Speaking of Ellen Hutter’s (Lily-Rose Depp) costumes, she says: “There was always the idea of her wardrobe being ethereal.” Other factors, like economic wealth, are also important: for example, Ellen comes from a rich family but willingly agrees to ‘downgrade’ to a lower class to marry her husband, and the dresses reflect that. On the other hand, her friend Anna (Emma Corrin) and her husband, Friedrich (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), are wealthy, hence their looks are made from more expensive materials.

Another long-standing collaboration is that of Janty Yates and director Ridley Scott — they’ve worked on fifteen films together, including 2000’s Gladiator (for which Janty won her first Academy Award), American Gangster, The Martian, House of Gucci, Napoleon (for which she received her second Academy Award nomination, though she didn’t win), and now Gladiator II. But there’s a new collaborator too: Dave Crossman, who also worked on Napoleon — so clearly, a match made in heaven.

Even if the movie was a bit of a letdown, the attention to detail in the costumes was unmatched: the reliefs on the armours, the embroidered tunics of the emperors and Roman bourgeoisie, or the wardrobe of the people living in the desert were a feast for the eyes. In a behind-the-scenes video, Yates affirms: “I had the most wonderful crew: cutters, leather workers, metal workers, jewellers, embroiderers — everything was made from scratch.” And it shows.

The German costume designer has worked with acclaimed directors like Michael Haneke, Terrence Malick, and now Edward Berger (this is their second collaboration, having previously worked together in 2022 for All Quiet on the Western Front). She was also nominated by the Academy in 2012 for Roland Emmerich’s Anonymous. And seeing her beautiful recreation of ecclesiastical attire for Conclave, it comes as no surprise that she has been nominated again.

It’s challenging to remake costumes that are already precious and have stood the test of time over centuries, especially in a rich setting like the Vatican. But Christl’s expertise stands out when watching the film: the way the cassocks move (they’re redesigned using heavier wool), the perfectly balanced and deep colour coordination (the orange-reds, the purples, the whites, the blacks), and the regality of it all. Her costumes speak of power, wealth, and faith — and they do so outstandingly.