Outstanding Achievement in Relative Obscurity
They are key players in the filmmaking process, artisans with fabric and dyes who work side by side with directors to create the look and feel of Hollywood’s motion pictures.
They have evoked the genteel splendor of 18th century French nobility in “Dangerous Liaisons,” captured the glamour of the 1940s in “Bugsy” and re-created the rags-to-riches social ladder that existed among the doomed passengers in “Titanic.”
Yet today Hollywood costume designers think of themselves as a forgotten and misunderstood segment of the Academy Awards, their work overshadowed by upscale fashion designers whose gowns for Oscar contenders and presenters become the talk of the town.
There was a time when Edith Head, who won eight Academy Awards in her life, was arguably the most famous designer at Oscar time, but the media’s attention today is focused almost entirely on the gowns created by Valentino, Armani, Versace and other top fashion designers who dress the Oscar-nominated actresses for their red-carpeted arrivals past the line of paparazzi.
“The Oscars are the biggest deal in the fashion business,” said Brian Rennie, design director at Escada, who last year outfitted Oscar winner Kim Basinger for the Academy Awards.
“Years ago, when the Oscars first started, the stars were dressed by people like Edith Head and Adrian,” Rennie added. “They did the costumes for the movies and Oscars as well. Nowadays, that is all gone. If you asked me to name a list of costume designers, I wouldn’t have a clue.”
Unlike fashion houses, costume designers don’t use the Academy Awards to pitch a label or a look. While their creations do occasionally spark fashion trends--as Michael Kaplan did when he designed the layered, torn T-shirt look in “Flashdance”--costume designers rarely reap the rewards.
So, it is understandable that costume designers, after years of feeling overlooked, have decided to shine the spotlight on themselves.
For the first time in three decades, the 470-member Costume Designers Guild will hold a gala awards banquet on Saturday at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Hosted by actress Anjelica Huston, with Annette Bening and Carol Burnett scheduled to present awards, the already sold-out affair will do what the directors, screenwriters, producers and actors guilds do annually--honor their own.
The winners will receive a sterling silver statuette that depicts a female figure draped in an amorphous swirl of fabric. As yet, the trophy has no catchy nickname like the Oscar.
The guild, which was formed in 1953, is taking this step with some trepidation, for costume designers traditionally work backstage, out of the public eye.
Even costume designer Albert Wolsky, who has won two Oscars, for “All That Jazz” and “Bugsy,” and has been nominated three other times, conceded that being named recipient of the guild’s Career Achievement Award is a bit unnerving.
“I think it’s a lovely idea, I just wish they hadn’t picked me--I’ve been in a total state of anxiety ever since,” Wolsky said from the Baltimore set of his latest film, “The Runaway Bride,” where he outfitted Julia Roberts and Richard Gere.
The guild’s decision to trumpet its members’ contributions to filmmaking reveals much about the frustration currently felt by costume designers.
Not only are they usually outshone by world-famous fashion designers at the Academy Awards, but fashion designers are encroaching on the movies themselves, inking deals with studios giving them screen credit in return for the free clothes they provide to a production.
Feeling lost amid the swirl of publicity and product placement are the costume designers themselves, who now want to raise their public image.
“A couple of years ago, I had a group of 12 designers over at my house and I said to them, ‘Look, I don’t care if we have beer and pretzels at the Sportsmen’s Lodge, we have to have a party, we have to celebrate ourselves,” recalled Deborah Nadoolman Landis, who has designed clothes for such hit films as “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and “Coming to America.”
Landis, who co-chairs the upcoming banquet, said that, all too often, costume designers remain anonymous even though their work catches the public’s fancy.
When “Bonnie and Clyde” was released in 1967, she recalled, Faye Dunaway sparked a fashion trend by portraying bank robber Bonnie Parker in a long cardigan sweater, narrow skirt and beret.
Landis noted that it was Theodora Van Runkle who designed the costumes for the film, but it was the fashion industry that “ended up making millions of dollars on that look.”
The fashion world’s invasion of the Oscars is best illustrated by the feverish attention now given to the gowns worn by the actresses at the show.
“It all started with Armani,” designer Rennie explained. “He sent over a ton of people from Italy with his newest collection. . . . Then all the other designers started doing it.”
It has now reached the point at which a group of stylists working with the celebrities wield enormous power over what they will wear to the show. Often paid by the studios, these stylists go to the fashion designers looking for the right gown.
They have become so important to the process that minutes after the Oscar nominations are announced, stylists are inundated by fashion houses with faxes, e-mails, boxes of chocolates, baskets of flowers and a couple of outfits hoping they’ll be considered.
The stylists are “offered cars, vacations anywhere in the world for two people, it’s unbelievable,” Rennie said, noting that he refuses to engage in such practices. “We want people to wear the dress because they love the dress.”
But the fashion houses know that one of their gowns seen onstage at the Oscars is worth 10 Vogue covers. A year after Basinger won as best supporting actress for “L.A. Confidential,” Rennie said, photos of her wearing the green satin gown to the Oscars still pop up in publications every week.
Some say that while the costume designers have been eclipsed, Hollywood itself has not forgotten their contribution.
“I think the people who do it know how important they are, but I don’t know about the world,” said director Paul Mazursky, who will receive the Distinguished Director’s Award at the guild’s banquet. “If the world is told it’s an Armani outfit, you’ll be impressed by the name Armani. But the industry knows which costume designers do a good job.”
That may be true, say costume designers, but they point out that even academy members often misunderstand their work. They point out that Oscars rarely go to films set in modern times.
The academy, they note, often bestows the Oscar on period films that convey style or elegance.
Over the past two decades, Oscars for costume design have gone to such films as “Tess,” “Chariots of Fire,” “Gandhi,” “Fanny and Alexander,” “Amadeus,” “Ran,” “A Room With a View,” “The Last Emperor,” “Dangerous Liaisons,” “Cyrano de Bergerac,” “Henry V,” “The Age of Innocence,” “Restoration” and “Titanic.”
The Oscars and costume designing have had a curious history. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences did not create a separate category for costume design until 1948, almost two decades after the awards began.
Until 1957, two Oscars were handed out for costume design--one for black-and-white films and another for color films. Wolsky explained that, in those days, color films were usually period pieces, while black-and-white films had a more modern flavor.
Then in 1967, as the number of black-and-white films began to dwindle, the category was consolidated once again, as it remains to this day.
Judianna Mokovsky, who is currently the wardrobe designer for Kevin Costner’s new baseball film, “For Love of the Game,” said there is a misconception among many academy members that costume designers merely go out and buy clothes off the rack at Bloomingdale’s.
“It’s not just about shopping,” she stressed. “We’re the ones who recognize that a garment is correct for that movie or that situation and the entire visual concept of the film. In essence, it’s like opera or theater. It’s not just about selecting a pretty dress.”
For now, the costume designers simply want to give themselves a pat on the back. Maybe in the future, they hope, their names will be as well known as Edith Head.
