2025 Oscar Predictions: Best Costume Design

If you want to win an Oscar for Best Costume Design, it’s best to pick a project for which you can create frilly dresses from a bygone era. Since its introduction at the 1948 Academy Awards, this category has favored period pictures, including the 2024 winner “Poor Things.” (Scroll down for the most up-to-date 2025 Oscar predictions for Best Costume Design.)

Voters love to reward the creative forces behind such films, especially those that are about the aristocracy including recent champs “Marie Antoinette” (2007), “Elizabeth: The Golden Age” (2008), “The Duchess” (2009), “The Young Victoria” (2010), and “Anna Karenina” (2013). By the way, none of those films even competed for Best Picture. Indeed, only 20 Best Picture champs also won this award; the last to do so was “The Artist” in 2012.

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Among the other double dippers was “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King” (2004). Fantasy films such as this often boast Oscar-winning costumes, including 2022 champ “Cruella,” 2019 winner “Black Panther” and its sequel Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” (2023) plus recent picks “Alice in Wonderland” (2011),  “Mad Max: Fury Road” (2016), and “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them” (2017).

Recreating the various looks of the early 20th century has also proven an effective way to win as evidenced by “The Aviator” (2005), and “The Great Gatsby” (2014). Voters are also delighted to travel to exotic locales as with “Memoirs of a Geisha” (2006) and “The Grand Budapest Hotel” (2015).

The one era that does not have costumes that usually appeal to academy members is the modern-day. You have to go all the way back to “The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert” (1995) to find a film set in the present day that won for its costumes, and that one benefited from being about drag queens.

UPDATED: October 15, 2024

LEADING CONTENDERS (ordered by odds)
“Wicked” (Universal) — Paul Tazewell
“Dune: Part Two” (Warner Bros.) — Jacqueline West
“Gladiator II” (Paramount Pictures) — Janty Yates
“Maria” (Netflix) — Massimo Cantini Parrini
“Blitz” (Apple Original Films) — Jacqueline Durran

STRONG CONTENDERS (ordered by odds)
“The Brutalist” (A24)  —Kate Forbes
“Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” (Warner Bros.) — Colleen Atwood
“Conclave” (Focus Features) — Lisy Christl
“Nosferatu” (Focus Features) — Linda Muir
“Emilia Perez” (Netflix) – Virginie Montel

POSSIBLE CONTENDERS (alphabetical order)
“Deadpool & Wolverine” (Disney) – Graham Churchyard, Mayes C. Rubio
“Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga” (Warner Bros./Universal) — Jenny Beavan
“Here” (Sony Pictures) — Joanna Johnston
“Joker: Folie à Deux” (Warner Bros.) — Arianne Phillips
“Kinds of Kindness” (Searchlight) – Jennifer Johnson
“Nickel Boys” (Amazon MGM Studios) — Brittany Loar
“The Piano Lesson” (Netflix) — Francine Jamison-Tanchuck
“Saturday Night” (Sony Pictures) — Danny Glicker
“Sing Sing” (A24) – Desira Pesta

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