A very partial list of movies with excellent contemporary costume design -- meaning not fantasy and not period, which sadly means said designs are too often ignored by the Oscars and other overall awarding bodies. And that's understandable! The more dramatic costumes of period dramas and the over-the-top fancy of films from the sci-fi/fantasy genres understandably garner a lot of attention, and it's easy to see (and remember) how good they are because they're so different from what we see daily.
But great contemporary costumes are, well, great! They're smart and subtle and so important to storytelling. So I wanted to highlight some of those.
This list comes from me and the great Emma Fraser, my favorite writer when it…
A very partial list of movies with excellent contemporary costume design -- meaning not fantasy and not period, which sadly means said designs are too often ignored by the Oscars and other overall awarding bodies. And that's understandable! The more dramatic costumes of period dramas and the over-the-top fancy of films from the sci-fi/fantasy genres understandably garner a lot of attention, and it's easy to see (and remember) how good they are because they're so different from what we see daily.
But great contemporary costumes are, well, great! They're smart and subtle and so important to storytelling. So I wanted to highlight some of those.
This list comes from me and the great Emma Fraser, my favorite writer when it comes to costume analysis. I also consulted the Costume Designers Guild website and looked at their contemporary design award history.
Feel free to make suggestions in the comments! We're talking Lady Bird and Nope, not Killers of the Flower Moon and Cruella. And (for now at least) I'm restricting it to movies from 1999 and after, since that's the year the Costume Designers Guild introduced the Excellence in Contemporary Film award.
