2012 Oscar Predictions: First Look at Best Costume Design

There is still plenty of time before Oscar nominations are announced on Tuesday, January 24th, but it’s about time I started filling in the rest of the categories in my Oscar predictions and while I’ll be seeing Young Adult tonight, which will mean you can expect updates in the Best Actress and Best Supporting Actor categories at the very least in the next couple of days, I felt it was time to lift the lid on another category I’d yet to explore… Best Costume Design.

There are some interesting things to consider when it comes to the costumes category, so let’s start at the top and see what shakes out.

My current front-runner is Michael O’Connor‘s work on Jane Eyre. O’Connor recently enjoyed his first nomination and first win with The Duchess and I see no reason not to consider him a strong candidate for the win this year as his work on the Charlotte Bronte adaptation may end up making him two-for-two with the Academy.

Then you have the work of Mark Bridges on The Artist, a film that is constantly noted for its spectacular embrace of the late 1920s. Depending on how the next couple of months shake out, Bridges could easily become the front-runner for what would be his first nomination. Of course, along with competing against O’Connor, he’ll also have to withstand nine-time nominee and three-time winner Sandy Powell who stands a strong chance at becoming a ten-time nominee with Martin Scorsese’s Hugo.

In my fourth and fifth slots I have a pair of “never-been-nominated” contenders in Sonia Grande for Midnight in Paris, a film that not only needed to supply modern day costumes, but garb for the 1920s as well as the Belle Epoque, and Trish Summerville‘s work in David Fincher’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Summerville’s work has already sparked an ironic Dragon Tattoo-inspired clothing line with H&M, which makes me wonder if her transformation of star Rooney Mara into goth cyber-hacker Lisbeth Salander will be looked at more as a piece of pop culture or a serious costume stand out.

Beyond the top five, things get no less interesting with the work of Arianne Phillips on Madonna’s W.E., a film that was highly criticized out of Venice but enjoyed plenty of praise for costumes and production design. Then you have two-time nominee, Sharen Davis‘s work on The Help and the eclectic work on Immortals by Eiko Ishioka who previously won for her work on Francis Ford Coppola’s Dracula.

One of the biggest question marks of the bunch, however, is Joanna Johnston‘s work on Steven Spielberg’s War Horse. Johnston has worked with Spielberg several times before, including films such as Saving Private Ryan and Munich, and yet her costumes have never been nominated for an Oscar. Will War Horse finally be the one to help her break through?

With that said, I have a total of 18 contenders in this category and I have supplied comments on each of them right here.

For your information I have included my top five in order once again directly below and ask that you stay tuned as I will be delivering a preview of the upcoming Oscar films heading toward theaters in December as well as predictions in remaining categories such as Film Editing, Original Score, Sound Mixing, Sound Editing, Art Direction and Visual Effects very soon as it’s time to continue filling out the pre-nomination predictions.

For all of my current predictions click here.