Costume Designers Guild Awards: “One Battle After Another,” “Frankenstein,” & “Wicked: For Good” Designers Honored

Three of the best costume designers in the business took home the big awards at the 28th Costume Designers Guild Awards on Thursday night. Colleen Atwood (One Battle After Another), Kate Hawley (Frankenstein), and Paul Tazewell (Wicked: For Good) took home the film awards.

Hawley’s win was for excellence in a period film, and she made sure to praise her director, Guillermo del Toro, saying, “I would have given up at certain times without him… I love that he celebrates and supports all of us and the process of being an artist.”

Tazewell’s win came for excellence in sci-fi/fantasy, and he said it represented a full-circle moment for his life. “To have experienced the journey that I experienced, creating the costumes, the looks for the world of Wicked and Wicked: For Good has changed my life in so many profound ways.”

For designers on TV series, Kameron Lennox (The Studio) and Michael Wilkinson (Andor) were the night’s big winners.

This year also marked a first for the guild—there was a tie: Rafaella Rabinovich (Dandyland, episode 10) and Michelle Martini (“Uber Eats: A Century of Cravings” – Super Bowl) tied in the excellence in short-form design category.

The evening was hosted by actor Courtney Hope, who plays Sally Spectra on The Bold and the Beautiful and The Young and the Restless. The special honorees for the evening were costume designer Michelle Cole, actors Kate Hudson and Teyana Taylor, and director James Cameron.

Taylor, who was the breakout star of One Battle After Another (along with Chase Infiniti), received the Vanguard Spotlight Award. She said, “Costume Design has always been bigger than fashion. In my life, it’s storytelling. Before a character ever speaks, what they wear is already telling you who they are, their strength, their vulnerability, their journey. That kind of visual language has inspired me since I was a little girl…this award represents creative freedom, the freedom to take risks, push boundaries and honor where I came from and just to continue to evolve to the next generation of creatives.”

Cole won the evening’s Career Achievement Award, which honors an individual whose career in costume design has left an indelible mark on the industry. Hudson was honored with the Spotlight Award, which honors an actor whose abilities include a special awareness of the role and importance of costume design. Hudson recalled some of her earliest memories, which included, “sitting on the floor of a studio in Hollywood surrounded by every sequin imaginable, looking down at me are these giants, my exquisite mother, and the phenomenal, iconic Bob Mackie, designed for her, both in life and on film.”

Cameron received the night’s Distinguished Collaborator Award, presented by his longtime designer, Deborah L. Scott, with whom he’s been working since Titanic. Cameron said of Scott, “Deborah had to clothe 2200 extras. So you can look at the task in terms of its scale: all of these costumes for first-class, second-class, third-class passengers, and all the crew, and so on. But I think that you can imagine the scale of that project, especially when all the costumes had to go in the water and come back out and still be usable, tuxedos and everything getting immersed night after night, because the Titanic itself sank once for a movie, we had to sink it over and over.”

Cameron ended his speech by saying, “These awards and this community that celebrates the art of design are so critical in this Age of the onslaught of AI.” He added, “AI don’t sew.”

Featured image: Caption: TEYANA TAYLOR as Perfidia in “One Battle After Another.” A Warner Bros. Pictures Release. Photo Credit: Photo Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures