There’s a saying amongst Oscars Kremlinologists that the Academy doesn’t reward one of the best appearing—it rewards the most appearing. It’s a sentiment that, at the very least a part of the time, seems to use to the costume design class too: for voters, in terms of type on display screen, greater is often higher. (Greater skirts, bolder colours, brasher patterns; if it makes your eyes pop, likelihood is the Academy will find it irresistible.)

Relating to costumes, although, the Academy’s favor can also be guided by one other issue: historical past. Trying on the previous decade of nominees as a pattern, 48 out of the 50 films up for the golden statuette had been both fantasy or interval movies—the exceptions being La La Land in 2016 and All the things In every single place All at As soon as final yr, in case you had been questioning—and all the interval movies that took the prize dwelling had been set at the very least 50 years previously.

This yr’s crop of best-costume nominees isn’t doing a lot to buck that pattern. 4 out of the 5 movies nominated characteristic historic settings, the latest of these being Oppenheimer’s conclusion within the early Nineteen Sixties, when the physicist is granted a medal by President Lyndon B. Johnson. And it’s tough to imagine that Barbie’s nomination took place for its scenes in present-day California, versus the fabulously kitschy Barbieland confections dreamed up by costume designer Jacqueline Durran (who really received her second best-costume Oscar in 2020 for Greta Gerwig’s earlier movie, Little Ladies—set within the late nineteenth century).