Historical research to digital worlds, Oscar costume designers share insight at ‘Sketch to Screen’

Costume designers don't just dress characters - they help create the people audiences see on screen.

That idea was front and center Saturday when the five nominees for this year's Academy Award for best costume design gathered in Hollywood for the 16th annual "Sketch to Screen" panel presented by the UCLA David C. Copley Center for Costume Design at the UCLA School of Theater, Film & Television.

The next day, Kate Hawley, costume designer for "Frankenstein," won the Oscar in her first nomination and used her acceptance speech to emphasize the collaborative nature of the craft, acknowledging her team and fellow nominees as "artisans, alchemists and dream weavers."

Moderated by UCLA distinguished professor Deborah Nadoolman Landis at Hollywood's Egyptian Theatre, Saturday's discussion offered students and the public a rare opportunity to hear directly from the designers behind the year's nominated films - and the nominees from one another - about the painstaking process of bringing characters to life.

This year's panel featured Ruth E. Carter ("Sinners"), a five-time nominee and two-time Oscar winner for "Black Panther" and "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever"; Malgosia Turzańska ("Hamnet"), nominated for the first time; Hawley ("Frankenstein"); Deborah L. Scott ("Avatar: Fire and Ash"), an Oscar winner for "Titanic" who this year earned her second nomination; and Miyako Bellizzi ("Marty Supreme"), a first-time nominee.

"What we teach at the School of Theater, Film and Television is that costume is agency," said Celine Parreñas Shimizu, dean of TFT, who gave opening remarks at the event. "Costume designers understand better than anyone that clothing speaks - carrying identity, history and the inner lives of the characters we see on screen."

When asked what advice they would give students and aspiring costume designers in the audience, the artists on stage emphasized that curiosity and openness are essential to the profession.

"Go see art," Turzańska said, noting that inspiration can come from museums, galleries and unexpected places.

Scott urged students not to be intimidated by the technological shifts transforming filmmaking. Costume designers now regularly collaborate with visual effects teams, scanning fabrics and garments that later appear on digital characters - a process she said has been a learning curve throughout the "Avatar" films.

"Be open to the future," Scott said. "Be open to the tools you're given." Rather than replacing traditional craft, new technologies expand the ways designers can translate their ideas onto the screen, she said. Carter suggested that up-and-coming designers surround themselves with teams proficient in technologies, even those they don't yet understand, recalling her own learning curve in superhero costume design.

"Don't forget to stay rooted in who you are as an artist," she said. "No matter how technology or methods change, it always comes back to how you see it. The art is the most important thing."

Bellizzi encouraged students to embrace uncertainty. "Approaching a new project, you're not expected to know everything," she said. "You learn along the way."

Nadoolman Landis underscored the central role costume designers play in cinematic storytelling.

"Production design creates the world," she said. "We create the people who live in it."

The nominees' films illustrate the wide range of challenges and approaches to craft.

For Hawley, designing "Frankenstein" meant developing a visual language aligned with her frequent collaborator, director Guillermo del Toro's gothic sensibility, drawing inspiration from anatomy and organic forms to shape the film's distinctive aesthetic.

Turzańska spoke about balancing historical authenticity with the emotional intimacy of "Hamnet," set in Elizabethan England. The designer, who also created the costumes for the best picture nominee "Train Dreams," described the careful choices required to keep the period details grounded in the story's emotional world.

Scott described the unusual process behind the "Avatar" films, where physical garments are created on human-sized models so visual effects teams can study their texture and movement before scaling the designs to the nine-foot-tall Na'vi.

Bellizzi said her work on "Marty Supreme," set in 1950s New York, evolved through collaboration with actors whose performances helped shape the look of their characters, while taking inspiration from - but not strictly replicating - the style of the real-life Marty.

Carter discussed the historical research behind "Sinners," set in the Mississippi Delta during the Jim Crow era, describing how studying the lives of sharecroppers and the Great Migration informed the film's costumes, including repurposing garments originally built for a period adaptation of "Blade," which was halted during the 2023 writers and actors strikes.

For "Sinners," Carter described working closely with actor Michael B. Jordan, who won the Academy Award for best actor Sunday night, as he developed the film's twin characters, Smoke and Stack. To help actors step into the world of the story, she said, the team transformed the fitting room into a Mississippi blues juke joint, covering the walls with sketches and images of blues musicians and dividing the space into red and blue zones - a visual cue inspired by director Ryan Coogler's idea that Stack would be associated with red and Smoke with blue. As Jordan tried on costumes, the character continued to take shape.

"It's a discovery process," Carter said, noting that fittings, camera tests and small details - even something like a pocket watch - help refine how a character ultimately appears on screen.

Nadoolman Landis closed the conversation with a reminder that costume designers' work often goes unrecognized.

"Every acting winner should thank their costume designer - they won't, but they should," she quipped, drawing laughter from the audience.