If there's one nominee that I'm really rooting for in the Best Costume Design category at the Academy Awards, it's Monique Prudhomme for The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus. It isn't simply that she managed to channel Terry Gilliam and make iconic ensembles that could withstand an onslaught of special effects and hastily subbed-in actors, it's that she was nominated for outfitting a film set in the present day, and that happens so rarely. Does she have a shot at a win? If history is any judge, the odds against her are steep.
Decades ago, it wasn't uncommon for a film set in contemporary times to be nominated for an Oscar or even win one. Helping matters was the fact that until 1966, the category gave out awards in both black and white and color, ensuring ten total nominees (with two special exceptions in 1957 and 1958 when only one Oscar was awarded).
Ironically, it was the black-and-white winners during that era that were most likely to be contemporary, including films such as Darling, The Night of the Iguana, and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? The color films that took home the Oscar were almost always lush period pieces like Cleopatra and Spartacus that managed to marshal hundreds of extras and outfit them in flashy historical garb, and since the two categories were combined, it's exactly that type of film that's most likely to win out.
In fact, in the years since 1966, only three modern-day films have won the Best Costume Design Oscar (excepting films set in another world, like Star Wars and Lord of the Rings):
Travels with My Aunt (1972)
All That Jazz (1979)
The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994)
Merely getting nominated is no cakewalk, either. Out of the fifty films nominated for Best Costume Design in the last decade, only six have been predominantly set in the year in which they were made (sorry, The Queen -- you were so close!):
102 Dalmatians (2000)
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (2001)
Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events (2004)
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005)
The Devil Wears Prada (2006)
The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus (2009)
Of course, besides The Devil Wears Prada, all of those films are cartoonish fantasies. There's a permission to be outlandish and over the top in that sort of movie, and that's apparently what it takes to get noticed amidst the historical dramas that so often dominate the Best Costume Design category now. Decades ago, you could get a nomination for expertly outfitting an actor in something modern that revealed character and mood. These days, you need to buckle all your extras in corsets.
Did the contemporary, comparatively realistic Prada have any shot at winning in its year? Certainly, it had a strong fashion viewpoint, and the mid-movie Anne Hathaway fashion montage may have been the closest thing to costume porn to come in a long while, but I suspect it was hemmed in somewhat by designer Patricia Field's curatorial eye (since some of its most striking ensembles came courtesy of name-brand labels) and the unavoidable juggernaut that was eventual winner Milena Canonero for the cotton candy fantasia that was Marie Antoinette.
So let's look at Prudhomme's odds, then. Up against her are the costume designers for the films The Young Victoria, Bright Star, Nine, and Coco Before Chanel -- spanning a period of time from 1818 to the 1960s. When it comes to winners in this category, the further back into the past you go, the better your chances are, which would seem to bode well for The Young Victoria and Bright Star. Still, Colleen Atwood had to outfit not just actors and extras for Nine but background dancers, too. If there's one category where that film has a real shot, it's this one.
Sadly, that doesn't leave a whole lot of room for our modern-day contender. Sure, Parnassus escapes every so often to a brightly garish fantasy world, but the rest of the film is set in contemporary London -- the ageless title character even bemoans the lack of interest modern-day people have in his special circus. Perhaps if we'd seen him on the road in his historical heyday instead, it would have better piqued the interest of the modern-day minds at the Academy.