You can use many techniques to help build your world, ground your setting, or give dimensions to your characters. You can use music and create elaborate sets, but one of the best ways is through the costumes you make.
People instantly judge a character within moments on the screen, and the outfits are essential to that first impression. More than this, you can also use costumes as a way of storytelling. What do they say about this world? What do they say about how a character is progressing?
Costumes can build worlds and tell us details we can only see, but also, they can make us say, ‘Hot Damn’, look at that beading on that dress. That must have taken hours to do!
Our Highly Commended Films in 2024 are: Alien: Romulus, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, The Bikeriders, Challengers, Deadpool & Wolverine, Gladiator II, The Holdovers, Hundreds of Beavers & Monkey Man
Our Highly Commended TV in 2024 are: The Diplomat, Doctor Who, Dune Prophecy, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, The Penguin, Star Trek: Discovery & Star Wars: The Acolyte
So without further ado, these costumes made us say ‘hot damn’ in 2024. Be warned that there may be slight spoilers ahead.
The Nominees Are –
Agatha All Along
Agatha All Along spent nearly every episode jumping into different costumes to explore the character’s motivations, including what might be the first costume-based-time-shifting-montage-scene-of-death that I have seen.
Dune: Part Two
Dune: Part Two perfectly captures the source material and brings it back to life. There are details and textures to every outfit that gives every character a history and life in the world.
Fallout
Fallout had the hard job of bringing the style of a video game into real action. It was a video game filled with fans who percolated over the smallest detail, and they pulled it off.
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
George Miller and their production team always bring details and textures to their work, and Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga made sure that they had in them the ability to make it epic.
Hit Man
Every character needs a persona, and every persona needs a costume that perfectly fits them. This means that for Hit Man, we get dozens of different looks for the main character alone.
Shōgun
What Shōgun does best is to bring you into this world of tumultuous power changes, in that we get to see people from nearly every strata of society, and they are all wonderfully brought to life.
Wicked
It is often said that details matter, and I think if there is a good case study for that, then Wicked would be a good candidate. Every costume explains people’s lives and desires in the stitching.
And the Winner is!!!!! – Shōgun
Directed by – Jonathan van Tulleken, Charlotte Brändström, Frederick E.O. Toye, Takeshi Fukunaga, Emmanuel Osei-Kuffour & Hiromi Kamata
Costume Design by – Carlos Rosario
While there were a lot of contenders here, what Shōgun focuses on is the details, helping you come into this world and using the costumes as a way to help get a sense of where all the fault lines lie. While I am sure not every detail was period-accurate, there are always some concessions that need to be made for simple filming reasons. Each costume captures the vibe of where that character was in their journey. It is these touches that connect you with a character, a people, and a culture, and that is the power of costuming when it is done correctly. What are your favourite cinematic costumes from 2024? Let us know in the comments below.
By Brian MacNamara: You can follow Brian on Twitter Here, when he’s not chatting about Movies and TV, he’ll be talking about International Relations, or the Solar System.
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Credits – All images used were created by the respective studios and artists of each film
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