Wardrobe tag
- The Academy first gave costume design awards at the 21st Academy Awards in 1949, in separate black-and-white and color categories.
- The two categories were last split at the 39th Academy Awards in 1967; at the 40th, in 1968, there was a single Costume Design award, won by Camelot.
- The Costume Designers Guild notes Ruth E. Carter’s Oscar for Black Panther as the first costume Oscar for a Black woman.
The Academy Awards began in 1929, and for their first two decades costume design had no category of its own. The craft that dressed the stars of the 1930s and 1940s did its most famous work, from The Wizard of Oz to Gone with the Wind, without an Oscar to show for it. The Academy’s own ceremony records show when that changed and how the category evolved.
The first costume Oscars: 1949
The Academy’s page for the 21st Academy Awards, held in 1949, lists two costume categories for the first time: Costume Design (Black-and-White) and Costume Design (Color). The winners and nominees were:
| Category | Winner | Designer | Nominee |
|---|---|---|---|
| Black-and-White | Hamlet | Roger K. Furse | B. F.’s Daughter (Irene) |
| Color | Joan of Arc | Dorothy Jeakins, Karinska | The Emperor Waltz (Edith Head, Gile Steele) |
The Academy highlights Dorothy Jeakins’s win for Joan of Arc among the memorable moments of that night. Edith Head appears on that very first list as a nominee, with Gile Steele, for The Emperor Waltz.
Why two categories?
The Academy’s ceremony pages list the two categories without explaining the split. What they do show is the result: the first black-and-white award went to Hamlet and the first color award to Joan of Arc. The two categories stayed in place for almost two decades, through the 39th ceremony.
The last split year and the merger
The 39th Academy Awards, in 1967, were the last with two costume categories. Irene Sharaff won Black-and-White for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, and Elizabeth Haffenden and Joan Bridge won Color for A Man for All Seasons. The color nominees that year included Jean Louis for Gambit, Dorothy Jeakins for Hawaii, Piero Gherardi for Juliet of the Spirits and Edith Head for The Oscar.
At the 40th Academy Awards, in 1968, the Academy’s list shows a single Costume Design category. John Truscott won for Camelot, over Theadora Van Runkle for Bonnie and Clyde, Bill Thomas for The Happiest Millionaire, Irene Sharaff and Danilo Donati for The Taming of the Shrew, and Jean Louis for Thoroughly Modern Millie.
Names that recur
Reading the first and last split years side by side shows how long some careers ran. The same designers turn up across almost two decades of the Academy’s lists:
- Edith Head: nominee at the first costume awards in 1949 for The Emperor Waltz, and again in 1967 for The Oscar.
- Dorothy Jeakins: winner of the first color award, for Joan of Arc, and a 1967 color nominee for Hawaii.
- Irene Sharaff: winner of the last black-and-white award in 1967, for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, and a nominee in the first single category in 1968, with Danilo Donati, for The Taming of the Shrew.
- Danilo Donati: nominated twice in the 1967 black-and-white category, for The Gospel According to St. Matthew and Mandragola, and again in 1968.
- Jean Louis: a color nominee in 1967 for Gambit and a nominee in 1968 for Thoroughly Modern Millie.
The 1967 black-and-white list also included Helen Rose for Mister Buddwing and Jocelyn Rickards for Morgan!: five films competed in the category in its final year, the same number as in color.
A timeline of the category
- 1929: first Academy Awards; no costume category.
- 1949 (21st Awards): first costume Oscars, split into black-and-white and color.
- 1967 (39th Awards): last year with two costume categories.
- 1968 (40th Awards): a single Costume Design award, won by Camelot.
- Black Panther (2018): Ruth E. Carter’s win, which the Costume Designers Guild records as the first costume Oscar for a Black woman.
Tip: The Academy’s ceremony pages on oscars.org list every year’s winners and nominees by category. They are the most reliable way to check a costume Oscar claim before you repeat it.
What the award reflects
The list of nominees over the decades tracks the changes the Costume Designers Guild describes in its own history: the postwar glamour of the 1950s, the darker scripts of the 1970s, when the guild says Theadora Van Runkle’s Bonnie and Clyde helped revolutionize fashion, and the blockbusters of the 1980s. The guild itself was founded in 1953, a few years after the first costume Oscar, by nine film costume designers; its story is in The Costume Designers Guild, Local 892: Who It Represents and How to Join.
Seeing award-winning costumes in Los Angeles
The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures is at 6067 Wilshire Boulevard. The ASU FIDM Museum downtown collects film costumes among its more than 15,000 fashion objects. Exhibitions change, so check each museum’s current schedule; our guide to Where to See Film Costumes in Los Angeles: Museums, Hours and What to Check First covers both. For the wider story of how costume design developed before the award existed, read A Short History of Hollywood Costume Design, Decade by Decade and Inside Golden Age Studio Wardrobe Departments: Designers, Costumers and the Studio Costume House.