In Hollywood, a costume designer’s job is to tell stories through fashion—so it’s fitting that at tonight’s 2026 Oscars, many of the nominated costumers chose red-carpet looks filled with meaning.
The group of honored costume designers this year—Malgosia Turzanska (Hamnet), Deborah L. Scott (Avatar: Fire and Ash), Kate Hawley (Frankenstein), Miyako Bellizzi (Marty Supreme), and Ruth E. Carter (Sinners)—reflects a range of different style sensibilities; onscreen, their work brought eras and settings as various as 16th-century Warwickshire, 1930s Mississippi, and 1950s New York to thrilling life. For tonight’s red carpet, however, they stuck to more personal stories. While a few costumers embraced vintage pieces, others created their looks themselves.
Turzanska was in the latter camp. “I designed the dress to feel like when you open a new box of safety pins at the beginning of a project,” she tells Vogue. The sculptural denim piece was made in John Kristiansen’s New York City costume shop, after which Turzanska embellished it with silver pins (aided by two of her best friends, Lou and Robyn). “Whenever someone asks me about my most basic work tool, I always say a safety pin,” Turzanska continues. “I always have a couple in my pocket. It is an unsung hero of the costume department, so I am very proud to put it on a bit of a pedestal finally!”
For her part, Scott chose a knit maxidress from Ulla Johnson’s fall 2025 collectsion for its feeling and fabrication more than anything else. “I have been a huge fan of Ulla Johnson for some time now. Her textiles are gorgeous, and the use of color and prints are beautifully tactile,” says Scott. “I can imagine her workroom, with abundant ideas and endless patterns and shapes. I think I would feel at home there.” Coincidentally, many of the costumes she created for Avatar also featured crochet work.
“For me, the craftsmanship in the dress I chose is unapologetically feminine with a definite point of view,” Scott continues. “Her shoes and jewelry are unique and playful. So fun to wear!”
Hawley paid tribute to her home of New Zealand by wearing a painter’s cape from the Kiwi designer Rory William Docherty. “I was encouraged by the wisdom of Iris Apfel, and prioritized my comfort and emotional state,” she tells Vogue of the look. “It’s also a nod to Frankenstein and Charles Dance’s character, Leopold.” For her accessories, she picked out archival Tiffany & Co. brooches by Jean Schlumberger. “They were chosen because of their lineage and their importance in the archives,” says Hawley. (Mia Goth wore a number of archival Tiffany & Co. jewels in the film.) “They’re an example of the exquisite craftsmanship that elevated Guillermo del Toro’s world of Frankenstein. Tiffany’s became an extension of our costume department.”
Bellizzi, meanwhile, went the vintage route on the red carpet—an approach that many actors have been taking this season too. The Marty Supreme costumer donned a vintage Dior by John Galliano dress from spring 1999. The red, black, and white design features a sleek silhouette and boldly geometric pattern. She got it from Tab Vintage—a celebrity favorite—and accessorized with custom Pandora jewelry.
Carter’s beaded gown, like Turzanska’s, was of her own making and something that she thought very carefully about. “To wear my own design to the Oscars is to stand fully inside the continuum of my craft,” the two-time Oscar winner says. “I represent costume design—the sacred art of couture in service of telling stories and building characters and worlds—and tonight that language becomes fashion. This dress holds the feeling of making history while knowing, deep in my spirit, that I have already won.”
Her look was inspired by “the journey of those who came before me, and of the ground I have claimed for myself,” Carter says. “The silhouette carries the dignity of African diasporic expression; the beadwork is an offering to the ancestors whose hands and vision shaped beauty long before recognition found them. Designing for myself is a quiet declaration: That the costume designer is also the author of fashion, that my creativity does not end onscreen, and that it also belongs here on the red carpet as a maker of image, identity, and legacy.”
