Tomorrow's the big day! The Kodak Theatre will held the biggest, most extraordinary party of the year: the Academy Awards! A tribute to some of the best films of the past few months and the people that make them possible. But today I'm talking about the last two contenders for the Best Costume Design award (if you missed the first part go here).

These two nominees are probably the most surprising of the category, as the Academy tend to prefer more classical wardrobes, those of beautiful and stylish period dramas. The Revenant and Mad Max: Fury Road, with their ragged and apocalyptic clothes, break the mould.

Jacqueline West, The Revenant

Jacqueline West (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Argo) created the costumes for Alejandro Gonzalez-Iñarritu latest movie with an important thing in mind: preventing Leonardo DiCaprio and the other stars "from dying in the wilderness". It may sound like a joke, but the extreme weather conditions in which the movie was shoot forced the clothes to be both representative of the time the film was set and practical.

The film follows the real story of Hugh Glass, a mountaineer who, in the early 1800s, was left for dead by his companions after a bear attack. The First Nations tribes depicted in the movie became another challenge for West. She decided not using the stereotypical images of Plain Indians and go beyond the clichés, giving each one of them an individual image.

Jenny Beavan, Mad Max: Fury Road

Jenny Beavan has been nominated for ten Oscars and won one in 1987 for A room With a View. She's one of those costume designers who seems to love period dramas. She designed the costumes for movies such as Gosford Park, The King's Speech, Sense and Sensibility, Anna and the King, Howards End... Not a bad resume, right?

However, this time Beavan changed up her style completely. The post-apocalyptic, rough landscape of The Wastelands required a very different wardrobe than those of corsets and ribbons. The clothes also needed to be practical for doing numerous stunts and working on the desert. Beavan masterly created a collection of shredded clothes in sand colors, contributing to the public imagery with iconic outfits, like those of The Wives (both angelical and badass) and Imperator Furiosa, arguably the best movie character of this decade. Furthermore, Beavan also successfully brought back some emblematic pieces of clothing of the original trilogy, like Max's leather jacket.

(If you are interested in learning more about how Mad Max: Fury Road was made Titan Books have published "The Art of Mad Max: Fury Road", a book that compiles all kinds of things about the movie, from production design, storyboards and, of course, costume design. I haven't had the opportunity of looking over it, but I have watched some reviews online and it seems like a must-have!)







So now we've made a brief overview of the five nominees, which one is your favorite? Which one do you think is going to win? Which other movies do you think should have been nominated in this category? Let's discuss!