Visionary costume designer Paul Tazewell triumphed on Sunday night, winning his first Academy Award for his nature-inspired “Wicked” wardrobe. He can add his shiny new Oscar to the crowded shelf where he keeps his Tony, his Emmy, his BAFTA, his multiple Costume Designer Guild awards and the many other honors he has won over the years.
Tazewell’s “Wicked” victory makes him the first Black man to win for costume and only the second Black person to do so since Ruth E. Carter‘s 2023 victory for “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” which followed her history-making 2019 win for “Black Panther.” (She is a multiple record-setter: the first Black woman to ever repeat an Oscar win in the same category; the first Black woman to win two Oscars, period; and the first Black person ever nominated for costume design — a distinction she achieved in 1993 for her work on Spike Lee’s “Malcolm X.”) The only other Black person to be Oscar-nominated for costume design is Sharen Davis, who earned nods in 2005 for “Ray” and in 2007 for “Dreamgirls.”
Over his celebrated career, Tazewell has earned nine Tony Award nominations for “Bring in Da Noise, Bring in Da Funk,” “The Color Purple,” “In the Heights,” “Memphis,” “A Streetcar Named Desire,” “Ain’t Too Proud,” “MJ” and “Suffs;” in 2016, he won Best Costume Design in a Musical for “Hamilton.” That same year, he won an Emmy for “The Wiz Live!” and earned a second Emmy nomination in 2018 for “Jesus Christ Superstar Live in Concert!”
After designing primarily for the stage for nearly 30 years, Tazewell worked on his first feature film, 2019’s “Harriet,” which starred his future “Wicked” leading lady Cynthia Erivo. He followed that with Steven Spielberg’s “West Side Story” in 2022, earning his first Oscar nomination for Best Costume Design.
Winning his first Academy Award for a film that began as a Broadway musical makes sense, given his long history in theater. Speaking with TheWrap in December about his approach for “Wicked,” he said, “My vision overall was to capture the energy of the musical from the stage and then reimagine that, pulling in and embracing the overall culture that was set up by the original 1939 film, [‘The Wizard of Oz’]. And also to tell the story as magically and as thoughtfully as possible in dealing with the relationship between wonderful, powerful women who are on the brink of finding themselves.”
