At Sunday’s British Film Academy Awards, 3 time Academy Award-winning costume designer Sandy Powell was honoured with their Fellowship Award, the highest accolade bestowed by BAFTA upon an individual in recognition of an outstanding and exceptional contribution to film, games or television and the very first time a designer has been awarded this precious prize. Perhaps one of the greatest costume designers that film has ever known, Powell’s work spans three decades and includes truly great works of art from The Favourite and Shakespeare in Love to Carol and The Wolf of Wall Street. In her acceptance speech, Powell paid tribute to her department, “I accept this fellowship on behalf of my community. The supervisors, assistants, coordinators, and PAs. The tailors, and cutters, the stitchers and buyers, the weavers, the knitters, the printers and dyers. The leather workers, the shoemakers, milliners, jewellers, the standbys, dressers, fitters and crew. In fact, everyone who makes this work possible."

Born in 1960 in London, Sandy Powell has become one of the film industry's most renowned and respected costume designers. Having learnt to sew on a Singer machine from her mother, Powell attended the prestigious Central Saint Martin’s school studying art before beginning a BA in theatre design at the Central School of Art and Design. Although, she would drop from this course after two years. After leaving school, Powell designed costumes for La Scala in Milan as well as on several music videos before entering the world of film in 1986 where she created the costumes for the Derek Jarman movie Caravaggio.

It was in 1992 that Powell achieved her first taste of notoriety for her designs in the period drama Orlando directed by Sally Potter and starring Tilda Swinton in the title role. This would be her first of 15 Academy Award and 15 BAFTA nominations. In a very rare occurrence, Powell would be nominated twice in the same Academy Award category in 1998 for Velvet Goldmine and Shakespeare in Love, winning the latter. Powell won her second Oscar in 2004 for Martin Scorcese’s The Aviator featuring Cate Blanchett, who presented her with her BAFTA fellowship this weekend. She won her third and most recent Academy Award in 2010 for The Young Victoria, a romantic period piece covering the early years of the reign of Queen Victoria as well as her marriage to her cousin Albert.

Considering how rare it is to be nominated twice in a category just once, it’s a real rarity that Powell has managed this thrice in her career! In 2016 she was nominated for both the live-action adaptation of Cinderella and Carol, both starring Cate Blanchett once more. And then, again, in 2019 she was nominated for both The Favourite and Mary Poppin’s Returns, making her the most nominated costume designer in history after the legendary Edith Head.

The Favourite sketch by Sandy Powell, 2018.
BAFTA.

Powell is most recognised for her work on period dramas, having a distinct and thorough understanding of historical fashion and how to incorporate these. In an interview for AV Club, Powell expanded on her experience creating costumes for period pieces for The Favourite, “So there is a real vogue at the moment for doing period pieces that look contemporary, that have anachronisms. I think it’s all about appealing to young people. People think that young people can only relate to anything modern or contemporary. So there is that fashion for that at the moment, which can work or it can’t. I mean, I did The Favourite, which the dialogue was very contemporary, the way that it was written, the way that it was acted, it didn’t play out like you would expect a period film to be. So I kind of deliberately did the costumes quite accurately, I kind of thought, to go against that, because if I went really out there and did modern costumes and with all the modern dialogue, it would be too much.”

She continued, “I’ve been irritated when I have been asked by certain producers—who are now in prison—to make something look modern, to make it look sexy, or to do things that wouldn’t be right, but for wrong reasons. And I don’t like that sort of stuff. Like, “and then her dress fell off” kind of things, you know?”