Top costume designer calls Melissa McCarthy bunny outfit 'insulting'
Melissa McCarthy and Brian Tyree Henry’s brief stint as presenters was, for many, one of the highlights of Sunday night’s Oscars. The pair, who worked together on the forthcoming movie Superintelligence, took to the stage wearing elaborate outfits that nodded to each of this year’s nominees in the best costume category.
McCarthy wore 53 stuffed toy rabbits in homage to Queen Anne’s numerous pets in The Favourite and a wig reminiscent of that worn by Margot Robbie in Mary Queen of Scots. Her hat was a tip to The Ballad of Buster Scruggs. Henry wore a Mary Poppinsstyle blue cape and hair and makeup evoking Black Panther. They explained that costume design was a craft of enormous craft, subtlety and importance.
The dissonance provoked laughs as well as admiration in many quarters.
However, Arianne Phillips, a veteran costume designer twice nominated for an Academy award, has claimed the joke did not work, and instead appeared to mock the very professionals the best-costume category was applauding.
“I like to think I have a sense of humor,” she wrote on Facebook, “And I love Melissa McCarthy and Brian Tyree Henry but … this was tasteless and insulting to costume design.”
Phillips continued: “The Oscars are an opportunity to honor our craft(s) . As costume designers we struggle with people in our own industry UNDERSTANDING our job, on this one night where the work is supposed to be elevated this is perhaps the most egregious misrepresentation not only of taste … but of value to the film-making process.
“We are not just ‘shoppers’, as our job is so often misunderstood … this kind of mockery only underscores frustration. Feels like major steps backwards … SHAME on the Academy for allowing this to be broadcast.”
Phillips, who has long worked as Madonna’s stylist, and was costume designer on Madonna’s 2012’s film W.E., for which Phillips was Oscar nominated, won broad approval for her comments on social media.
Paula Bradley, costume designer on the 2018 season of American Horror Story, proposed an open letter to the LA Times, while Superstore costume designer Alix Hester agreed about the need to “get very concerned about the lack of respect for our craft. Would they ever ridicule production design or cinematography in this way? I‘m tired of being called wardrobe with no understanding that we create costumes that inform a character and tell a story.”
Others defended Katja Cahill, costume designer for the Oscars ceremony, who on Monday told the Hollywood Reporter her intention had been for McCarthy and Henry’s outfits to look like “all the costumes sort of threw up”.
Pitch Perfect 3 costume designer Salvador Pérez responded to Phillips’s post by saying: “A costume designer designed this and is very proud of it, she has posted many pics to her Instagram account about it, it may not be your taste, but it was designed by a fellow costume designer, not a producer.
“The beauty of costume design is that we get to show creativity in many ways, this was her vision. Be careful how you dismiss your colleagues’ work.”
In response, Phillips praised the efforts of Cahill and her team, who “obviously worked meticulously to create such elaborate comedy. So bravo for doing her/their job well!
“I do not agree with the content and context of how that script was written. This is my opinion, and the opinion of many people here, as well as many people who contacted me after seeing the show. We can agree to disagree. This tacky and egregious misstep is about representation.”