From sketch to screen: This year's costume design Oscar nominees

This year’s Oscar-nominated films in the Costume Design category take viewers from a magical 1926 New York, to a glamorous 1942 North Africa, to a charming and classic modern-day Los Angeles, and beyond. All are beautiful and all dive deep into their respective, cinematic worlds — and here, the nominees speak to the inspirations and ideas behind them.

GALLERY: See how sketches from this year’s Oscar-nominated costume designers came to life

La La Land

Designer: Mary Zophres

No surprise, a lot of coordination went into writer-director Damien Chazelle’s modern-day musical centered on the love story of aspiring actress Mia (Emma Stone) and jazz pianist Sebastian (Ryan Gosling). “The first three days that I was on the film the production designer [David Wasco], myself, the set decorator [Sandy Reynolds-Wasco], and Damien went through the script page by page and he talked about his inspirations for each scene,” Zophres recalls of her early conversations while working on the film. Among the many topics discussed, the group had to figure out why and how the like of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg or The Young Girls of Rochefort — Jacques Demy films released in the ’60s, but inspired by earlier MGM films — worked as well as they did. Answer: “It’s very choreographed, even between the costumes and the set design,” so the four, and others surely, moved forward with an eye toward specificity to tap into those classic flicks, and with a limited budget at that.

Take, for example, a scene in which Mia wears a scarf that ties into the flower pots that she walks by. “We went to those extents, so anytime we had a major choice that was especially part of a set piece and a dancing piece the art department and myself were in huge communication with each other,” explains Zophres. That communication extended to color — just look to Mia’s bright yellow dress that stands out during the magic hour dance number, or the primary colors of the opening number set against a bleak Los Angeles freeway — and those vibrant shades were welcomed by Zophres, who was previously nominated for True Grit and has worked with the Coen brothers many times; she was also just awarded a Costume Designers Guild Award for Excellence in Contemporary Film for La La Land. “It was so refreshing to work with a [director of photography, Linus Sandgren] that embraced all color, embraced white,” she says. That the film and costumes certainly do, as well as a classic, timeless, and often formal style that still feels appropriate to 2016.

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

Designer: Colleen Atwood

In the Harry Potter prequel that follows magizoologist Newt Scamander (Eddie Redmayne) as he attempts to reclaim his escaped creatures, Atwood had the interesting challenge of making the costumes period and place appropriate to 1926 New York while still maintaining a sense of magic and whimsy. “I based the costumes heavily on a lot of period research and then within the world of magic and magical people I used the period, but I did little tweaks to it,” Atwood says of how she struck the balance in the fantasy flick directed by David Yates and written by J.K. Rowling. Case in point: the wizarding-world enforcers who wore ’20s-inspired coats that were a bit bigger and more fluid than they would have been during that era. “I took liberty with the period in using sort of lighter fabrics and fabrics with a little more movement on the magical world to kind of separate those people from the regular folks on the street.” She also embraced multiculturalism in the costumes by reflecting the people coming into New York from all across the globe, and she sought to give these designs and characters their own life.

As far as any relation between Beasts and its predecessors, “I love the first Potter films,” says Atwood, who previously won in the category for Chicago, Memoirs of a Geisha, and Alice in Wonderland; this nomination marks an impressive twelfth. “I went to them all with my daughter because she was that age and I think I just took this reverence for them more than anything as far as from a design standpoint, just sort of really wanting to get it right and giving it a feeling of the world.” That said, this really is its own film, and a big difference with the costumes surrounds the need, or lack thereof, for them to camouflage. “In the Potter [films], they don’t have to hide. They can go out in their capes and funny hats and get groceries or whatever they’re doing. In this one, they had to look like everyone else, but then if you sort of squinted your eyes, you realized there was something else going on. I love that challenge and that reveal in the story.”

Florence Foster Jenkins

Designer: Consolata Boyle

“I’ve worked a lot with [director Stephen Frears],” says Boyle, whose collaborations include The Queen and Philomena, the prior of which earned her a nomination. “Always, he’s interested in other people’s lives, the mystery of other people’s lives and the world that they create around themselves.” The 1940’s-set Florence Foster Jenkins — which stars Meryl Streep as the real-life New York heiress who had a frightening singing voice, but pursued opera singing and continued to support New York’s music scene nonetheless — is no exception. “He and I spoke a lot about that, about Florence’s world and how her world is totally created by her and those around her who are invested in the construction of her world and protecting her from the harsh realities of life and of the reality of her abilities.”

Those conversations extended to the visual and emotional approaches that would be taken. More specifically, “I spent much time talking to [production designer Alan MacDonald] about how we would use color to show the emotional… space that Florence inhabited because her world was quite childish in many ways,” says Boyle. As a result, Florence appears in a number of light hues and pretty, frilly, fun costumes. “Florence expressed herself in her clothes because she loved decoration… She dressed in quite a childish, theatrical way, even in her daily life. There wasn’t that much difference between her performance clothes and what she wore in her daily life.” That said, her stage clothes are really something special. Boyle continues, “Obviously that was taken to its logical extreme with her performance costume, but there was also that feeling of over decoration and her love of music and things that moved around her head.”

Allied

Designer: Joanna Johnston

Early on, Johnston had the idea to bring a classic, elegant touch to Allied, a drama that begins in 1942 North Africa where Canadian intelligence officer Max (Brad Pitt) and French Resistance fighter Marianne (Marion Cotillard) take on a dangerous, undercover mission, and then move to London where allegiances are called into question. “When [Bob] asked me to do the film, we pretty much knew the two leads and they’re both very glamorous actors,” says the designer, who was also nominated for 2012’s Lincoln. “I had this idea of doing it in a slightly old-fashioned Hollywood way that would lift it,” she says. And lift it does, if Max’s handsome, ’40s-style tuxedo and Marianne’s chic, polished gown to make one green with envy are any indication.

To bring it all together, Johnston turned to a number of inspirations including, of course, 1942’s Casablanca, which had Orry-Kelly as costume designer, as the film kicks off in that city. “Casablanca looks as beautiful today as it did then, I imagine,” Boyle says. “It’s so fresh and it’s so classy and it’s so clean and there’s a simplicity to it, but it’s very defining… It’s just so classic.” Then there’s Now, Voyager from the same year. “Bette Davis’ transition in it was just remarkable,” says Johnston. Let’s not forget some sprinklings from Katharine Hepburn films, and a lot from those of Lauren Bacall. “I can’t say a load of stuff wasn’t obvious, but looking at the early ’40s now — the way they styled and shot and dressed and how the actors wore it, how the hair and makeup wore it — it’s so beautiful and it seems so effortless and it seemed so perfect.”

Jackie

Designer: Madeline Fontaine

Natalie Portman realized former first lady Jacqueline Kennedy for the screen in director Pablo Larraίn’s biopic, which focuses on the historical figure’s battle with grief following the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy and her fight to shape her husband’s legacy. It was an effective performance that was made all the more convincing through the true-to-life costumes she wore. The red dress Kennedy appears in for the 1962 televised White House tour and the pink suit and matching pillbox hat she donned on the day of the attack stand out as some of the real-life examples Fontaine had to precisely replicate for the film. It was the designer’s research and fierce desire to get things right that were crucial to the process. “[Pablo] wanted Natalie to incarnate Jackie, and we had to help,” Fontaine previously wrote to EW. “We did such an incredible amount of research with pictures of these people and events, we had to go through to stick to reality as much as possible, and of course to find the way to the period to make it true.” This is the first nomination for Fontaine, whose other credits include Amélie, Yves Saint Laurent, and the TV series Versailles.

Find out which of the Oscar-nominated costume designers will take home the gold when the 89th Academy Awards take place in Los Angeles on Sunday, Feb. 26.