"Anna Karenina"

Credit: Focus Features

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It's no surprise the three big period pieces up for awards at tonight's 85th annual Academy Awards ceremony dominated on the design front. Joe Wright's adaptation "Anna Karenina," Tom Hooper's musical "Les Misérables" and Steven Spielberg's biopic "Lincoln" ended up splitting the awards for Best Costume Design, Best Makeup and Hairstyling and Best Production Design.

"Whoa, thank you so much. It's quite overwhelming," makeup artist Lisa Westcott said upon receiving the prize for her work in the big musical adaptation. "I must pay a huge tribute to the team who worked so incredibly hard. I feel that I own very little of this and the rest goes to them."

"Anna Karenina," meanwhile, brought home the trophy for costumes, marking outfitter Jacqueline Durran's first Oscar to date (after previously being nominated for Wright's films "Pride & Prejudice" and "Atonement."

“With Joe [Wright], I kind of don't have too many ideas in advance of our first meeting, because he always has an angle that he wants to investigate in the piece," Durran said on the occasion of the film's release in November. "And he thought we should look at 1950s couture as a way into reinterpreting the 1870s. He was interested in reducing everything to the barest essentials. “

Nevertheless, the ensembles were certainly ornate, capturing the eye of the Academy this evening.

"Lincoln"'s win is the first prize for the film, nominated for 12 Oscars, tonight. Spielberg's long-time production designer accepted the trophy alongside set decorator Jim Erickson.

"Because of our relationship, I have a lot of freedom," Carter told HitFix of his collaborations with Spielberg over the years. "He always directs me in the sense that I show him things and he comes up with ideas…Every choice we made [on 'Lincoln'] was based on historical accuracy. It was a place where Daniel [Day-Lewis] could go and feel he was in a real place...that meant that the details had to be purposeful."

Kristopher Tapley
Editor-at-Large

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Kristopher Tapley has covered the film awards landscape for over a decade. He founded In Contention in 2005. His work has also appeared in The New York Times, The Times of London and Variety. He begs you not to take any of this too seriously.