Quentin Tarantino’s most famous characters, from the Bride in Kill Bill to Django Unchained, are as revered for their brazen sartorial style as they are their verbal pyrotechnics. And yet while Tarantino has been lauded with two Oscars for his scripts, none of his films have even been nominated for best costume design.

During Tuesday night’s 18th annual Costume Designers Guild awards in Los Angeles, the film-maker, while accepting the distinguished collaborator award from his Hateful Eight stars Kurt Russell and Jennifer Jason Leigh, called out the Academy for just that.

“None of my costume designers have ever been nominated for an Oscar, ’cause I don’t do period movies that have ball scenes with a hundred extras in them,” Tarantino said to huge laughs – and a few audible gasps – from the audience.

“But we do have something else,” he continued, smirking. “We have Halloween parties.”

Michael Madsen, Quentin Tarantino, Harvey Keitel, Chris Penn, Lawrence Tierney, Tim Roth, Steve Buscemi and Edward Bunker in 1992’s Reservoir Dogs. Photograph: Sportsphoto Ltd/Allstar

“For the last 20 years, I go to Halloween parties and I see a white guy and a black guy dressed as Jules and Vincent [from Pulp Fiction]. I see a girl with blonde hair wearing a yellow track suit with black trim … To tell you the truth, I’ve always considered that maybe the greatest award.”

Tarantino stressed that he’s always taken the costumes in his films “very seriously”, citing his first film, Reservoir Dogs, as an example. “It’s why I made such a big deal about putting all the characters in Reservoir Dogs in these black suits,” he said. “I thought that would be a really interesting thing – you know, every guy looks better in a black suit. And by the time the 90s rolled around, if you wore a black suit, it kind of looked gangster. It kind of looked badass.”

Cate Blanchett at the 18th Costume Designers Guild Awards at the Beverly Hilton Hotel. Photograph: Emma McIntyre/Getty Images

Cate Blanchett was also honored during the black-tie event with the Lacoste Spotlight Award, from her frequent costume design collaborator Sandy Powell, who most recently worked with the actor on Cinderella and Carol.



“Everyone talks about their relationship with the other actors and the director, and of course those are important,” said Blanchett, upon accepting the prize. “But in the end, it’s in those costume fittings – those silent moments away from the rush of film-making, where you make manifest the psychological things you talk about in the rehearsal room. It’s the building blocks of a character.”



Elsewhere during the evening, Beasts of No Nation won for excellence in contemporary film, The Danish Girl for excellence in period film and Mad Max: Fury Road for excellence in fantasy film.

Costume design veteran Ellen Mirojnick (Fatal Attraction, Basic Instinct) was meanwhile awarded twice: on top of collecting the lifetime achievement award, she netted the outstanding period television series prize for her work on The Knick.