Costume designer Deborah L. Scott’s Oscar nomination for Avatar: Fire and Ash reflects something larger than a single project: It acknowledges a shift in what costume design is.
“This is one of those moments, right?” Scott says. “This is one of those moments where a mostly performance capture VFX virtual reality movie has gotten a costume design nomination. So it feels kind of like a big deal, and not just for me. I think it’s for all of us, and all of the costume designers that will come after me.”
Scott won her first Oscar for James Cameron’s Titanic, and has earned her second for Avatar: Fire and Ash after working with Cameron on all three Avatar films. She started out in the 1970s, when costume design was a purely tactile art form, and has worked on classics including E.T., Back to the Future, and Heat.
With the Avatar films, she needs to both create real designs and communicate constantly with the rest of the Avatar team about how the costumes would move and flow in a digitally animated world.
Deborah L. Scott on Making the Costumes for Avatar: Fire and Ash — and Following Them Through Digitization
As she always does, she started out by researching environments, defining cultures and creating clothing that reflects how the characters live. It’s just that with the Avatar films, they live on Pandora, a planet born from Cameron’s imagination.
The Ash People, shaped by a harsh landscape, wear minimal materials. The Wind Traders, who travel across the planet, carry colors and variety gathered along the way.
“Most Indigenous peoples, even today, will use what they have in their environment,” Scott says. “Especially a long time ago, they would use plants, twigs, anything they could find.”
The garments were built physically. They were woven, assembled and aged by hand, as they have been throughout Scott’s career. But with the Avatar films, the process is just beginning when the costumes are complete.
Actors perform wearing capture suits, allowing their movements and expressions to be translated onto digital Na’vi characters. Scott’s costumes are scanned, studied and digitally rebuilt, with visual effects artists recreating every bead, fiber and strand. Adjusting to that process meant stepping into an entirely different creative language, one that forced Scott to rethink instincts she had relied on for decades.
“When I started, I was not very computer savvy,” she says. “Let alone learning about the kind of lighting that they use, the way they do simulation or animation, you know. So there’s a tremendous amount to learn.”
Scott had to shift from leading a physical workshop to collaborating continuously with artists working inside digital environments, often without the immediate feedback she was used to.
“I guide them on a weekly basis until the movie is finished,” she says.
That level of involvement represents a fundamental shift in what costume design now requires. Traditionally, designers complete their work once garments are built and filmed. On Avatar, Scott continues shaping those costumes inside the digital pipeline, helping visual effects artists interpret how they move and behave.
“When we start to work with it, there’s a lot of things you don’t know, like, how heavy is the garment? How much does it blow in the wind? What is the sound that it makes?” she says.
Traditionally, a designer can see how fabric drapes or moves when an actor walks across a room. But Scott has to translate that knowledge into instructions, working closely with artists who rely on simulation rather than direct observation. She says that requires patience and a willingness to solve problems that don’t have obvious answers.
“Honestly, it’s really hard because I’m used to working with my hands,” she says. “Now I get to sit at a computer with the team and work with my eyes and work with my voice and try to describe to them all the information.”
The work unfolds gradually. Scott reviews brief segments of footage as it’s completed, refining costume color, contrast and texture alongside the animation, lighting and rendering teams.
“It happens step-by-step,” she says. “It’s like a big jigsaw puzzle.”
Lighting introduces another layer of complexity. Because Pandora exists entirely in a digital environment, director James Cameron can manipulate light in ways that wouldn’t be possible on a physical set.
“Jim can go like, I’d like a little pink coming up from the ocean. I’d like some blue coming in from this place,” Scott says. “So it adds another complexity.”
Avatar: Fire and Ash is now in theaters.
Main image: One of the costumes on Avatar: Fire and Ash designed by Deborah L. Scott. Photo by Mark Fellman. © 2025 20th Century Studios. All Rights Reserved.