Keira Knightley on working with costume designer Jacqueline Durran on her trifecta films 'Pride & Prejudice,' 'Atonement,' and 'Anna Karenina'
UPDATED 11/12/12: People.com's Keira in Costume: See Exclusive Anna Karenina Shots
"Keira is a fantastic collaborator. She enjoys the contribution a costume can make to a performance, and never worries about what something will look like. She never has a moment of vanity, but is always completely focused on what is best for the movie." (Jacqueline Durran)
"I love working with Jacqueline Durran. She is the costume designer who also designed that green dress in “Atonement” and all the costumes as well for “Pride and prejudice”, that I did. She is one of my favorite costumes designer definitely, but just creative people. I think the reason is that there's always a really specific reason for each costume and they really tell the story." (Keira Knightley)Here's spotlight on 2-time Academy Award Nominee Jacqueline Durran's costume designs in all 3 Keira Knightley films (Pride & Prejudice, Atonement, and Anna Karenina) images stills below...
Pride & Prejudice (2005)
From People.com:
COUNTRY STRONG
Read all P&P costumes articles here!
Elizabeth Bennet's costumes in Pride & Prejudice
Notes on the costumes in Joe Wright's Pride and Prejudice
Pride & Prejudice costumes guide
How I undress Mr. Darcy
(via The Telegraph)
What challenges did you face on Pride and Prejudice?
We were all approaching it as a difficult thing to tackle, because it had already been done on TV, and we wanted this version to be different. Joe [Wright, the director] felt that the high waistline was really unflattering. In the 18th century, you had a corseted waist that was more or less the natural waistline, and after the 1790s it started moving up towards empire line. Joe found out that the book (published in 1813) was actually written in 1796, and thought, 'Anything to get us back earlier!' So that's what we did.
How did you differentiate between the five sisters, costume-wise?
Lizzie Bennet was the tomboy, and wore earth colours because she loved the countryside. Jane was the most refined, and yet it's still all a bit slapdash and homemade, because the Bennets have no money.
One of the main things Joe wanted was for the whole thing to have a provincial feel. Mary is the bluestocking: serious and practical. And then Lydia and Kitty are a bit Tweedledum and Tweedledee in a kind of teenage way. I tried to make it so that they'd be sort of mirror images. If one's wearing a green dress, the other will wear a green jacket; so you always have a visual asymmetry between the two.
And Darcy?
His costume had a series of stages. The first time we see him he's at Meryton, where he has a very stiffly tailored jacket on, and he's quite contained and rigid. He stays in that rigid form for the first part of the film.
By the time we get to the proposal that goes wrong in the rain, we move to a similar cut, but a much softer fabric. And then later he's got a completely different cut of coat, not interlined, and he wears it undone.
The nth degree is him walking through the mist in the morning, completely undressed by 18th-century standards. It's absolutely unlikely, but then Lizzie's in her nightie, so what can you say?
Atonement (2007)
Read Atonement Costume Designs
The Costumes - Atonement (scanned from EW Magazine)
From People.com:
For Atonement's famous green dress (left),"I looked at lots of 1920s and 1930s evening dresses and put them all together to make a new dress," Durran says. Wright "also told me he wanted the dress to have a low back, because he knew exactly how he wanted to shoot it."Atonement related articles
Part of the challenge of Atonement (left) was the fact that it was predominantly set in one day. "It was supposed to be the hottest day in the English countryside," Durran elaborates, "so all the costume choices were based on what you would put on if you knew it would be exceptionally warm."
In a recent poll, the emerald green dress worn by Keira Knightley in Atonement has been voted the best film costume of all time.
Best Costume Design Oscar Nominee: Atonement
Best Costume Design Oscar Nominee: Atonement
SETTING THE SCENE
Oscar-nominated costume designer Jacqueline Durran collaborates with director Joe Wright and actress Keira Knightley for a third time with Anna Karenina, in theaters Nov. 16. (The trio previously worked together on Atonement and Pride & Prejudice.) "It was an ambitious project," she tells PEOPLE of the amazing gowns she created for Knightley. "You never have enough time, and feel like you're always trying to catch up. But I enjoyed it."
Anna Karenina related articles...
(source: Anna Karenina website)
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