IF the '30s costumes in "Atonement" look a little too good to be true to the period, Jacqueline Durran has done her job well. A far cry from a stuffy period drama, "Atonement," based on Ian McEwan's novel, opens on a singularly sweltering summer day in 1935.
What happens that night in the dimly lighted library of the Tallis family estate -- filtered through the prying eyes of a fanciful young girl -- irrevocably alters the lives of childhood friends-turned-lovers Cecilia (Keira Knightley) and Robbie (James McAvoy).
But director Joe Wright didn't want a faithful re-creation of the fashions of that day. Durran, whose groundbreaking costume design on Wright's "Pride & Prejudice," which also starred Knightley, earned her an Oscar nomination, explains why.
"When we first started talking, Joe was clear that he didn't want it to look pristine or to have the patina and age you usually associate with that era. When you look at photos of upper-middle-class British families from the '30s, they look rather scruffy, clumpy and lumpy.
"That's real, but it's not what we wanted because the film isn't based on reality. It's more of a dream, a remembered past, a child's distant memory of a perfect day before everything went horribly wrong."
Durran talks about where she found inspiration (and fabrics) for the realistic segments of the film, the challenges of designing clothing based on a child's memory, making original World War II uniforms and the secret of Knightley's irresistibly tempting green silk gown. --
How is it possible to make a period film feel so modern?
We used a modern aesthetic with '30s shapes. We literally made everything for the '30s scenes, finding original costumes and using shapes from that era remade with modern fabrics. What proved really hard was finding the right patterns. In most cases, we had to make patterned fabrics in our color palette.
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Why was Keira/Cecilia's evening gown such an unusual shade of green?
Joe said he wanted a green dress. Green is a very symbolic color, but I never wanted to pin down exactly what green meant to him. It's an open-ended symbol that means many things to many people. I think of green as temptation but that's just me.
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Was it hard to find the perfect green?
