Keira Knightley’s green dress is a bargain at £120k
Keira Knightley’s green dress is a bargain at £120k
Hannah BettsSat, November 14, 2026 at 9:00 AM UTC
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The couture masterpiece worn by Knightley in 2007’s Atonement will go under the hammer at Christie’s next month - Alamy Stock Photo/Landmark Media
In Ian McEwan’s 2001 novel Atonement, Cecilia Tallis, dressing for dinner, dons then rejects two outfits. Romantic heroine she may be, but her situation is one every woman has faced. “Above all,” we read, “she wanted to look as if she had not given the matter a moment’s thought, and that would take time.” Our heroine picks the only frock she genuinely likes: a backless, green halterneck. “As she pulled it on she approved of the firm caress of the bias-cut… and she felt sleekly impregnable, slippery and secure; it was a mermaid who rose to meet her…”
And so it came to pass in celluloid. Joe Wright’s 2007 film of McEwan’s metafiction – in which said dress clothes Keira Knightley’s picture perfectly 1930s, racehorse physique – made this confection immortal. The outfit marks a turning point in the Tallis fortunes, and, as such, it gleams with a heightened, fateful enchantment. The stuff of legend, it is a fantasy imbued with magic, memory and desire, Knightley’s raw-boned beauty hovering geometrically above it.
The backless halterneck was designed as a fusion of 1920s and 1930s fashion - Cover Media/Christie's Images Ltd
Created by Jacqueline Durran, the gown has been celebrated as “Best Costume of All Time” in a poll by Sky Movies and In Style magazine, usurping Audrey Hepburn’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s little black sheath, and Marilyn Monroe’s knicker-revealing billows in The Seven Year Itch. Two decades on, this nonpareil will go on sale at Christie’s in December with a guide price of £100,000 to £120,000. Cheap at the price! Not only is Durran’s dress a slice of cinematic history, for a garment the aim of which was to appear simple, construction was painstakingly elaborate.
This couture masterpiece is not even a dress, being a bodice, skirt and sash. It was designed as a 1920s and 1930s fusion – Coco Chanel does silver-screen siren – with a 21st century fluidity suggestive of body heat. Durran secured acres of snowy silk, hand dyeing it to concoct a shape-shifting emerald: verdantly fertile from some angles, darkly seductive from others. Its fragility – and function in flagrante – ensured that multiple versions, and frequent on-set fixings, were required.
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Audrey Hepburn in a publicity still for Breakfast at Tiffany’s in 1961, wearing a little black dress designed by Hubert de Givenchy - Moviepix/Donaldson Collection
More than these technical achievements, women are besotted with this garment with a passion that transcends all sense and measure. Mere mention of it, and we sigh, then slip into hazy-eyed reverie. Whatever our age, whatever our proportions, we see ourselves in Knightley’s sinuous guise: all bob, smoulder and shimmering skin.
In such a humdinger, we too could provoke passion, we too could break good men’s hearts, we too inspire drama on an epic scale. Straight men do not understand this. They know the dress is sexy, but they do not perceive its freighted, metaphysical enormity, the witchcraft in every silken swish. ’Twas ever thus. Style is for the girls and the gays.
Marilyn Monroe pictured in the sheer Jean Louis gown she wore to sing to President John F Kennedy on May 19, 1962 - Universal Images Group Editorial
Come next month, what should become of such a coruscating example of the costumier’s craft? Some will argue that clothes ought to be worn. However, who could do this ensemble justice other than a 21-year-old Keira? Besides, the capital D drama over Kim Kardashian’s alleged vandalism of the $4.8m frock in which Marilyn Monroe crooned Happy Birthday, Mr President by sporting it to the 2022 Met Gala shows where such heresy can lead. Who could bear our dream dress besmirched by some oligarch’s moll?
One hopes whomever purchases it won’t ferret it away in some sartorial safe, but present it to the V&A where countless pilgrimages were made to it during 2012’s Hollywood Costume blockbuster. Here, in Kensington, it would be cherished, seen and sobbed over, continuing to occupy the pedestal it deserves. I, for one, would go and gaze.
Source: “AOL Entertainment”
