Rating Keira Knightley's Period Drama Dresses on Historical Accuracy

hello my sweet doves if you haven't immediately noticed i'm not in my usual highly professional bedroom setup um i'm not at home right now but i wanted to still make content for you all so this is the background that we're working with today so for today's video we're going to be bringing kiara natalie's costumes in the various period dramas that she starred in we're just going to be doing two scores per movie the historical accuracy score and the style score i'm not going to combine them i'm also i'm going to be looking at the dresses out of context because i do know that costume design is very vast like trust me i know there's a lot that goes into it the reason i'm not going to be talking more about the costume design as a whole is because i plan to do individual videos for some of these movies where i will go more in depth with them so today we're just going to be looking at just the dresses and the outfits that she wears in general this should come as no surprise to anyone but pirates of the caribbean is not historically accurate just in general i think the creators or the writers said that they actually loosely placed the first movie somewhere between 1720 and 1750 they didn't really care too much about historical accuracy but um alec gemmell on screenrant managed to work out the timeline of the franchise and placed the first movie in 1728 so let's use that date to make this easier now i rewatched this movie relatively recently because i was like i haven't actually watched this movie since elementary school and um i obviously had to rewatch it again for this video so i did that and the corset slander was really a lot first of all the corset was not popular terminology until the 1800s the boned corset like bodice that we see in a lot of period dramas prior to the 1800s is actually called a stays i don't know if the writers didn't know this or if they just deliberately chose to use the word corset because um it's a more popular word in today's lexicon but yeah this was no good but what actually bothered me more than the terminology mix-up or even the tight lacing is just the fact that uh kiara knightley's character elizabeth swann acts like she's never worn a corset before i'm told it's the latest fashion in london well women in london must have learned not to breathe she's literally an adult english woman in the 1720s like what do you mean you don't know how to breathe with the stays on you would have been wearing a stay since the age of 12. minus the script issues the actual costume design does look pretty good the gold dress that she wears is pretty accurate it's a robe all the fun says made with what looks like silk taffeta i can't admit that i don't know too much about historical sign construction but it looks fine i'm not mad about it i'm convinced that it's the early 18th century and that's kind of all that i ask for when it comes to historical accuracy in period dramas the dress that barbosa gives her is composed of a red colored silk mantua and at first glance the sleeves definitely scream 17th century to me i tried to scavenge the internet for some gowns that looked similar and only came up with a few examples from the late 1600s i guess it's all possible in the timeline because barbosa did acquire this dress from another woman he doesn't say when but i guess it could be 40 years old the only glaring thing is that the skirt of the dress looks to be of a retrosay style which is when the skirt is looped up in the back all the gowns i've seen with the skirt style are from the late 1700s for historical accuracy i'm giving her outfits a 7 out of 10 just because i can't date this red gown for the life of me for style i'm not super obsessed with the dresses i would give them a 5 out of 10 just because there's been so many period dramas focused on this time period and these dresses are just nothing to write home about compared to all the other productions i actually think the red dress is very tacky one of my instagram followers actually messaged me and was like she looks like she's on the cover of one of those bodice ripper romance novels so that's not really a compliment at least i think okay so joe writes pride and prejudice 2005 is actually a very polarizing topic i've realized in the fashion history enthusiast community we have one camp that loves the costumes that thinks even though it's not completely historically accurate the inaccuracies can be justified whereas the other camp 1995 bbc dedicated fans who think that version was so much better than this version because that one was more historically accurate in terms of costume design and in general even stuck to the unflattering trends of the era in the name of historical accuracy where do i stand on this case um i actually liked pride and prejudices 2005's costume design i don't think it was the best it probably wouldn't even make it on my top 10 costume design top 15 costume designs ever but i don't hate it i've watched a good number of jaywright films in my lifetime i've seen a lot of the director's commentary and behind the scenes footage and even though i've never met joe wright nor have i ever talked to him i feel like i understand him as a director when it comes to aesthetics i think he's very particular about style in case you didn't know he actually set his adaptation of pride and prejudice in 1790 and this was because he thought empire line dresses that were popular in the regency period were too ugly and so he wanted to push back the time period with it still making sense the bennetts are also shown to be quite lower status in this adaptation with elizabeth frequently getting dirt on her clothes and pigs just wandering in the house but this is not right they're actually not as low status as the adaptation might have you believe in addition dresses in the early 1790s were relatively full skirted so lizzy is not wearing enough petticoats in this movie for sure her dresses all look a little flat these are just general costuming notes but let's take a closer look at some of the dresses this dark green brown gown is really pretty but doesn't really work for historical accuracy duran said that she chose lizzie's color palette to be earthy because lizzy is a tomboy who loved the countryside this is pretty inaccurate to the book as well now correct me if i'm wrong because it has been a while since i read pride and prejudice but the bennetts are not supposed to be low class they're actually pretty high class because mr bennett did inherit an estate you don't inherit an estate if you're low class that's just not how it works the problem is that the bennetts failed to save enough money for their daughter's dowries which made them all less eligible for marriage regardless of that fact elizabeth bennett is a gentleman's daughter and she's actually higher class than the bingleys who are from a rich merchant family what i'm trying to get at is that she should be wearing more fashionable pastel colors her father might have less means but they're not poor women who wore darker colors are actually lower class because they had to work every day and wearing light colors was not practical for them on a style level i love this dress i love a good sweetheart neckline the crossover bodice the sheerness of the sleeves the lace trim literally all the girls are wearing white dresses of the same silhouette but lizzie's is still clearly the prettiest from these small details the bodice is actually pretty historically accurate though i think the crossover situation would be a bit higher in the chest and it would be less of a sweetheart neckline there's a brief scene of her and jane getting ready before the ball and we can see that they're both wearing chamises and transitional stays which are these short stays that came into fashion in the regency period i can't tell if she's actually wearing a stais or she meets underneath the actual gown but at least we're supposed to think she did and that's what matters lastly let's talk about the brown jumper she wears this sleeveless garment over a long-sleeve blouse with a large opening at the neck this ensemble is pretty good jumper dresses were pretty popular in the 1790s through the 1810s the buttons also modernized the dress a bit more but overall it goes with that earthy vibe they were trying to do i guess overall i give lizzy's wardrobe a seven out of ten the ball gown is really carrying the other dresses but none of them are ugly they're just not spectacular but i think that was also the point i did a whole video looking at atonement's costume design so if you're interested in that it's the first video on my channel so i would take a look at that after this video for historical accuracy i'm giving heroes looks a 7 out of 10. cecilia her character wears a couple different outfits in this film the first being this midi flowy blouse ensemble it's not completely accurate for instance women do not mismatch patterns like this and duran actually said in an interview she had trouble creating this outfit because she had no references and also like she couldn't find matching mismatching fabrics that would look good together however both pieces are pretty accurate to the 1930 silhouette and the skirt print was inspired by sonia delaney an artist and textile designer of the time period if anything i would say that the separates are pretty flimsy and wouldn't be able to adequately cover her undergarments if she was wearing all the correct ones which she isn't so the green dress also has 1930s energy but it's definitely not accurate the spaghetti strap situation and super high thigh slit would be way too sexy for the times the laser cutting detail on the bodice is not period accurate either for style i'm giving her a 10 out of 10. she looks stunning in the green dress and this may be one of the most iconic dresses in film history i've talked to so many people about this movie people who've only seen this movie one time in their lives and the green dress is always something that they mention granted i do surround myself with fashionable people but you get my point it's a memorable dress i love the color and the silhouette looks especially good on kira's body type joe wright wanted her to look ethereal and indeed she does honestly it's this green dress that carries the whole movie and this bathing suit is quite nice as well so i'm going to give the duchess a 10 out of 10 on historical accuracy this may sound a little bit crazy but i'm not like one of those teachers who believes in not giving a pluses to their students because it's impossible for someone to do a perfect job or whatever don't get me wrong the duchess is far from a perfect job but they managed to recreate costumes from 300 years ago they're not able to just go to an antique shop and buy some costume pieces they actually have to recreate them and they also have to recreate them in a way that allows actors to move more comfortably as well as to reflect the director's stylistic vision so taking all that into account michael o'connor did a pretty damn good job the most historically inaccurate element i can point out is that the clothing would not look this strap at the time especially considering georgiana's high rank 18th century fashion was known to be quite ostentatious and garish compared to today's fashion but i assume that was a purposeful choice because they wanted to match the somber tone of the movie directors and costume designs do this often for instance on the flip side we have a movie like marie antoinette which takes place during the same time period the colors are on the other end of the spectrum and way too saturated and pastel but that was done purposely to evoke tone there's i believe 27 dresses that karen wears in this film i'm just going to talk about three that stood out to me she's wearing a robe ala francaise made of silk taffeta for her wedding gown it's mostly accurate the skirt looks very similar to this extant gown from the late 1770s the gown that georgiana actually wore for her wedding did not survive unfortunately but it has been recorded as being a white and gold dress the scene where she gets undressed is pretty accurate these kinds of gowns were often pinned or basted to clothes so ralph finds cutting her out of the dress is actually how many women got undressed as crazy as it may seem to a modern audience or i guess they wouldn't be undressed by ralph finds specifically but you get what i mean she's wearing a pant a stays and a chimney's underneath if you notice the stomach her is attached to the stays which is accurate because often times the stomacher would be pinned or stitched the stays the lacing for the stays is spiral laced which is also accurate she's not wearing any underwear and her stockings are tied with ribbon garters this is all really very good the maternity dress is an interesting one because we don't see too many of those come up in period dramas her dress looks to be similar to a robe all on glaze she wears a fur stool and fur trimmed lower sleeves in the duchess by amanda foreman she writes that when pregnant in the 1780s georgiana and her friend amused themselves by experimenting with new hats and drawing patterns for dresses georgiana added the false front element to the dress to disguise pregnancy showed it to her friends and it was so well received that the false fronts were soon worn even by women who were not pregnant i tried researching more into this false front on google and i didn't find anything time to georgiana i did find an interesting fashion trend that came up in the 1790s where women would wear belly pads as another undergarment to kind of make this shape these are not designed for maternity wear but there were a bunch of satirical cartoons joking about how the woman looked pregnant i have no idea what this is georgiana's doing but considering how it took some time for trends to catch on it could be believable don't quote me on that though according to o'connor he designed the stress to reflect georgiana's role in campaigning for fox's election just some background information charles fox was one of the whig party leaders and he invited georgiana to attend a campaign rally at the time women were rarely involved in politics so the press ate this up and you can find some silly political cartoons about fox and georgiana if you google the colors of the wig party are blue and orange so she's wearing those colors she's also wearing fox fur and donning foxtails in her hair as a way to fashionably show support for fox the fox gown is a writing habit aka women's horseback riding attire its design looks to be based off of this portrait of seymour fleming i love the military look of it even though the film doesn't do a deep dive on georgiana's political involvement this costume does send a nod to it we hate to see it but men have historically been and honestly still are the main players when it comes to political involvement so when a woman wears masculine clothing it does have these symbolic undertones i would give this style for this movie an 8 out of 10. honestly it's just because as i said before with elizabeth swann i do have like a high expectation when it comes to 18th century clothing so basically when i'm watching an 18th century period piece unless it's like focused on the lower classes i expect a lot of opulence and decadence and color and you know extravagance the kind that gets aristocrats o'connor did say that they opted for simpler styles because they didn't want the costumes to be too distracting from the actual plot and dialogue because this movie is more of like an intimate drama i understand but to put it simply for eye candy purposes the duchess is no marie antoinette okay i didn't like this movie but i will say that the costumes are pretty accurate well they got right arc here is pompadour hairstyle the high neck shirt waist walking skirts and edwardian lingerie dresses lingerie dresses despite the name are not actually undergarments the reason they're called lingerie dresses is because they're made out of fabrics that are very soft and delicate and fine so i actually did a quick google search on sabina spelrain which is karen knightley's character in the movie and the real sabine actually came from a very wealthy family so imagine my disappointment when i saw that she was wearing the most underwhelming clothing maybe sabino wasn't into fashion like not all women were into fashion and clothes and looking nice but why not make her at least for the audience's pleasure at least for my pleasure this movie is not 100 historically accurate so costume design why can't we run with it a little bit more or at least have a couple fashion forward people in the background higher class women loved wearing foreign import textiles all the white was honestly just so boring if this movie has the budget to hire keira knightley and michael fassbender where's the costuming budget i'm giving the outfits a six out of ten they're not ugly they're just not memorable there is one scene though that i have to call out which is why i give historical accuracy a 8.5 out of 10. at some point sabina wears a corset without a chevys now i'm not well-versed in the history of sex and i have not read any edwardian erotica but i assume the reason that they decided to have her wearing just a corset is because this corset has become quite a sexualized garment in modern day periods behold my majestic corseted form i mean i don't know what sabine likes who's to say okay so for anna karenida i will admit that i loved the costume design some people might not expect that from me because i i guess i've made enough historical accuracy videos for people to think that i care about that the most but i actually don't i take costume design as a whole and i just i really enjoy the costumes in this movie but i also understand why people might not like it i think that if you're really excited about late victorian clothing and you kind of go into this movie thinking that you're going to see all these beautifully extravagant opulent uh victorian dresses you're going to be disappointed because you're going to get dior jacqueline duran did the costume design for this movie and joe wright is also the director for this movie and she said that joe actually told her that he wanted her to incorporate 1950s couture elements into this movie for vinyl designs she admits that she overemphasized the 1950s couture element because she wanted to show that this was very anachronistic and that the costumes were done like this on purpose with all that said it should be clear that none of anna's dresses are historically accurate um i would give the final score for that a 2 out of 10. but let's examine the underwear first she's wearing a chemise in the opening scene a corset and drawers the chamise looks to be an evening shimmies which was designed to accommodate low shoulder dresses however it doesn't really make sense because she's about to put on a long-sleeved bodice she puts on a cage crinoline which i thought was kind of odd because the crinoline kind of peaked in popularity in the 1850s and 1860s by the late 1860s the crinoline was replaced by the bustle as skirts started to narrow she also puts on a flounced petticoat over the crinoline i would actually expect her to wear way more petticoats because of the russian winter the outfit she wears when she meets ronski is a cape decorated with a peacock feather pattern over a purple dress duran said they used an example of a cape from the victoria and albert museum as a reference i couldn't find that reference but i trust her anna's also wearing a peacock feather in her hat and a first doll this is very interesting narratively because a peacock feather is actually bad luck in a lot of cultures there are many origin stories for this but in parts of eastern europe peacock feathers are symbols of bad luck because they were allegedly worn by mongols who invaded in 13th century overall i love this look i think it's very elegant i like that kira wears some fur trimmed outfits to reflect her environment i also just love how this is a scene where she meets fronsky and how she's covered in these bad luck motifs to imply to the audience that vronsky will bring her demise anna karenida also wears a black ball gown which is pretty significant because that was a detail that translated from the original book there is a whole passage describing the gown which i have included here anna was not in lilac as kitty had so urgently wished but in a black low-cut velvet gown showing her full throat and shoulders the whole gown was trimmed with venetian aguipure around her well-cut strong neck was a thread of pearls for this dress duran used valenciaga and dior asymmetrical bodices for the reference and an 1870s-esque transitional bustle adrenaline silhouette for the skirt kira is also wearing a statement chanel necklace with a camellia motif instead of a string of pearls though she does wear pearls at other points in the film when asked about the red dress duran says she chose not to bone the bodice or have kira wear corset to allow her ease of movement i assume this is the same case with the black ball gown because she does a whole dance number in it also speaking on this point a little bit more russian gowns of the time period well trendy ones tended to mix light fabrics such as tulle and chiffon with um heavy fabrics such as velvet or brocade obviously because keira is dancing and twirling around in much of the movie it's impractical for her to be wearing any heavy fabric this black ball gown is made of tulle and taffeta though duran's credit they were still popular fabric choices of the era [Music] this is the most recent period piece that i'm going to be including in this set and i was actually debating between the imitation game or the edge of love because both of them take place around the same time period i actually hadn't seen either before i decided to do this video idea and when i looked at the edge of love it actually had pretty flop reviews so i decided on the imitation game and hopefully more of you have seen it because it is more recent and i think it was up for some oscar noms not that the oscars really means anything so for some background costume designer sami sheldon differ said that for this movie it was a mixture of clothes that she had created for the movie and clothes that she either rented or bought that were original 1940s pieces she also said that when constructing characters wardrobes she tried to give each of them a very limited wardrobe to reflect the wartime rations that were happening in great britain at the time for historical accuracy curious costumes are pretty good she wears some button-down collared blouses light cardigan sweaters and a-line skirts that were popular during the decade i give the costumes a 10 out of 10 because there's nothing glaringly wrong i think in general it's pretty difficult to mess up 20th century costuming i think if you do then it's really like you just didn't do any research because there is just so much information out there there's so many garments still in good condition from this time period there really is no excuse as for style i can't say i'm a huge fan just because the 1940s isn't my particular cup of tea the 1940s look is very utilitarian and boxy that's not to say that the 1940s can't be glamorous but chelsen differs said she didn't want to make kira's character joan look like a fashion icon so we're definitely not going to see any of the more stylish garments of the decade in this movie sheldon differ also purposely made it so every outfit had something mismatching but this makes sense for that time period most women and especially working women like joan would only own one coat and one or two hats that they would rotate between i know 40s and 50s fashion catalogs show off these twin set hats and coats but that just wasn't the reality of most women i liked a few pieces that joan wears like this cardigan and actually her dress at the end is quite nice i would not personally wear either of those pieces but they look fine the colors she wears are mostly saturated blues and burgundies which are colors you won't find in my closet so i'm a little biased i'm giving her style overall a 4 out of 10 though i do think that the outfits do a good job in conveying joan's character [Music] to create her designs costume designer andrea fletch said that she spent a whole year sourcing original garments because she wanted to stay true to the fabrics and colors of the time period many of the costumes were real antique garments that were restored by the museum of applied arts in hungary for instance the yellow dress she wears at the beginning of the movie is a dress flesh found in an antique shop in the u.s all of this is 10 out of 10 worthy obviously if you're working with the original garments they are going to reflect the time period very well we could also see how fashion evolved over the 20-year period in this movie kira's character collette wears day dresses with high necklines long sleeves and a-line skirts for the 1890s portion i think it was a cheeky touch to have her wear this dress to an evening party in paris because evening dresses of the time tended to bear the chest and shoulders you can see how she looks out of place while still being historically accurate i also think this is a more admirable route than going the easy costume route which is to put the character that you want to stand out in very anachronistic clothing it's a lot more effort and just a lot better when you're able to make the character stand out in a historically accurate way she also wears a lot of shirt waves dresses and blasters with fuller sleeves walking skirts vests and short jackets as the series progresses through the early 1900s we can also see kira wearing very similar clothes to what the actual collette was photographed wearing in her life as for details that are not so accurate kira does not wear a corset in the entire movie both kira and the director of washless moreland said they wanted to forgo the corset because they wanted to emphasize how colette was breaking gender norms and you know one of those radical rebellious women but in reality colette did wear corsets it's just very tiring for me to see the justification for the no corset versus corset dilemma because the number one reason that directors say oh we wanted to get rid of the corset is because they want to cater to modern audiences idea of what a corset represents aka female oppression or whatever i wouldn't be such a stickler for the corset if the directors were like oh it just didn't make sense for the movement for the actor during the scene or you know some kind of practical excuse and not just because of this misconception of what core sets are i can't breathe yes i'm i'm a bit nervous myself for historical accuracy i give the looks a 9 out of 10. i really loved all the outfits in this period drama i would give the style a 10 out of 10. i think in a lot of period pieces costume designers are kind of afraid to give their characters neutral clothing because they're afraid of the costumes skewing on boring but i think because of colette's character and how she's able to mix and match menswear and women's wear she can have a whole closet of neutrals and every look is still fresh and innovative i love the flowy white blouses with cravats and vests i also think she looks very good in her feminine dresses as well but the androgynous outfits were definitely more of a statement you just don't see too many female characters wearing menswear seriously a lot of the times it's because the female character is in disguise or something so she's wearing these ill-fitting men's clothes and it's just not a look so that's all i have for today thank you so much for watching if you have a favorite costume that keira knightley wears please let me know if you just want to tell me what your favorite period drama kira has been in please let me know that as well i'll see you guys in my next video i hope you have a great day and take care of yourselves

Channel: Mina Le

Views: 311,189

Rating: 4.9656525 out of 5

Keywords: mina le, fashion history, keira knightley, historical accuracy, period drama, period film, atonement, pride and prejudice, pirates of the caribbean, anna karenina, the imitation game, colette, colette 2018, a dangerous method, the duchess, costume design, costume analysis, video essay, film analysis, historical fashion, cosplay

Id: 5bjLRxhhu7o

Length: 28min 24sec (1704 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 09 2020