“Folks inform me the way it’s their favourite movie to look at on a Sunday afternoon when it’s raining. I’m so thrilled that it’s received that place in folks’s hearts,” Jacqueline Durran mentioned, reminiscing on the lasting relevance of the 2005 movie adaptation of Jane Austen’s honored novel “Delight & Prejudice.” The 2-time Oscar-winner served because the costume designer for director Joe Wright’s characteristic movie debut, a time when Durran was utterly new to the world of cinema.
“Delight & Prejudice” celebrates its twentieth anniversary in 2025, coinciding with Jane Austen’s 250th birthday. The movie obtained large crucial acclaim on the time of its debut, and earned 4 Oscar nominations, together with Durran’s first nod of 9 for her costume designs. She’s since received the Greatest Costume Design statuette for “Anna Karenina” (2013) and “Little Ladies” (2020). Twenty years on, even Durran cedes to the movie’s continued accessibility.
(L-R) Jena Malone, Keira Knightley, Rosamund Pike, Talulah Riley, Brenda Blethyn and Carey Mulligan in “Delight & Prejudice” (2005).
Focus Options/courtesy Everett Assortment
“We have been speaking about it not too long ago as a result of it seems like a special period of filmmaking,” Durran mentioned on a late March afternoon over Zoom, a Hoover operating indiscriminately in one other room of her dwelling.
“We have been a lot on the hoof, and we have been younger to it. And it was all recent,” Durran mentioned. “It was actually a skeleton crew in comparison with the sort of crew sizes you have got immediately. We simply moved across the nation as this type of touring band of filmmakers and made this movie that we simply beloved making. It actually was a pleasure to make. It was onerous. However there was simply one thing within the spirit of the movie that was only a fantastic expertise.”
Durran described the manufacturing of the 2005 movie as a “blossoming” of then-burgeoning skills, together with now-Oscar-nominated actors Keira Knightley, Rosamund Pike and Carey Mulligan. On the time of the movie’s pre-production, Durran recalled her interview for the movie. “I wasn’t certain that I actually even wished to do the job once I first went for the assembly as a result of I simply felt I used to be the incorrect individual for it,” Durran mentioned, referencing the then-“institution” of filmmaking.
Rosamund Pike in “Delight & Prejudice” (2005).
Focus Options/courtesy Everett Assortment
“I believe again then it was perhaps movie wasn’t such an open business,” she mentioned. “It was rather more, sort of, conventional, at that time. And I felt like maybe it simply wasn’t the job for me. I used to be a younger designer and I hadn’t had that a lot expertise. Notably not in that sort of interval. So, I went to fulfill [Joe Wright] however I believe that, actually, my newness was one thing that was interesting. [Joe] wished to return at it with such a recent take. He didn’t essentially need anyone who’d accomplished it earlier than. He wished somebody coming at it freshly as he was.”
That newfangled strategy to Jane Austen’s materials started with the time interval. Although “Delight & Prejudice” was initially printed in 1813, sq. in the midst of England’s Regency period, Wright and Durran took the movie again to the late 18th century, on the time when Austen started the primary drafts of her story, then titled “First Impressions.”
“Joe and I mentioned the completely different kinds — the distinction between, say, 1797, which I believe was the date we selected to set [the film] and say 1815. It was actually to do with how the waist rose and rose and rose,” Durran mentioned, referencing the waistline of Regency period clothes.
Keira Knightley in “Delight & Prejudice” (2005).
Focus Options/courtesy Everett Assortment
“[Joe] discovered the sooner [style] extra fascinating and extra engaging. I used to be very glad to go along with that.” With Durran understanding the time interval for the movie’s manufacturing and execution for the costumes, she was met with “one other downside” that invariably obtained some criticism. “There are so few issues obtainable appropriate to 1797 versus what number of issues can be found to 1815,” she mentioned of sourcing the costumes.
“I received numerous criticism in regards to the military uniforms being the incorrect date. Clearly, in a movie like ‘Delight & Prejudice,’ you’re not going to make 250 troopers of the right uniform.” Durran used the Waterloo uniforms, characterised by the purple waist jackets, grey trousers and stovepipe shakos.
“You’re going to make use of the Waterloo uniforms as a result of they’re there and, really, it’s not in regards to the uniforms.” Actually, Durran’s costuming served as a part of the movie’s visible language — an extension of every character’s qualities and idiosyncrasies. Her course of begins with consideration for “how the character can be mirrored,” she mentioned.
Keira Knightley, left, and Matthew Macfadyen in “Delight & Prejudice” (2005).
Focus Options/courtesy Everett Assortment
“There was positively a sense that the Bennetts have been provincial and have been behind the curve fashion-wise,” Durran mentioned of the principal household within the story. “For Jane, she can be so female. She’d be in pink and pale blue. Elizabeth can be in rather more earthy colours. She can be not-so female. The truth is, there was extra criticism of the truth that Elizabeth was carrying a person’s coat firstly,” Durran recalled.
The Bennett sisters comprised 5 in all — Jane (Pike), Elizabeth (Knightley), Mary (Talulah Riley), Kitty (Mulligan) and Lydia (Jena Malone) — with every character possessing their very own distinctive look and magnificence. “When you have got a gaggle of women like that, it’s actually essential to offer all of them a definite character,” she mentioned.
Regardless of the choice to largely embody kinds from the late 18th century, Durran subtly nodded to the altering tone of vogue, significantly silhouette, with one character. “Caroline Bingley was positively extra superior fashion-wise as a result of she’d come from London,” Durran mentioned of the character, portrayed by Kelly Reilly within the movie
(L-R) Keira Knightley, Simon Woods, Kelly Reilly and Matthew Macfadyen in “Delight & Prejudice” (2005).
Focus Options/courtesy Everett Assortment
“It was crucial to grasp that the Bennetts have been provincial — they lived within the countryside, they made their very own garments, if not that they had them from a neighborhood dressmaker. There was nothing London about them. Any strikes in vogue can be evident by Caroline Bingley, not by the Bennetts,” she mentioned. “That was positively baked into the characterization of the movie.”
For the manufacturing, Durran relied on English vogue homes Cosprop and Sands Movies, the place the principal characters’ costumes have been made. “That’s once more one other instance of a special scale of filmmaking,” Durran mentioned. “These days, likely, I’d have a workroom and we’d make them in-house. However we didn’t. It was a small movie and we simply made them within the costume homes. That was the dimensions of our funds and what we may obtain.”
Since “Delight & Prejudice,” Durran collaborated with filmmaker Joe Wright on a number of of the director’s movies, together with “Atonement” (2007), “Anna Karenina” (2012) and “Cyrano” (2021), amongst others. Its a collaborative relationship Durran calls a “thrilling trip. You already know that you just’re within the fingers of a director who will make your work look good and can worth your work. In case you’re placing that a lot power and energy into what issues appear to be that can actually be represented within the movie. He’s a director that loves the visible facet of filmmaking.”
Keira Knightley in “Delight & Prejudice” (2005).
Focus Options/courtesy Everett Assortment
The oftentimes arduous, difficult course of of constructing a film is front-of-mind for Durran, particularly within the yr of this “Delight & Prejudice” adaptation’s twentieth anniversary. “I used to be fascinated about the sort of alchemy of filmmaking,” Durran mentioned.
“You possibly can put the perfect group collectively…however typically it really works and typically it doesn’t. I believe there was one thing very distinct within the alchemy of ‘Delight & Prejudice.’ [Joe] wasn’t a longtime director. It was his first high-profile movie. It was my first time working with him. We have been a brand new crew and it was younger actors and we have been going off on this journey and the sort of feeling amongst the crew was tied to the sensation within the e book: it was very youthful,” she recalled.
“I believe ‘Delight & Prejudice’ is a incredible instance of that filmmaking alchemy of when all the pieces comes collectively and makes a very stunning movie.”
Jacqueline Durran holds her Oscar for Greatest Costume Design for “Little Ladies” on the Academy Awards on Feb. 9, 2020.
Elizabeth Goodenough/Everett Assortment
A “stunning movie” derived from a traditional work, Durran mirrored on the serendipity of each the “Delight & Prejudice” twentieth anniversary and Austen’s 250th birthday, calling the revered writer a “sensible” and “unimaginable” author. “She has held this explicit place in our tradition,” Durran mused.
“I believe it’s as a result of she’s so accessible. It doesn’t really feel such as you’re studying an outdated story. You instantly perceive the dynamics of the characters…the way in which it may be tailored to trendy interpretation or traditional interval interpretations; it’s simply tales which can be so true and so they’re so alive. I believe she is going to simply proceed to be held within the esteem she’s held in these days.”
