Spotlight On Jacqueline Durran’s Costume Design

Jacqueline Durran is a British costume designer who, after her studies at the Royal College of Art, which did not formally include that of costume or fashion design, began her career in clothing by selling vintage clothes at Camden and Portobello Road markets. This taught her how to date clothes in the 20th century. This newly acquired knowledge allowed her to break into the costuming industry via the West End costume house, Angels, which she followed with a job assisting costume designer Lindy Hemming for approximately five years. From here, Durran worked her way up through the industry, obtaining her first BAFTA Film Award for Best Costume Design with Mike Leigh’s Vera Drake (2004), demonstrating Durran’s proficiency for the costuming of period films early in her career. She has also been acknowledged for her work in historical costuming with her 2013 and 2020 BAFTA and Academy Award wins for Anna Karenina and Little Women respectively. Alongside these achievements, Durran has been nominated for 11 BAFTA Awards and 9 Academy Awards recognising her work in costume design.

Durran’s costumes have shaped moments in the cultural zeitgeist

However, it is not only the critics whose attention has been captured by Durran’s designs, but also the everyday audience member. Take, for instance, Durran’s work on Joe Wright’s Atonement (2007), in which she costumed Kiera Knightley in an unforgettable emerald-green slip dress, inspired by London in the mid-‘30s. This dress has a V-shaped neckline and an open back; both framed with a series of subtly sensual pin-prick cut-outs. It also employs a draping that folds along the hips, drawing the eye effortlessly towards a skirt that liquidly billows behind Knightly as she moves through the scenes where it is worn. This dress which, following the film’s release, was crowned the ‘greatest film costume ever’ by both a Sky Movies and an InStyle poll, still lingers in the cultural zeitgeist, with a 2020 British Vogue article naming it one of the most unforgettable green dresses in film. Moreover, in 2024 Nensi Dojaka recreated this dress for Alexa Chung, and Tori Burch brought her interpretation of the dress to the fore for Vogue World 2025: Hollywood, continuing to reinforce the lasting influence of Durran’s costuming.

Another instance where Durran’s costumes have shaped a moment in the cultural zeitgeist is that of Greta Gerwig’s Barbie (2023), which incited the bright pink Barbiecore trend that dominated culture in the summer following the film’s release. In fact, my friends and I dressed in pink to see Barbie at the cinema, and we certainly weren’t the only ones, with the Guardian producing an article discussing the bright and very pink outfits their readers wore to cinema screenings of Barbie during this period.

Durran estimated that she and her team custom- made 450 out of [Barbie’s] 1,000 total costumes

Durran explains that her approach to costuming Barbie, which was nominated for both a BAFTA and an Academy Award for Costume Design, was one of both practicality and feasibility for the world of this doll, with “the defining characteristic of what she wears [being] where she’s going and what she’s doing”. This approach is undeniably demonstrated by the various costumes worn in the scenes that take place in Barbieland, where, for example, a dance party shows the Barbies to be dressed in unique yet uniformly extravagant gold and white occasion wear, inspired by the colour schemes Durran saw whilst researching in Mattel’s back catalogues.

Further epitomising this doll-logic of perceived practicality is the hot pink western-inspired ensemble that Robbie’s Barbie dons after realising her Hot Skatin’ Barbie-inspired outfit is too conspicuous in the human world. The costume consists of a waistcoat and trousers set with star-shaped accents and lace-up threading, and is made of a pink stretch fabric printed with denim texture. This outfit is accompanied by a range of accessories employing the same star motif, including shooting-star style earrings; a white cowboy hat with pink, starred banding; and starry white and gold cowboy boots. This motif likely links to the all-American likeability Durran thought Barbie would be striving for in this scene. Amazingly, in addition to this costume, Durran estimated that she and her team custom-made 450 out of the movie’s 1,000 total costumes, demonstrating her dedication to executing Gerwig’s vision for this film.

In an interview for Fashionista, Durran stated that “the director is just the absolute key to any project”, and that when working with a director “it’s absolutely critical […] that you can be excited by […] their take on something”. In line with this statement, Durran’s costumes have recently fulfilled another director’s specific vision; that of Emerald Fennell’s upcoming adaptation of Wuthering Heights.

While Durran and Fennell may not have striven for period accuracy in this retelling of Wuthering Heights, it does seem that they are choosing to embody storytelling and the communication of what the person is about through costume

Now, as a student of literature, I tend to observe with a mix of both excitement and terror whenever a film adaptation of a book I like is announced, and this feeling is not unique to myself. Fans of Emily Brontë’s original novel took to the internet in droves to contest Robbie’s costum[ing] from the very first paparazzi shots of this film. Specifically, the initial outrage took issue with Robbie’s anachronistic white wedding dress, which wouldn’t become popular until Queen Victoria’s 1840 wedding, around forty years after Brontë’s Wuthering Heights is set. However, the question must be asked; is historical accuracy really what was being attempted during the costuming of this film?

As more costumes were revealed through the marketing of Wuthering Heights, the answer to this question became a resounding no. Fennell’s Catherine is shown to wear a pale pink, cellophane-esque dress with a ribbon tied around the waist, which Durran states in an interview for Vogue is “about Cathy being a gift on her wedding night, making herself a gift”. Moreover, the trailer includes a scene in which Catherine wears a lavish white dress, paired with little red glasses and a bejewelled cross intended to reflect the “opulent, stylised Gothic story” they are retelling. Neither of these dresses, nor their accessories, can be said to be period accurate, and yet, they do seem to reflect Catherine’s characterisation at this point in the narrative.

Catherine has deliberately and self-servingly married into wealth that is far greater than her own, using marriage to fulfil her desire to climb the social ladder. Thus, these overly extravagant and anachronistic dresses seem to play a narrative purpose, displaying that Catherine is playing the part of the excessively wealthy wife that her husband expects; reflecting the transactional nature of Catherine’s marriage. Therefore, while Durran and Fennell may not have striven for period accuracy in this retelling of Wuthering Heights, it does seem that they are choosing to embody storytelling and the communication of what the person’s about through costume, a central belief in Durran’s approach to costuming film. Will Durran’s costumes for Wuthering Heights prove the early nay-sayers wrong and result in another award nomination? Only time can tell.