I've said it before and I'll say it again: the green dress that adorned Keira Knightley in Atonement deserves an Oscar. Oh sure, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences saw fit to give the film a Costume Design nomination, but that's not what I meant at all. That dress deserves a Best Supporting Inanimate Object (That's Really Quite Animated) statue at least.I don't want the dress. I want to be the dress.
But those of you who would settle for owning it are in luck. If you have a few greenbacks to spend on the green bit of silk. From an NBC Universal media release:
An iconic piece of movie history from one of this year's Best Picture Oscar nominees will be auctioned off to benefit Variety – The Children's Charity of Southern California, beginning later this week.(The green dress wants me to remind you that smoking's bad, kids.)
The Clothes Off Our Back Foundation will host the online auction of the green evening dress worn by Keira Knightley in Focus Features' Atonement, which is nominated for 7 Academy Awards including Best Picture and Best Costume Design.
The auction begins Friday, February 1st at the Foundation's site www.clothesoffourback.org and ends Saturday, March 1st. Bidding will start at $1,000. The auction is for the green evening dress memorably worn during the crucial emotional and romantic sequences by Ms. Knightley as Cecilia Tallis, opposite James McAvoy as Robbie Turner, in director Joe Wright's Atonement. Upon the film's release, the dress quickly became one of the most influential cinematic costumes of recent years, being spotlighted on The Today Show and detailed on the covers of newspapers and magazines.
The dress being auctioned off, taken directly from the production's archives, is one of a handful that was made specifically for Ms. Knightley to wear during filming. Multiples were fashioned because of the fragility of the dress. The dress being auctioned off was made under the supervision of, and has been authenticated by, Jacqueline Durran, who is nominated for an Academy Award for her costume design of Atonement.
Ms. Durran elaborated, "Joe Wright wanted something that would flow because Keira Knightley would have to move around in it. We picked this specific shade of green for the backless dress, and Keira was involved in the process, so it really was a collaboration."
