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"    Photo: Getty Images   When director Joe Wright and Keira Knightley make a film together, they seem to have a knack for creating romances that are as striking and composed as a Balanchine ballet. But they also have a secret weapon in costume designer Jacqueline Durran, who worked on Pride and Prejudice and Atonement. In Wright&amp;#039;s new adaptation of Anna Karenina, Durran once again created standout costumes, including a few stunning ball gowns, for Knightley as Karenina. The film itself is an incredibly stylized vision of 1870s St. Petersburg through the slightly gauzy lens of a 1950s melodrama. To depict the Russian upper crust, Durran created costumes that convey high drama through bustled dresses, furry stoles, severe necklines, and many veils. ELLE.com spoke with Durran on working with the actors and revisiting Tolstoy.    ELLE: This is your third film working with Wright, what did you first think when you heard he was doing Anna Karenina? Jacqueline Durran: Joe is a really visual director, so every time I do a film with him, I go to him at the beginning, and he tells me what his angle in the situation is. This was slightly different. But he always wanted to stylize the costumes. He wanted everyone to have a very distinct silhouette. The way he explained it is that he wanted it to be 1950s couture. So I looked at 1950s couture and I studied the 1870s, and I came up with this hybrid. I maybe overemphasized the 50s details on the costumes, because I wanted it to be clear what we did.  ELLE: How much do you collaborate with the actors when you start figuring out the wardrobe\u2014especially since this is also the third time you&amp;#039;ve worked with Keira?  JD: Joe&amp;#039;s vision is the dominant vision. It is very important with each film that you do, that you don&amp;#039;t come at it with your thing. You make the director&amp;#039;s film, and you do what they want. Within that, I always want to collaborate with the actors. I don&amp;#039;t find it interesting to just impose an idea onto them, and then they have to wear it. If they say &amp;#039;Yeah this is not really working. This is not how I feel the character would look for this big scene,&amp;#039; then you need to rethink it. I love working with Keira. She really is a true collaborator, and she takes the work very seriously.  ELLE: This story is so iconic. What was it like rereading the book now versus the first time you read it?  JD: There&amp;#039;s no easy answer to that question. I probably read it when I was in university in my twenties. Reading it now in my forties, I found it absolutely astounding, astoundingly better than I remembered it. There are remarkable descriptions in it like the description of the horse race. It&amp;#039;s so brilliant and evocative and such a kind of microcosm of the whole story. The second thing is that they describe the costumes a lot. It&amp;#039;s very evocative of details. There was one moment where Joe, Keira and I were discussing whether Anna should wear black at the ball. It&amp;#039;s such a big thing in the book that she does. We were debating whether to follow Tolstoy or not. It turns out that Tolstoy described the dress in the most fantastic way. It wasn&amp;#039;t really about the dress as much as it was about how the dress framed Anna.  ELLE: You did Pride and Prejudice, which was much more natural than Anna Karenina, which is very dramatically stylized. Do you have a preference between the two, or is it just different approaches to the same job?  JD: It&amp;#039;s different ways of approaching the same job. It&amp;#039;s a good question, because you&amp;#039;re trying to figure it out. Joe gave me very clear brief for Anna Karenina. He said &amp;#039;Always use the idea of it being provincial as your touchstone.&amp;#039; It gives you the mood of the piece that you&amp;#039;ll always be searching for. The most rewarding situation is to work with a director who gives you direction and is interested in what you do and collaborates with you. It&amp;#039;s the most creative way of working I think.  More: Read this exclusive interview with Keira Knightley on Anna Karenina. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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