Keira Knightley's emerald-green Atonement dress is heading to auction, nearly two decades after a version of the gown fetched $46,000 (£35,000) at a charity sale. The backless silk dress will go under the hammer at Christie's in London on 9 December, with an estimate of up to £120,000.
At the top of that estimate, it would fetch around three and a half times the $46,000 paid for a version in 2008. Thais Hitchins, head of sale at Christie's London, called it 'one of the most instantly recognizable' dresses in fashion history.
Knightley wore the gown as Cecilia Tallis in Joe Wright's 2007 adaptation of Ian McEwan's novel, in the film's pivotal library scene, where Cecilia and Robbie, played by James McAvoy, finally confess their feelings. Christie's said it has remained in a private collection in the US since a charity auction in 2008.
From Charity Sale to Christie's
That timeline matches a March 2008 auction run by the charity initiative Clothes Off Our Back, which raised money for Variety – The Children's Charity of Southern California. Bidding opened at just $1,000 (£750), and the size 2 dress sold for $46,000.
The listing at the time described it as a costume taken straight from the production's archives and authenticated by costume designer Jacqueline Durran. It also revealed a detail many fans may not know: the gown was one of several made for Knightley to wear during filming.
Why There Was More Than One
The dress was so delicate that it tore easily, so Durran's team made spare pieces to keep filming on track. 'We had three or four skirts and 10 bodices and when they tore, we would quickly repair them,' she has said.
Even the famous shade took careful work. Durran, Wright and cinematographer Seamus McGarvey put together a stack of green swatches, which dyer Tim Shanahan used to create the final colour on fine cream silk. The beaded detail on the bodice was inspired by a photograph by French photographer Jacques Henri Lartigue.
Durran has also admitted the gown is not strictly true to its 1930s setting. 'I chose elements from 1920s and 1930s dresses that I liked: the dress is not an authentic 30s dress,' she said.
The emerald-green dress which Keira Knightley wore in "Atonement" (2007) was named as "greatest film costume ever" by InStyle Magazine. Joe Wright had asked costume designer Jacqueline Durran to create a “memorable” dress for the library scene.According to Wright, Durran deliberately kept the seam down the middle of the skirt open, which would normally be sewn shut in a dress design for "easy access" in this scene. Durran said, "Wright knew that he wanted movement in the skirt. He liked the idea of it being bare-backed. But really, apart from that, there was very little instruction—direct instruction—from him about what the dress should be like. He wanted it as showstopping as we could make it, and that it should be green"Rather than just making 1 green dress, the costume team actually produced multiple versions of the dress due to its fragility—with Knightley auctioning off the one from her collection for charity in 2009. It went under the hammer for $35,000, with an LA Times article at the time noting that “someday the dress could be right up there” with Audrey Hepburn’s costume in "Breakfast at Tiffany's" (1961) , or Marilyn Monroe’s white halterneck dress in "The Seven Year Itch" (1955).("The Story Behind Keira Knightley’s Emerald-Green Slip Dress From Atonement", Emily Chan, Vogue, 2025 and IMDb)P.S: On this day, 19 years ago, "Atonement" (2007) premiered at the Malmö Filmdagar, Sweden.
— DepressedBergman (@DannyDrinksWine) August 27, 2026
Voted the Greatest Film Costume
The dress made an impact almost immediately. Within months of the film's release, a Sky Movies and InStyle poll voted it the best film costume of all time, ahead of famous looks worn by Audrey Hepburn and Marilyn Monroe.
Durran earned an Oscar nomination for Atonement and has since won two Academy Awards, for Anna Karenina and Little Women. Even so, she has said the dress's success caught her off guard.
'It was a complete surprise how much it did resonate with people and how much it was picked out as a single look from the movie,' she said in 2017.
The gown will be offered in Christie's 'Love & Lust: A Literary Guide' sale, and the auction house expects interest from private collectors, film fans and museums. Whoever wins it on 9 December will own one version of a costume so delicate that its makers needed several skirts and 10 bodices to finish filming.
