Black Doves is ostensibly an action thriller series about a steely British spy risking it all to avenge her hunky murdered lover. Perhaps even more importantly, though. Black Doves is a show about Keira Knightley wearing really chic coats.
Set in London at Christmas, the six-part Netflix mystery sees Knightley transform into Helen Webb, a dutiful mother, and politician's wife leading a double life as an intelligence operative who sells state secrets to the highest bidder. (Honestly, is there anyone who plays "woman who seems a little bit hard to love at first" better than Knightley? I'll wait.)
Based on that plot summary, you might expect her wardrobe to be extremely bifurcated between a conservative Tory wife and an undercover agent. But costume designer Ian Fulcher found a clever way to merge Helen's two identities into one continuous understanding of her personal style. After all, that is perhaps the show's central theme: Two halves of the same person still add up to one restless individual.
"Even though there is a duality to her look, it also had to seem believable that if Helen were heading out for an assignment and bumped into somebody she did know as the wife of a Member of Parliament, she wouldn’t look odd in her attire," Fulcher explains.
As such, Fulcher ensured Helen's sartorial leanings remained consistent across her everyday life and undercover dealings. The burgundy or orange cashmere roll-neck sweaters and wide-leg jeans she wears in her "normal" life are still present when she goes out to hunt down her enemies at night. The only difference is that she might top her quiet luxury attire with a trusty old brown leather jacket she used to wear in the field. Like a true working mom in the city, Helen needs a wardrobe that can take her from day to night.
Although Black Doves is a contemporary show, most of Fulcher's references for Helen's wardrobe came from classic crime-thriller cinema and the golden age of spy dramas.
"From the start, '60s and '70s films such as Klute, The Parallax View, and Marathon Man were heavy influences for the overall design ethos of the show," Fulcher says. "For Helen, I also included in her concept boards iconic individuals such as Catherine Deneuve from Belle de Jour and the cool, classic Grace Kelly from the '50s and '60s.
"Oh, and the odd image of when a British Member of Parliament’s wife looked effortlessly stylish—not so many of those!" he adds.
The '70s influence comes through clearest in Helen's flashback scenes, where she's pictured wearing high-waisted, wide-cut jeans with' 70s-embroidered plimsolls and a nostalgic olive green parka coat layered with a cropped burnt umber hoodie. Elsewhere, the '60s nod manifests in high-waisted trousers or maxi skirts paired with cashmere sweaters and silk blouses tucked into wide belts.
"Keeping that classic trope felt right for retaining as it embodied the classic spy genre," Fulcher explains.
Fulcher's meticulous approach extended even to Helen's carefully controlled color palette, which emphasizes warm holiday hues and employs white or "cold" shades only as accents. His commitment to those hues often meant much of Helen's wardrobe had to be created from scratch.
"I ended up making all the coats for Helen, Sam, and Reed, as I never found the perfect cut in the perfect color which echoed our inspirations," he reveals. "It took three weeks and lots of fabric stores in the UK and Europe to source the perfect shade of tobacco for Helen’s coat as the options would be too brown or too orange, or the cashmere too furry."
However, the costume designer's proudest moment from Black Doves season one was the matching burgundy silk blouse and pleated skirt set Helen slips on to host her family's Christmas party—a memorable and galvanizing moment. This look, too, was custom-made in a quest for "the perfect tonal shades in the right cut."
"I made the entire outfit, from the silk blouse and the pleather pleated maxi skirt to the matching suede belt," Fulcher says. "All the textures and sheen give her an elegant hardness, which played to her duality when hosting a party but then confronting Reed with a knife ten minutes later."
Get you a girl who can do both, I suppose!
Although most of Helen's clothes are bespoke, you can still find similar pieces to catch her nostalgic cloak-and-dagger meets high-profile housewife vibe.
