This dress is a bit of a chameleon. The fabric is shot silk and thus has a shine that can make it appear pink, green, and even brown when it appears in different films under different lighting conditions.

This dress, from the 2005 Casanova, designed by Jenny Beavan, is also interesting because it is an excellent example of costume duplicates. Many films have copies of a gown made for various reasons. Sometimes they are for use on body doubles, stunt doubles, or photo doubles, and other times they are needed if a film calls for the gown to be aged or to go through some kind of change, such as getting wet or dirty. Some well-known examples of costumes that required numerous duplicates would be Vivien Leigh’s calico dress for Gone with the Wind, which goes through various stages of age and disrepair, and ultimately called for a total of seventeen versions of the dress to be produced. Another example would be Kate Winslet’s “Swim Gown” from Titanic, which supposedly had twenty-seven duplicates!

In this particular instance, however, it appears that only three duplicates of this costume were made. At least one of them was worn on Natalie Dormer as Victoria in the 2005 Casanova. One version of the gown went on to be used in the 2006 film Marie Antoinette on an extra, where some fur trim appears to have been lightly pinned over the ruching to give it a slightly different look. The original trim still appears to be intact underneath the fur, and it’s likely that the fur was removed after filming. Two of the gowns went on to be used in different episodes of the 2008 HBO mini-series John Adams. The first appeared on an extra in the episode Join or Die, and another was used in The Reunion. One of the versions was seen in the 2008 film The Duchess on an extra, and the 2012 film A Royal Affair used all three gowns at once on ladies in waiting. You can see that one of the three gowns has had an additional pink bow added to the already extant bows. In 2013 one of the gowns was used in an episode of Horrible Histories on Alice Lowe, and Gugu Mbatha-Raw wore another version as Dido Elizabeth Belle in the film Belle. Lastly, all three gowns were used together again in the 2015 pilot episode of the Amazon series Casanova.