Deep in rehearsals for The Lives of Others in the West End, Keira Knightley had not given one thought to the season two press tour by the time it rolled around. “I trust you, just do it,” was the message her friend and stylist of more than 20 years, Leith Clark, received from the booked-and-busy star, who is enjoying a mid-life career shift as a top spy climbing the Netflix charts.
Clark, who Knightley met when the former editor left Conde Nast to start her own magazine, , in the mid-Noughties, did what she does best and called Chanel, Prada and Loro Piana: “I come from a place of storytelling, which is nice to bring a narrative to red-carpet dressing.”
The fashion spin this time around was, in part, Knightley, the biker babe. Due to the actor’s theatre commitments, there was a high chance Keira would have to mototaxi her way from the Adelphi Theatre to Leicester Square for the premiere. In the end, the season two screener took place a stone’s throw away at Savoy Place, but Clark held onto the idea that Keira “could do anything and not be constrained by clothing”. Tailoring, by way of Matthieu Blazy, was key, and her black Chanel couture suit, sprinkled with noirish feathers and the most perfect cherry buttons, stayed true to the season one press tour aesthetic, which saw the pair remove all colour from Knightley’s clothes in keeping with the dark subplots of the moreish thriller.
Watching Keira as Helen Webb, a Tory wife turned snitch who infiltrates the British government, a second time around, Clark was struck by the freedom of the secret agent’s uniform. Pencil skirts? Nope. Ladies-who-lunch dresses? Not a chance. “For a Prime Minister’s wife [spoiler alert!], it’s all quite free.” This effortlessness threaded into every other piece Clark picked for Keira, so that she could turn up and not think about pulling off a look. “Full transparency: we didn’t even do a fitting for season two.”
“I think about her a lot in my life anyway,” continues the stylist, for whom editorial fashion will always come first. “When watching the shows, Keira is in my head, so then I can feel my way into her projects quite easily having talked or not talked. It’s been very instinctual from the start.”
Case in point: amidst the junkets – of which there are sadly few pictures – Clark dressed Knightley in a preppy-meets-showgirl Erdem dress for the opening night of The Lives of Others – “a singular moment,” says Leith, that had an ethereal tone to separate it from “all the fighting and physicality of ”, while nodding to the playfulness of the performing arts. It was effortlessly spectacular – just like everything this power duo quietly pulls off.