Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Emily Brayshaw, Honorary Research Fellow, School of Design, University of Technology Sydney
Even before the film’s release, the costumes for Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights caused controversy.
Wuthering Heights was first published in 1847 and the story switches back and forth in time between 1801 and the 1770s. But Cathy’s wedding dress references an entirely different era, inspired by a 1951 Charles James haute couture gown. Cathy also appears to be wrapped in cellophane – a material first invented in 1908 – on her wedding night.
These costumes were designed by Jacqueline Durran, who previously won Oscars and BAFTAs for costume design for Anna Karenina (2012) and Little Women (2019), and a third BAFTA for Vera Drake (2005).
Some costume experts have panned Durran’s costumes as anachronistic and visually incoherent. But Vogue described them as “wild and wonderful”. So who’s right?
Designing for film
Costume design is a collaboration; the designer works closely with the director and other production creatives to make a world and bring a story to life.Costumes must make narrative sense within the world a director is building and communicate the character’s personality and story in each scene.
Often, costumes can seem so natural to a character and their world that you don’t even notice them, like Kathleen Detoro’s designs on Breaking Bad (2008–13).
Costumes can also be scene-stealers because displays of fashion and dress are part of the plot, like Durran’s costumes for Barbie (2023), or Patricia Field’s costumes for Sex and the City (1998–2004).
In Wuthering Heights, Cathy (Margot Robbie) has 50 different costumes, many featuring vintage Chanel jewellery. Other times, she is in ultra shiny, synthetic, plasticised contemporary fabric – such as a black gown that resembles an oil slick.
Heathcliff (Jacob Elordi) has fewer changes, more in keeping with Georgian dress, with his costuming riffing on the cinematic trope of the bad-boy Byronic hero.
With every character, the costumes have a life of their own.
This is not unusual for cinematic adaptations of classic literature, which have featured glamorous, luxurious costumes to attract audiences since the beginning of film history, like Georges Méliès’s Cinderella (1899) and Cecil B. DeMille’s Male or Female (1919).
Designing Wuthering Heights
Fennell’s world of Wuthering Heights is built on a collection of images and cinematic references that span time and space to show the love story is universal.
Fennell also wanted to “make something really disturbing and sexy and nightmarish” rather than faithfully recreating the book.
To do this, she accumulated a huge number of visual references and collaborated with Durran to see how and where these could fit into the film.
Instead of historically accurate costuming, Durran and Fennell created a world of stylised costumes inspired by 500 years of historical dress, contemporary fashions, images from fairy tales and popular culture, and old Hollywood technicolor films from the 1930s to the 1960s, particularly Gone With the Wind (1939) and The Wizard of Oz (1939).
This is part of a broader costuming trend rejecting complete historical accuracy when re-imagining historical eras on screen, such as the alternative Regency world of Bridgerton (2020–) and Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein (2025).
‘A collection of memoranda’
After Cathy dies in the book Heathcliff says, “The entire world is a dreadful collection of memoranda that she did exist, and that I have lost her”.
Motifs of hair, skin, bone and teeth are found throughout the film and speak to the physical, visceral nature of Heathcliff and Cathy’s passion. This echoes historical trends for mourning jewellery that featured hair, bones and teeth of deceased loved ones, and foreshadows the film’s ending.
Cathy’s jewellery is her armour. After she marries Edgar Linton (Shazad Latif), her jewellery signals her newfound wealth and security. The majority of Cathy’s costumes are black, white and red, echoing the interiors of her old and new homes, Wuthering Heights and Thrushcross Grange.
Cathy demands Nelly (Hong Chau) tighten her bridal corset, echoing the scars on Heathcliff’s back from a beating he sustained as a child when defending her. But this tightening also signals she is trapped in a loveless cage.
Edgar, the nouveau-riche textile merchant, wears suits with a period silhouette but made in contemporary, shiny fabrics; his spoilt, unhinged sister Isabella (Alison Oliver) wears tacky, frilly beribboned gowns and accessories; Heathcliff transforms from rough brute in farming clothes to rakish, Regency-style dandy with a gold tooth.
Not all of the costuming choices work. Cathy’s dirndl-style gowns are more Oktoberfest than “moorcore”. Unlike Cathy’s other costumes which aren’t historically accurate, but are still based on a bygone time, I found the dirndl gowns too similar to a style of traditional dress still worn in Bavaria, Austria and Switzerland, taking us away from the historical fantasy world of Wuthering Heights.
Let it sweep you away
While some will criticise the bold costuming choices, the beauty and skill of Durran’s work on Wuthering Heights are undeniable.
We should embrace Durran’s costumes and their blend of romantic, historical silhouettes and imagery with glossy, gauzy fabrics and sexy, contemporary, high fashion looks.
Don’t look for historical accuracy in Fennell’s Wuthering Heights. That will lead to disappointment. Instead, let the sensual, opulent costumes, the brash, bold scenography and the chemistry between Robbie and Elordi sweep you away to a sumptuous, imaginary world.
– ref. Are the costumes for Wuthering Heights accurate? No. Are they magnificent? Absolutely yes – https://theconversation.com/are-the-costumes-for-wuthering-heights-accurate-no-are-they-magnificent-absolutely-yes-274971
