“Wuthering Heights”: The Clothes Cause the Real Scandal

This Saturday marks Valentine’s Day and the premiere of Emerald Fennell’s bold adaptation of Wuthering Heights. If heart-shaped chocolate boxes and roses aren’t enough to get you in the mood, perhaps two hours and sixteen minutes of ball gowns and BDSM might do the trick?

The film, starring Margot Robbie as Catherine and Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff, has received a mixed response. Online, however, it has been hotly debated long before anyone has seen as much as a single frame. And it is not the toxic love story, nor Fennell’s flirtation with sexual taboos, that has caused the greatest uproar. It is Margot Robbie’s costumes. Her age. And her hair.

Emily Brontë’s novel is famously unromantic, it is a feral, brutal study of obsession, cruelty and emotional decay. And domestic violence. It was published in 1847, but the narrative begins in 1801, with the main, tumultuous events told in flashback, taking place roughly between 1770 and 1802. Fennell has never claimed fidelity. Instead, her film is a highly personal, stylised interpretation, driven by mood rather than historical precision. Even the title, placed in quotation marks, signals that this is not a definitive adaptation but an aesthetic proposition.

That proposition, however, has infuriated Brontë purists. Ever since the first paparazzi images of Margot Robbie leaked, fans have taken to social media to complain that nothing aligns with the book’s gothic bleakness.

The many tableau’s (photos above) are dramatic enough. But expectations leaned towards a darker palette, austere silhouettes and period-accurate restraint. Robbie, blonde and 35, playing the 18-year-old, dark-haired Catherine, has been described — repeatedly — as “wrong” and nicknamed her Brontë-Barbie.

In the podcast Ruthie’s Table, Fennell explains that her ambition was to capture the raw, destructive intensity she felt when reading Wuthering Heights as a teenager, rather than producing a faithful adaptation. It is a defensible artistic choice — and one that places costume firmly at the centre of the film’s emotional language. To realise this vision, she turned to costume designer Jacqueline Durran,, who has previously designed costumes for Kirsten Stewart in Spencer, Keira Knightley in Anna Karenina, and Margot Robbie in Barbie.

“With overlaps and reuse, we created between 45 and 50 costumes just for Cathy,” Durran told British Vogue in January. She cites the Tudor period, classic Hollywood cinema, and contemporary elements as her primary sources of inspiration. During the design process, she worked with mood boards filled with vintage pieces by Thierry Mugler and Alexander McQueen. And while Robbie’s costumes do not contain many direct references to these designers, Durran says they were a major influence on the film’s costume design — particularly Catherine Earnshaw’s wardrobe.

“Our references ranged from Elizabethan (1558–1603) to Georgian (1714–1830) and Victorian (1837–1901), from paintings and historical garments to modern fashion and period costumes as depicted in twentieth-century films. The challenge was distilling all of this into a look that told the story Emerald wanted to tell,” Durran told Vogue.

In short, Catherine’s outfits resemble an eclectic mix of red-carpet gowns and Oktoberfest costumes, paired with ostentatious Chanel jewellery — reportedly real — and a red dress that looks as though it’s made of latex. The latter, according to Durran, was designed to make Catherine “shine”, reflecting the character’s complex personality.

Jacob Elordi’s Heathcliff, by contrast, is dressed in a more historically grounded manner, according to Durran.

“Heathcliff has always been a kind of Georgian-era hero, and we felt that suited Jacob very well. So we chose a style reminiscent of the early nineteenth century. He wears dark colours as he is clearly very brooding. He has the white shirts of classic romantic heroes and a long black coat. It’s a heroic, Byronic look that has been established over time in film and theatre,” she says.

And yes, Elordi does look like a paperback fantasy made flesh: unkempt, gold-toothed, volatile, and radiating a bad-boy swagger that Fifty Shades’ Christian can only dream of. Viewed through a contemporary lens, he also serves as a reminder that fantasy and reality should never be confused, and of the novel’s ugliest truth: that desire and lust cannot be tamed, even when they become fatal.