Are the Costumes for Wuthering Heights Accurate? No. Are they Magnificent? Absolutely Yes

Margot Robbie's Cathy in a black and white gown inspired by a Winterhalter painting. Photograph: Joap Buitendijk. Cover picture of Issey Miyake SS26 by Jay Zoo for DAM

By Emily Brayshaw

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.

Cathy’s wedding dress would be more at home in the 20th century than the 18th. Photo Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures

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.

The film draws on 500 years of art and fashion influences. Photo Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures

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.

Heathcliff’s costuming riffs off the cinematic trope of the bad-boy Byronic hero. Photo Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures

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.

The costumes aren’t quite historically accurate – but they’re sumptuous. Photo Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures

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.

Emily Brayshaw, Honorary Research Fellow, School of Design, University of Technology Sydney

76th Berlin Film Festival Awards: Bearing Witness - From Red Carpet to Golden Bear Gravitas as 'Yellow Letters' Seals a Politically Charged Night

Turkish-German director Ilker Catak on the red carpet in Berlin. He won the Golden Bear for his film Yellow Letters. Photograph and cover picture of Dua Lipa by Jay Zoo.

The 76th Berlin International Film Festival culminated in an awards night that balanced cinematic achievement with a palpable sense of global unease. On the red carpet, nominees and winners gathered beneath the lights of the Berlinale Palast before the Golden and Silver Bears were handed out. Photography by Jay Zoo for DAM

In Berlin, award-winning director Lance Hammer 

with supporting actor Anna Calder-Marshall. 

AS cameras whirred and flashbulbs ricocheted across the red carpet at the Palast and the winter air in the German capital carried its familiar bite, guests gathered to attend the Berlin Film Festival's awards ceremony.

The top prize of the Berlinale went to Yellow Letters from İlker Çatak, while the Silver Bear Grand Jury Prize honored Salvation by Emin Alper. Sandra Hüller claimed Best Leading Performance for Rose, and Queen at Sea secured both the Silver Bear Jury Prize for director Lance Hammer and supporting performance wins for its veteran co-stars, Anna Calder-Marshall and Tom Courtenay. When Yellow Letters director İlker Çatak stepped onto the stage to accept the Golden Bear, it was another confirmation of his arrival as one of Europe’s most evocative filmmakers. 

Çatak’s fifth feature is a tightly wound political drama centered on a married couple, an actress and her playwright husband, whose lives unravel after state authorities target them for dissent. Set in Turkey but filmed in Germany in a bold, self-aware gesture, the film blurs geography to underscore a chilling thesis: authoritarian language travels easily. What begins as professional reprisal escalates into social erasure, as the couple’s comfortable existence collapses under mounting surveillance and public suspicion.

Jury president Wim Wenders praised the Golden Bear winning film as a stark examination of "the political language of totalitarianism"

President Wim Wenders with the rest of the jury

 on the red carpet before the awards ceremony.

Jury president Wim Wenders praised the film as a stark examination of “the political language of totalitarianism,” positioning it as both cautionary tale and contemporary mirror. 

For Çatak, whose previous feature The Teachers’ Lounge earned an Oscar nomination, the win marks a career-defining moment and a rare homegrown triumph at Berlin for a German-Turkish director.

The awards ceremony itself unfolded against a charged backdrop. Festival director Tricia Tuttle acknowledged a year defined by debate and division, describing the atmosphere as “raw and fractured.” 

Throughout the evening, multiple winners used their acceptance speeches to address global conflicts and the responsibilities of artists in volatile times. If the Berlinale has long been considered the most overtly political of the major European festivals, this edition reaffirmed that reputation, at least among the attendees.

Yellow Letters defined the night, a film that insists private lives cannot remain untouched by public power

Director Ilker Catak with the cast of his film

Yellow Letters that took out the top prize. 

Beyond the Golden Bear, the jury spread recognition across an eclectic slate, including Grant Gee took Best Director for Everybody Digs Bill Evans. The Silver Bear for Best Screenplay went to Nina Roza, by Geneviève Dulude-De Celles and the Silver Bear for Outstanding Artistic Contribution was won by Yo (Love is a Rebellious Bird), by Anna Fitch and Banker White.

Yet it was Yellow Letters that defined the night, a film that insists private lives cannot remain untouched by public power. As Çatak stood beneath the festival’s iconic bear emblem, applause rolling through the Palast, the result reflected the importance of films attentive to intimate human stories shaped by political and historical forces. ~ Antonio Visconti

Scroll down to see guests on the red-carpet of the awards evening of the 76th Berlin Film Festival