Costume designers have been having a hard time recently. Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights has caused a stir since the day it was announced, and our first glimpse of Margot Robbie as Cathy was no exception. Last March, when images emerged of Robbie wearing an ivory, off-the-shoulder wedding dress, online critics were quick to point out that white wedding dresses were popularised by Queen Victoria, around 40 years after Wuthering Heights takes place. Not to mention the silhouette, which is creative to say the least.
Then, in November, we got the teaser trailer for The Devil Wears Prada 2, prompting yet another debate about whether or not Miranda Priestly would be caught dead in Valentino Rockstuds (see here). And to top it all off, as if costume designers needed anymore criticism last year, director Luca Guadagnino gave an interview in which he diminished their work, comparing them unfavourably to fashion designers and using his frequent collaborator Jonathan Anderson as an example. “Costume designers tend to think in terms of the garment,” he explained, “[whereas] designers of fashion think in terms of the body who wears them.” Several Oscar-winning costume designers were quick to disagree.
Just as it’s done for fashion, social media cast a spotlight on costume design like never before and opened the door for wider discussion. Suddenly, everyone is a fashion historian – eager to dissect and pick apart costumes, especially those that stray from precise historical accuracy, whether that’s Margot Robbie’s wedding dress or the precise make of helmet that Matt Damon wears in the trailer for The Odyssey. However, it’s no secret that Fennell’s vision for Wuthering Heights has always been far from Emily Brontë’s original 1847 novel.
So far, the reviews have been split – some have called it an erotic dream, others have said it’s a nightmare. Either way, just about everyone agrees that it’s a fairly surreal adaptation. Naturally, when it came to the costumes, Fennell turned to someone who knows period dress inside and out, but isn’t afraid to put her own twist on it: Jacqueline Durran, who Fennell had previously worked with on Barbie.
In the world of costume design, Durran needs no introduction (she’s basically the John Galliano of movies). As well as her two Oscars and three BAFTAs, the British designer is responsible for one of the greatest ever onscreen looks, the infamous green dress which Keira Knightley wore in Atonement (it even has its own Wikipedia page). Despite Atonement being set during World War II, Durran took inspiration for the dress from Coco Chanel’s designs of the 1920s. For Anna Karenina, she was reunited with Knightley and turned to the Chanel archive once again, this time blending 1870s Russian fashion with strings of pearls.
To put it simply, she knows what she’s doing, and for Wuthering Heights, her list of references ranged from Tudor England to the 1950s, Mugler and McQueen. But while mixing time periods together is a Jacqueline Durran staple, she’s far from the only one doing it. Take Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein: New Zealand costume designer Kate Hawley has been Oscar nominated for her work on the film, which she openly admits is far from historically accurate.
“It’s so funny when people think that I’m historically accurate – no I’m not!” Hawley told me last year. “I do all the research and then I let it go. I like breaking the rules because it’s all about the story that we’re telling. We’re in a dream of the period, it’s its own world. It’s not a Mary Shelley biography, it’s not a documentary; it’s Guillermo’s mythology.” Like del Toro’s Frankenstein, Wuthering Heights is Fennell’s reinterpretation of an established fictional story. Not only is Hawley nominated at this year’s Oscars, she also received the first ever Costume Designer Award at the Fashion Awards in December.
Often, it’s the playful obscurities that make costumes all the more interesting. In Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette (2006), a pair of lilac Converse sneakers can be spotted among the 18th century heels. Clearly, they weren’t wearing Converse at Versailles, but the shoes are a deliberate detail to make the young queen seem more modern and rebellious. Or more recently, with Sinners, we saw Michael B Jordan become a grill-wearing vampire in 1930s Mississippi. Grills weren’t popularised until the early 1980s, and yet, this was costume designer Ruth E Carter’s homage to Black dandyism, as well as a way to distinguish the identical twins.
It goes without saying that extensive research and understanding of the era is imperative – it’s the foundation of any good costume designer. However, when we’re (mostly) already dealing with works of fiction, who’s to say that costume designers can’t add a few flourishes of their own? Ultimately, it’s about the story that the director is trying to tell. And if a pair of Converse, a diamond grill, or Margot Robbie wrapped up in cellophane helps to communicate that story, then why the hell not?
