Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights is not the classic you think you know. Her film adaptation, starring Margot Robbie as Cathy and Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff, lays the eroticism on thick. Depicted through the eyes of Fennell’s 14-year-old self discovering Emily Brontë’s 1847 Gothic tale, it’s a fever dream in every sense. Every detail, from costuming to set design, combines to create the film’s intoxicating vision. The beauty looks, especially, act as an emotional barometer for Cathy and Heathcliff’s raw—and unmistakably horny—feelings.
For hair and makeup designer Sian Miller, the creative process with Fennell, who put together expansive mood boards, was deeply collaborative. “Emerald very much steers the ship and is such a visually amazing person, everything she puts forth is incredibly evocative—the mood, the tone, the colors, the shapes,” Miller tells InStyle. “We drew from every source you can imagine, whether it was fine arts, photography, landscape, film, or fashion.” References range from TikTok makeup trends to 1939’s Gone With the Wind.
In mapping out the film, Miller organized it into acts, approaching each stage of Cathy and Heathcliff’s story with distinct beauty choices. In the first, set across the wild moors of Wuthering Heights, “it was all about trying to portray that very windswept kind of look,” she says. “The hair being messy and hairy and skin just very raw.” Through freckles and blooming cheeks, viewers witness Cathy and Heathcliff’s childhood bond give way to longing and desire. By the second and third acts, as Cathy marries the wealthy Edgar Linton (Shazad Latif) and lives under the cloying presence of his ward, Isabella (Allison Oliver), Heathcliff departs, returning years later to claim revenge. “There’s opulence. There’s extravagance. There’s showoffiness,” Miller notes. “There’s more contrivance in how people are appearing, but they’re looking their best.” Think: Heathcliff’s 18-karat gold tooth or Cathy’s devil-horned victory rolls.
Below, Miller breaks down seven of the film’s most pulse-quickening and blush-inducing beauty moments, from the moors to the Grange.
Wind-Blown Texture
Warner Bros. Pictures
Amid the rugged moors of Yorkshire, the beauty was meant to be natural and youthful. “It was all about trying to portray that kind of very tussled, uncontrived, windswept kind of look,” she says. “The hair, like the emotion, is quite raw.” For Cathy, her undone texture, complete with whisper-soft flyaways, was as untamed as she herself in the early part of the story. “Often, with those styles, the less you do, the better,” Miller explains, chalking up much of the styling to working with Robbie’s natural, slept-on texture with soft spritzes of sea salt spray for pieciness. “The moment you get out the pro tools, I think you end up getting into the contrivance. Sometimes, sitting on your hands and not doing it is enough.”
Sun-Kissed Skin
Warner Bros. Pictures
Much like the hair, the skin was designed to feel natural and shaped by the elements—never perfect or overly concealed. “Sun-burnt freckly skin” is how Miller describes the effect, which was partially inspired by TikTok’s “Pomegranate girl” trend. She worked with prosthetic artist Waldo Mason to create 3D scans of Robbie’s face to map the freckles, allowing them to be airbrushed consistently each day. Coverage was kept strategic and minimal. “There are ways of putting on foundations, be it men or women, where you can really skillfully do any corrective work you need to do, but without needing to cover the skin,” she explains. “With the whole cast, that was something from the get-go that Emerald really wanted.”
Flushed Desire
Warner Bros. Pictures
A flush is worth a thousand words. “It’s been portrayed for hundreds and hundreds of years in portraiture to show the first flush of youth, or embarrassment, or sexual arousal and all that,” says Miller. The latter is especially palpable for Cathy as she begins to discover her sexuality and her passion for Heathcliff deepens. “It’s a powerful tool that lets you subtly signal what’s going on in the narrative.” To give Robbie’s blush a life-like quality, Miller primarily used cream pigments. “We didn’t want anybody to have a powdery look about them, so it was about keeping that dewiness of the skin, but without veering into the luminosity.”
Corset Braids
Warner Bros. Pictures
Love as domination is a thread through the film, and Cathy’s corset hair—two plaits cascading to her waist, woven in a corset-like lattice of crimson ribbon—illustrates it perfectly. At first glance, the style may seem like a sexy wink—but here, it’s Cathy’s new housemate, Isabella, asserting control, styling Cathy like a doll as she becomes ensnared in her new life at the Grange. Innocent dress-up gradually takes on a more sinister edge. “She’s like, ‘I’ve made a doll’s house. I’ve created this style, and now I’m going to replicate this on you,’” says Miller. “And you just think, Goodness me, that’s actually a little bit eerie.”
Crystallized Sweat
Warner Bros. Pictures
“We wanted it to feel a little bit like perspiration,” says Miller of the constellation of crystals she speckled across Cathy’s cheeks—placed to echo freckle patterns for an organic effect—during a dinner marking Heathcliff’s return. The energy? Tense and feral. “It was very visceral,” she says, noting that the dining room set, with walls literally glistening as if sweating, inspired her to break out the diamanté. The result reinforced the heat, tension, and desire that pulsed through Heathcliff’s homecoming.
Devlish Hair Horns
Warner Bros. Pictures
“As Cathy becomes more arced, so does her hair,” says Miller of the devilish victory rolls she crafted as the film’s second chapter takes an even darker turn. “Suddenly, it’s much more structured. Straighter lines. There’s a hardness to it. It loses the doll-like playfulness.” Miller and Fennell arrived at the style after referencing a picture of Vivien Leigh in Gone With the Wind. “Emerald just said, ‘Horns,’ so it just became known as horns,” she says of the style’s silhouette. Marking a turning point in Cathy’s psychological state, the look trades playfulness for vampy severity.
The Gilded Tooth
Warner Bros. Pictures
In the first act, young Heathcliff is missing a tooth; by the second act, he returns with an 18-karat gold one, a visual shorthand for power and transformation. “It indicates alongside the costume and his stature that he’s made money,” says Miller. “Everything about him has changed—in terms of his appearance at least.” She collaborated with Chris Lyons of Fangs FX to craft the perfect gilded prosthetic, testing the placement and angle in shots to achieve just the right impact. The tooth gives Heathcliff an undeniable allure and swagger, but with a light touch. Like a beauty mark, it’s subtle yet magnetic. As Miller puts it, “When he smiles, you’re drawn to it.”
