If, like the rest of social media, you raced to your local cinema and bought a ticket for Wuthering Heights (starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi) over the weekend, you’re likely still reeling. Emerald Fennell’s take on Emily Brontë’s 1847 gothic romance has predictably divided viewers – purists are clutching their pearls, while Fennell enthusiasts are in raptures over her adaptation – a teenage fantasy made dreamlike with Alice-in-Wonderland-style scenery juxtaposed against the bleak backdrop of the Yorkshire Moors. The costume is predictably fantastical and the hair and make-up looks play a huge part too. Every visual element is considered. What’s not to love about a movie in which corset plaits, flesh-covered walls and cellophane dresses can coexist?
The smorgasbord of beauty looks in Wuthering Heights comes courtesy of Siân Miller, award-winning and BAFTA-nominated hair and make-up designer, who worked with a team of experts on set. Each look was designed to communicate a series of messages – weather-beaten flushed cheeks captured the remains of childhood innocence and tightly bound corset plaits were designed to make Cathy look caged, the list goes on. Scroll through seven none-too-subtle beauty messages you may, nevertheless, have missed in Wuthering Heights below…
The freckle factor
Speaking to celebrity make-up artist Lisa Eldridge, Miller recently revealed how integral freckles were to Cathy’s look. They feature across the midsections of the face for both young Cathy and her older self, signifying the link between her untamed youth, which remains with her despite any attempt to grow into the lady of the house at Thrushcross Grange.
Miller’s freckle continuity mask, used on Margot Robbie on set of Wuthering Heights ©Instagram @siantmiller
The continuity of those freckles was so important that Miller organised a vacuum form face mask to be made for Robbie, which featured carefully cut out holes over which she could easily and accurately airbrush the same freckle pattern onto Robbie’s skin.
Pearly perspiration
©warner bros.
When Heathcliff makes his triumphant return to the Heights, he is welcomed into the Grange for dinner. Cathy – dumfounded, besotted and relieved – is caught losing her cool. Most of us would break into a sweat too, but Cathy’s flustered temperament manifests as glistening crystal beads on her cheeks. Miller took inspiration from the set design, which featured silver walls studded with clear stones, designed to be reminiscent of perspiration. If the walls could talk…
Corset plaits
Hair is a big thing in Wuthering Heights, it bleeds into the set design as well as the narrative. Used to demonstrate the passing of time, you’ll find it on Cathy’s headboard and hanging down underneath the pedestal tables. Cathy’s own hair follows her character arc, graduating from unkempt free-flowing waves seen on young Cathy to the highly sculpted and refined hairstyles we see on her as a married Catherine Linton.
©warner bros.
Newly married, Cathy’s hair is routinely plaited – a signal of her feeling of entrapment as Edgar’s wife. One of Miller’s favourite looks is the lattice ribbon doll plaits. They’re designed to mimic a corset and echo an earlier pre-wedding scene in which Cathy encourages Nelly to bind her tighter into her wedding dress. This look is designed to amplify Cathy’s sense of suffocation.
Weather-beaten blush
©warner bros.
If there is one make-up product that feels emblematic of this Wuthering Heights adaptation, it’s blush. There’s a realism to it, it speaks of skin blown pink by the same relentless gusts of wind that make Cathy shiver at night. On the younger versions of Cathy and Heathcliff (Charlotte Mellington and Owen Cooper), blush is intended to communicate the innocence of childhood.
Then there’s the sexual context, on Robbie and Elordi, it’s also evocative of the flush of excitement and sexual awakening that dominates the first half of the film. Miller took inspiration from TikTok’s ‘Pomegranate Girl’ trend – a ruddy, natural-looking glow achieved with deep pink stains.
Heathcliff’s gold tooth
First introduced as an orphan adopted by Cathy’s father, Mr. Earnshaw, Heathcliff is solitary and silent, but his low class is communicated by his clothing and a missing tooth. Later, suited, booted and newly wealthy, Heathcliff returns to the Heights with cropped Mr Darcy-esque hair and a gold dental implant. It’s a glinting signal that Heathcliff has gone up in the world, but he’s not shy about his roots.
Other-worldly make-up
©warner bros.
Fantastical, opulent and untethered to any specific time period, Cathy’s make-up looks go into overdrive once she takes up residence at the Grange. Miller says she took inspiration from make-up legend Pat McGrath’s iconic work with designers like John Galliano, Vivienne Westwood, and Alexander McQueen.
They’re a visual representation of Cathy’s new life as a lady of luxury – no longer subjected to a life swerving slaughtered pigs and slurry, the newly minted Catherine Linton has the time and means to pamper.
The skin room
©warner bros.
When Cathy moves to the Grange, Edgar surprises her with her own room where the walls are painted in what he deems the most beautiful colour in the world: Cathy’s skin tone. Farrow & Ball eat your heart out. It’s powder pink, freckled and even runs with veins. The set was created with an image of the inside of Robbie’s wrist in mind and was designed to be as disconcertingly life-like as possible, with textured walls that would bounce back to the touch. It’s grotesque but beautiful, and a reminder that Cathy can’t run away from herself.
Sameeha Shaikh is Grazia’s beauty writer, covering all categories to bring you insights on the latest trends, industry news and the products you need to know about, viral or not (most probably viral).
