Emerald Fennell’s adaptation of Wuthering Heights isn’t your grandmother’s period drama.
Starring Margot Robbie as Cathy and Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff, this visceral reimagining transforms Emily Brontë’s 1847 Gothic masterpiece into something rawer, sexier, and unapologetically modern.
The film’s beauty choices don’t just complement the story—they tell it.
From windswept textures to crystallized sweat, every makeup and hair decision acts as an emotional barometer for desire, power, and obsession.
A Fever Dream Vision Brought to Life
Fennell filtered the entire production through the lens of her 14-year-old self discovering Brontë’s tale. Hair and makeup designer Sian Miller worked closely with the director to create what she calls “incredibly evocative” visuals.
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’s references spanned centuries and mediums. TikTok makeup trends sat alongside 1939’s Gone With the Wind. Fine art photography mixed with landscape imagery and fashion editorials.
The result? A film that feels simultaneously timeless and refreshingly contemporary.
Beauty as Narrative Structure
Miller organized the film into distinct acts, each with its own beauty language. The approach mirrors Cathy and Heathcliff’s emotional evolution—from wild innocence to calculated sophistication to dark obsession.
Act one on the moors demanded rawness. Act two and three, set primarily at the Grange after Cathy marries wealthy Edgar Linton, shifted dramatically.
There’s opulence. There’s extravagance. There’s showoffiness. There’s more contrivance in how people are appearing, but they’re looking their best.
This evolution manifests in everything from Heathcliff’s 18-karat gold tooth to Cathy’s devil-horned victory rolls.
Seven Beauty Moments That Define the Film
Wind-Blown Texture: Raw Emotion Made Visible
Yorkshire’s rugged moors demanded natural, youthful beauty. Cathy’s undone texture—complete with whisper-soft flyaways—mirrored her untamed spirit in the story’s opening.
Often, with those styles, the less you do, the better. The moment you get out the pro tools, I think you end up getting into the contrivance.
Miller worked primarily with Robbie’s natural texture, adding soft spritzes of sea salt spray for pieciness. The hair, like the emotion, remained deliberately raw.
Sometimes the most powerful styling choice is restraint.
Sun-Kissed Skin: Elements as Character
Miller describes the effect as “sun-burnt freckly skin,” drawing unexpected inspiration from TikTok’s “Pomegranate girl” trend.
She collaborated with prosthetic artist Waldo Mason to create 3D scans of Robbie’s face. This allowed freckles to be airbrushed consistently each day while maintaining organic placement.
Coverage stayed strategic and minimal—never mask-like or overly perfect. Foundation was applied skillfully to correct where needed without concealing skin’s natural texture.
Fennell insisted on this approach from day one for the entire cast.
Flushed Desire: The Language of Arousal
A flush communicates what words cannot. Miller points to centuries of portraiture depicting embarrassment, youth, and sexual awakening through rosy cheeks.
It’s a powerful tool that lets you subtly signal what’s going on in the narrative.
For Cathy, deepening blush tracks her sexual discovery and intensifying passion for Heathcliff. Miller relied on cream pigments to maintain dewy, life-like quality.
Powder would have deadened the effect. Dewiness without excessive luminosity became the sweet spot.
Corset Braids: Love as Control
Two plaits cascade to Cathy’s waist, woven in lattice fashion with crimson ribbon. At first glance? Sexy Victorian styling.
In reality? Something far more sinister.
Isabella, Edgar Linton’s ward and Cathy’s new housemate, creates this style. What begins as innocent dress-up gradually reveals itself as assertion of dominance.
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.’ And you just think, Goodness me, that’s actually a little bit eerie.
Cathy becomes trapped in both marriage and aesthetic—styled like a doll as she loses autonomy.
Crystallized Sweat: Tension Made Tangible
When Heathcliff returns, Miller dusts Cathy’s cheeks with crystals placed to echo natural freckle patterns.
We wanted it to feel a little bit like perspiration.
The dinner scene crackles with feral energy. Even the set’s walls glisten as if sweating, inspiring Miller to break out diamanté.
The crystals don’t just catch light—they capture the heat, tension, and desire pulsing through Heathcliff’s homecoming.
Devilish Hair Horns: Psychological Darkness
Victory rolls take sinister form as Cathy’s psychological state deteriorates.
As Cathy becomes more arced, so does her hair. Suddenly, it’s much more structured. Straighter lines. There’s a hardness to it.
Miller and Fennell found inspiration in Vivien Leigh’s Gone With the Wind styling. When Fennell simply said “horns,” the name stuck.
The style loses playfulness entirely, trading doll-like softness for vampy severity. This is Cathy transformed—harder, sharper, dangerous.
The Gilded Tooth: Wealth as Weapon
Heathcliff returns to Wuthering Heights transformed. His 18-karat gold tooth announces his newfound wealth with unmistakable flash.
It’s ostentatious. Deliberate. Impossible to ignore.
Where young Heathcliff was rough and powerless, adult Heathcliff wields money—and appearance—as instruments of revenge. The gold tooth becomes his calling card, a permanent reminder that he’s no longer the boy who could be dismissed.
When Beauty Becomes Storytelling
Fennell’s Wuthering Heights proves that hair and makeup choices can carry as much narrative weight as dialogue or cinematography.
Miller’s work doesn’t simply enhance performances—it is performance. Every freckle, flush, and carefully placed crystal communicates psychological states that words struggle to capture.
From windswept moors to suffocating parlors, beauty evolves alongside character. Innocence hardens into calculation. Desire burns into obsession. Control masquerades as care.
This isn’t costume drama prettiness. It’s beauty as emotional archaeology—excavating what lies beneath polished surfaces to reveal raw, complicated humanity.