In Wuthering Heights, Hair and Makeup Create the Ultimate Fantasy

Bringing a literary classic like Wuthering Heights to screen is a dream for any hair and makeup designer, especially under the direction of visionary Emerald Fennell. Inspired by Fennel’s girlhood love for the gothic romance novel, the latest adaptation is a fairy-tale feast for the eyes with Cathy, played by Margot Robbie, wearing more than 45 elaborate costumes. Free from the constraints of a specific time period, hair and makeup designer Siân Miller was allowed to run wild with Fennel’s imagination, pulling from all kinds of references throughout history.

“The beginning for me is always a script,” Miller tells Glamour. “And with an Emerald Fennell script, it’s full of detail and there’s always a great mood board.” Miller, who also worked with Fennell on the 2023 black comedy film Saltburn, drew inspiration from an array of sources, including historical paintings, architecture, the wilderness, the runway, movies, and art installations. Then came constant meetings with Fennell, costume designer Jacqueline Durran, and production designer Suzie Davies to make sure their creative visions were aligned.

“I was able to really immerse myself in that world, and look at ideas for fabrics on the set, colors, shapes,” says Miller. “And gradually over a period of time, Emerald and I would curate that. When you work with Emerald Fennell, it’s like learning the language. And once you’ve learned the language and you’ve got the intuition and that, it becomes second nature. So you’re then much more able to curate as you go along. But it’s always a conversation. It’s incredibly collaborative across all those creative departments.”

One key moment in which this collaboration shines through is during a tense scene at The Grange, Cathy’s marital home with Edgar Linton, where she is reunited with her first love, Heathcliff. Scattered across Cathy’s cheeks are dainty circular crystals, meant to evoke beads of sweat. Miller took inspiration directly from the dining room walls, which were covered in large clear beads.

“Perspiration, that stemmed directly from the production design, because when we were talking about what we could do and motifs, that room was designed with the silvery walls,” says Miller. “They’re decorated with these ornate hemispherical beads. I had painted the crystals silver, and immediately Emerald was like, ‘Actually, I think they’re better clear.’ So we decided to do that. It all stemmed from those walls, which were supposed to feel like they were slightly perspiring, because it’s a beautifully opulent setting, but it’s also a very uncomfortable moment.”

Ahead, Siân Miller breaks down key looks from the film, including Cathy’s doll braid, Heathcliff’s glow-up, and the perfect postcoital flush.

Glamour: As you were reading the script, were there any moments you jotted down or circled, where you had an immediate visual of what it looked like?

Siân Miller: I knew that I wanted Cathy and Nelly, certainly their younger selves, to have that kind of sense of abandonment. I wanted Cathy to have that wild and free. Emerald and I talked a lot about the color of her hair to begin with, and Emerald was very keen on having wanted it to be blonde. So we looked at the colors and how that would be, and the younger version would be lighter. And we wanted a natural texture, so we tried to source hair that was as naturally textured as possible for hairpieces and back pieces. And then later on I employed wigs more for The Grange.

I wanted to have the natural flush on the skin, the sense that their playground is the isolated wilderness and exposure. And then, of course, there’s so much in there about hair and about Isabella and the ribbon room, the hair incorporated into the sets, that I knew this was going to be a very strong motif. It then became about key moments and how to achieve those and to deliver the schedule. So it became a challenge, how to achieve that in no time at all.

How quick are we talking? How long did Margot spend in the chair each morning?

Margot was quick in the chair. I’d say for the scenes set at Wuthering Heights, we were often down to maybe 45 minutes. The Grange, an hour, hour and 15. Margot has Nana Fischer, her personal hair and makeup artist, because of the amount she’s in the film and the amount of work involved. Margot is such a trooper and such a team player; it was often a team of us working. We usually apply the wig whilst the makeup was being done. We’d work as a team, there’d be several pairs of hands. So we’re constantly prepared to add something, take something away, or to change something, but incredibly quickly. And it was fun. It was like a challenge. It was like one of those kind of reality shows, it was like, “How quick can you do this?”

Yeah. And I think when you’ve been working a long time—my whole team, we’ve been working a long time in the industry—you’ve got skills, you rely upon what you know can do, and I think just maintaining a sense of calm all around and preparedness, and it’s good to achieve. And Margot is such a brilliant collaborator, and Emerald is incredibly decisive and proactive, so it’s very easy to go, “Yep. No. Yep.” And it just worked.

What did you listen to while you were getting Margot ready?

There was a lot of Kate Bush, and I’m a massive Kate Bush fan. I went to see her in 2014 twice. Very appropriate. Margot’s got a really eclectic range, really broad taste. And we’d put on all sorts. It was good, because you’ve always got to have good tunes.

Wuthering Heights is obviously a very tumultuous story with high highs and low lows. How did you pick and choose when to have big beauty moments and when maybe to pare back for more serious moments?

We broke the story down. Jacqueline Durran, the costume designer, had broken her story arc down into three acts—Wuthering Heights, The Grange, and then that turning point, act three, where suddenly we find that it’s going to be over. Heathcliff realizes that she’s having the baby, and it takes that dark turn. So the three acts really helped us work out when we could be more frivolous and when there could be more dress=up and playfulness, and then when we would turn.

Wuthering Heights, it was more obvious because we’ve got somebody who’s grown up without everything that Isabella has had, by contrast, moving into The Grange. So we knew there was going to be a raw, a natural look to everything. And then I knew when we went to The Grange that we’d have this period of dress-up and experimentation and lots of costumes, lots of hairstyles.

It’s where we start to see what Emerald and I described as the horns, which had come from a very grainy printouts of Scarlett O’Hara, particularly picture of her from 1939 Gone with the Wind where her hair has been twisted into wonderful horns.

Cathy’s complexion has this reflective quality that’s almost sweaty. To your point, we’re in the elements, out in nature, there’s wind whipping in our face. How do you recreate that?

The underlying thing coming from Emerald, her direction is less is more. To go as raw as possible and allow the skin to show through regardless of what products you’re using, because it’s such a plethora to get there. With blush, we did use a lot of cream blush on all the cast, men and women. Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff, on his skin, there’s wind burn, there’s a ground-in dirt, but all of that was still making him look real. It’s about making them look real, albeit in this sort of fantasy world.

How did you convey the passage of time through the makeup and hair?

We knew we wanted freckles, so I had Margot 3D-scanned with a prosthetic artist that I’ve used a lot, Waldo Mason. He made a 3D vacuum-form transparent mold of her face and Charlotte Mellington, who plays the younger Cathy, which I was able to draw out in a very early test, the freckles on Margot’s face. And then you can hot-knife through this vacuum to airbrush on those freckles.

Blush is a huge part of the film. Is there a difference in technique or colors you use for different blush stories? Out in the moors she’s got this chilled flush versus a flush that comes from a love scene.

Of course. Is it more of a blush that looks like a cosmetic where there’s a bit more of that in The Grange or when we’re out in the moors, is that a bit more natural? Embarrassment, the early stages of arousal or awakening. The expression, the first flush of youth, that’s where that comes from, that adolescence kind of flush. Placement comes into play and how sheer something is, how much you put on, all of those things, yes, it definitely makes a difference. Isabella, hers was very much a baby-doll apples of the cheeks, and much more of a pale pink, and that was purposeful. She hasn’t lived a life outdoors. She’s not freckled.

She’s lived a life of luxury and care.

Yeah, absolutely. And particularly with the doll braid at The Grange, they’ve got nothing to do. It’s dress-up. Cathy becomes her muse, if you like. With the doll, she’s taken the hair from the hairbrush, since she’s hopeless with her own hair, but suddenly Cathy has got this luxuriant hair that she just wants to play with. And she makes the doll designs, that lovely doll braid, and then dresses Cathy up at The Grange and takes her to the doll’s house. There’s that, “Oh, that’s the hairstyle you’ve just done on me.

Another standout beauty moment is the silver eye with the star stencil. How did that look come about?

The montage was put in there to show that passage of time, that playfulness, that dress-up, what are these two young women doing? The stencil, when we tested all these things and that’s actually tin foil. Aluminum foil. That’s all Emerald’s idea. Emerald is like, “Tin foil, yeah, how about a star?” And that’s where that came from.

Heathcliff goes through a huge transformation. How did you approach that glow-up?

I worked with Jacob on Saltburn so I knew his hair really well. I’d got him to grow everything. I just said, “Stop shaving, just grow it all. Let’s have a wig made. We should have a wig made for the Heathcliff that we first meet.” And I worked with a brilliant wig maker in London, Samuel Cox of Samuel James Wigs. We had a brilliant wig made with natural virgin, untouched textured hair. He came back with this amazing beard.

The combination of that and selling it to the studio, the idea that this transformation would be really, really a great thing to show. And then the makeup was very much ground-in dirt every day. The flush, dirty, filthy fingernails. It was ground-up dirt. I’d even get blood and get that rubbed in. The missing tooth. And then we knew when he came back we just wanted that quintessential regency Darcy-esque look. And knowing that Jacob can pull that off, he has the hair to do it. Last night in the screening, people cheered when he returned. It was everything we wanted it to be.

What do you hope audiences take away from the hair and makeup in this film?

I hope it’s noticed. Sometimes hair and makeup is misunderstood in terms of what it can bring to a character and the approach. But I hope it’s really helped to tell the story, how this couple were friends as young children, to enemies and everything. Because it’s not just costume, it’s the whole thing. Really, my job is to support the narrative in the best way possible and to convince an audience. Also, I hope lots of people will want to try out the doll braid on TikTok.

Ariana Yaptangco is the senior beauty editor at Glamour. Follow her @arianayap.