Move over Kate Bush! The new voice of “Wuthering Heights” is Charli xcx, whose haunting soundtrack to Emerald Fennell’s new big screen reimagining of Emily Brontë’s gothic tale of love, heartbreak and haunting is poised to darken and deepen our aural landscape.
The recording artist has form with era-defining albums – 2024’s epochal Brat was a summer phenomenon that found its way into that year’s US presidential election. But inspired by Fennell’s take on Brontë’s masterpiece, the mood has turned murky and melancholy. “I think I’m going to die in this house,” intones the deep-voiced refrain on House, the pop singer’s collaboration with the legendary John Cale, which was the first track to be released from the new album. “I’d rather watch my skin bleed/ In the eye of your storm,” she sings on Chains of Love, a moody synth-pop ballad that heightened the sense of gothic romance in the trailer ahead of the film’s 13 February release for Galentine’s Day and Valentine’s Day.
“I sent the script to Charli with a view to asking her simply if she had an emotional response to it, would she like to make a song about it?” says Fennell. “And she called me and asked if she could do an album. Of course I said yes. And then she just started sending me just the most incredible things that were new, sexy, emotionally engaging.”
Charli xcx has called the sound “raw, wild, sexual, gothic and British”. It’s the acoustic equivalent of getting caught in a squall on the Yorkshire moors while wearing one of Oscar-winning costume designer Jacqueline Durran’s lavish creations.
You could dub it “moorcore” – a fusion of the boldly elemental and the broodingly extravagant that owes everything to Fennell’s distinctive vision. From music to fashion, and interiors to screen icons, the film’s aesthetics look set to crystallise a new cultural vibe straddling shade and romance. The look mixes then and now, as historical references clash with red-carpet-ready modernity to create something fresh.
With Barbie star Margot Robbie playing Catherine Earnshaw against Saltburn’s Jacob Elordi’s Heathcliff, casting director Kharmel Cochrane had dialled up the glamour even before Oscar-winning Durran got to work on the costumes. Of the some 50 costumes Durran created for Cathy, several are standouts, from a milkmaid-style corset to a white wedding dress that is an amalgam of Victorian looks and 1950s fashion by designers like Charles James, the esteemed English-American couturier.
“They’re not really period costumes – they’re an imagined version of a period costume,” Durran explains in a promotional video for the film. One of Britain’s most renowned costume designers, Durran has said her stylised version of “Wuthering Heights” references contemporary fashion and Old Hollywood as well as the actual period – with inspiration ranging from Elizabethan through to Georgian and Victorian.
Fennell’s vision for the look and feel of “Wuthering Heights” is characteristically unique. “The first thing was not to pin it to any very specific time,” says Fennell in the promotional video. “It’s going back to what did I imagine? What I imagined was kind of like a fairytale.”
In an interview with Vogue, Durran singled out a red velvet cape and silver dress that Cathy wears when she returns to Wuthering Heights, her family home, as being the look that worked best on camera. “Red capes like that are actually historically accurate for the era, though our cape … [is] very much like a costume, referencing the past but also 1950s melodramas,” she told the magazine.
On Robbie’s striking frame, the hooded crimson cape, worn with a white, fluffy hand muff, is dramatic against the snowy moors, and would represent a significant upgrade from Gore-Tex for anyone hiking England’s latest national trail, the Coast to Coast path. The upgraded route, which opens officially this spring, cuts through the Yorkshire Dales national park, home to several of the film’s locations, including Surrender Bridge, which is close to an old lead smelting mill. For gen Zers, who have embraced rambling as a viable, hip alternative to late-night boozing, “moorcore” taps into various outdoor pursuits, as well as the perennial quest for love.
Robbie can’t contain her excitement over Durran’s creations, enthusing in a promotional video for the film: “The costumes are unreal, just unreal. And it’s just, like, squeal-inducing.”
She hopes the look and feel of Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights” will add to the story’s visceral power, telling Vogue: “That’s a signature of Emerald’s. Whether it’s titillating or repulsion, her superpower is eliciting a physical response.”
Fennell has reunited with several of her Saltburn collaborators, including British production designer Suzie Davies and director of photography Linus Sandgren. Their rendering of Thrushcross Grange, home to Heathcliff’s rival for Cathy’s heart, Edgar Linton, will raise the bar for home refurbishments. The rubberised, glossy red floor in one of the rooms will ignite the nascent “sixth wall” trend for expressive flooring, while the ornate interiors – think dripping pearls and ceramic sculptures – will accelerate the rococo revival under way everywhere from the catwalk to TikTok feeds and Netflix period dramas. From serene blues and oxblood reds to inky dark walls, “moorcore” is for more than just fashion.
Davies’ interpretation of this new “moorcore” vibe manages to encompass the two houses of the story in very different ways. “With the house Wuthering Heights, we wanted it to feel like a place that is being taken over by a hostile landscape,” says Fennell. “It’s sliced in half by huge slate rocks. And as it ages it becomes more malignant, it starts to crack, things start to ooze out of it. In the gothic everything is alive, so we wanted that to extend to the sets.
“If Wuthering Heights is a place where nature is thrusting itself into the man-made, Thrushcross Grange is a place which attempts to do the opposite: to constrain nature. Cathy’s room is made of her “skin” – we printed Margot’s skin (veins and freckles included) on to padded fabric with a sheer latex overlay, and trapped it inside panels … We spent a lot of time looking at hairwork, flower pressing, taxidermy. Natural things made grotesque by human intervention.”
In this context, the sartorial and physical transformation of Heathcliff in the middle of the story becomes even more impactful – and is already proving influential. Take Elordi’s windswept locks, which the men’s magazine Esquire has dubbed his “Wuthering Heights” look a “retro mod haircut”, urging fans to ape his mutton chop sideburns along with the longer layered, round-in-shape style. The laced bodice-style detail on Robbie’s double plaits is set to be a much-copied look for summer brides and festival-goers alike.
In the wider world, fashion is leaning heavily into the film’s gothic mood. Jonathan Anderson, the creative director at Dior, showcased a first edition cover of Bram Stoker’s Dracula on his Dior Book Tote last year – now sold out. And at the other end of the retail spectrum, Hush named its cross-front knit jumper after the Wuthering Heights’ author, the garment’s crisscross front evoking a shawl wrapped tightly against the chill wind of the moors.
Fennell’s distinctive artistic vision feels uniquely in tune with the world right now.
The director has said she’s “been obsessed” with Wuthering Heights since reading it aged 14 and her new film is poised to ignite a similar obsession in its viewers. Strap in, lace up and prepare to indulge your darkest fantasies because “moorcore” is heading this way.
“Wuthering Heights” in cinemas 13 February. Book your tickets now
