The Internet Is Losing Its Mind Over Emerald Fennell’s ‘Wuthering Heights’ (And Not In A Good Way)
The internet is the place our shared interests blossom into communities united by algorithms and curated content, and while at the mainstream level this manifests into a collective female gaze drooling over Bad Bunny’s recent Calvin Klein ad, on a more niche level you’ll find the outraged literary girlies who simply “cannot” over the first on-set photos from Emerald Fennell’s upcoming film, Wuthering Heights, starring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi. Here’s one example from X handle @mediaforupdates.
And I get it, on a personal level. As the moodiest classic you’ll ever get to read in school, Wuthering Heights is a deeply cherished piece of IP. And for every man who can’t stop thinking about the Roman Empire, there is a female bibliophile who makes the pilgrimage to Yorkshire (the home of the Brontë sisters) and hires a private guide to hike to Top Withins, the farmhouse credited as the inspiration for the site of Wuthering Heights, like I did in 2019.
The one thing every high school English teacher will drill into your brain is that Wuthering Heights isn’t just the title or the setting of the novel, it’s a location so central to the narrative it practically becomes one of the main characters. A location so timelessly preserved, tangible, and accessible, it makes fans feel all the more protective. So when the images were released of Margot Robbie in that incredibly voluminous wedding gown, the criticism floodgates were flung open.
The epic summer and press tour that was “Barbenheimer” set a certain fashion standard for Robbie. We now know how effortlessly she can pull off different styles and how flattering everything looks on her. But this dress, my friends, is not it.
Beyond the standard consensus that the gown wasn’t period appropriate, feeling more like a Princess of Wales inspired look that had fans speculating whether the tale was being reimagined in the 1980s, another super-niche corner of the internet came ready with receipts.
Historical tailors and dressmakers, mostly amateur hobbyists, have created a community sharing their knowledge and DIY expertise at replicating period accurate clothing, which many of them wear in their day to day lives. These aren’t Oscar winning costume designers, but people whose intense passion for the past has found a relevant outlet with its own audience.
One of these talented individuals, who goes by the handle @littleblossomdarling, succinctly breaks down every historical inconsistency and aesthetically unpleasing detail about this costume choice in her video below:
We’ll have to wait for more images or an official trailer before we draw any reliable conclusions about the look and feel of this film, but the one thing that is certain is the blatant throughline between this story and Fennel’s most recent and provocative film, Saltburn.
You put together very rich British people in lavish estates with people who are not rich, but are willing to go to great lengths to become rich, and very suspect behavior at a fresh gravesite, and it’s easy to see why Fennell would set her sights on this beloved tale for her next act.
