Wuthering Corsets
At the tail end of last year a friend who works in Film Costume, got in touch to ask if I could help out out in the Production studio of the new Wuthering Heights movie by Emerald Fennel, staring Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi.
They needed me to help make a gold corset for the wedding scene in the film - the scene where they pull the corset in silhouette.
So off I went between Christmas and New Year 2024 to Elstree Studios. What an experience!
The corset itself was patterned using my Sew Curvy Camille Edwardian pattern as a base. It was constructed with white sateen coutil and vintage gold lame fabric from the 60’s. It had corded panels over the bust and a decorative corded panel at the back. It had a conical busk and vertical bone casings over the Edwardian style seams.
The seams were to be lapped in Edwardian style and then bone casings added vertically over the corset.
Monday was ‘fitting day’ in the studio and so I found myself in the very surreal position of being in the same room at the same time as an array of stars including the two lead actors - Margot is as beautiful in real life as she is on camera - just stunning. At one point I looked up from my sewing machine only to see Martin Clunes, who plays Cathy’s father in the film, standing in the fitting room having a laugh and a joke with the Costume Designer. He is exactly as Martin Clunes’ish as you would expect Martin Clunes to be. Tall, jovial, and pleasant.
The cording details on the corset took a whole day alone because the cording material was so fine and I had blisters on my fingers by the end of it, but I loved the pattern on the back panels so much, that I will probably try to incorporate this and some gold fabric into a future design.
Obviously I had a tour of the production studio which I found utterly fascinating. Everyone is in there - the Designer, the admin staff, the Director and all the cutters, sewers and tailors. It’s in a big ‘hangar’ like space, sectioned off into an open plan set of departments. There are fabrics, and tools, and mood boards everywhere, dotted in amongst the rails of finished and part finished costumes. Everyone works together from the Director down, and even when the actors come in, it’s like any other normal workplace, banter, chatter, laughter and lots of very hard work. The whole thing is made by a tight knit team of many parts.
The mood boards were fascinating and of course all the fabrics which were being used. Heathcliffe’s coat for instance, was made from a printed material that looked like soft worn leather but felt like rubber - very strange but a very fine coat indeed.
I was very sceptical about the concept of the film then. The costumes, the fabrics, it all seemed a bit ‘cheap and nasty’ and I did wonder at the casting of Margot Robbie as Cathy - perhaps because of Kate Bush, I always imagined Cathy to have dark hair and look a little more ghostly!
However, having said all that and now having watched the film I can tell you it is an absolute WORK OF ART and I feel super inspired by everything in it - the costumes, the colours, the cinematography, the mood - everything! It had shades of Marie Antoinette, Gone with the Wind, even Dracula. All you could want from Victorian Gothic with added skin and sparkles. Fantastic acting, amazing soundtrack, incredible feels.
It is everything Emerald Fennel the Director said it would be and more. So so good and thoroughly recommended but remember, there's a reason there are "quote marks " surrounding the title - Emerald Fennel is an artist and this film is her interpretation of one of the most well known and popular love stories of all time.
Talking of Love Stories - every corset commission is a love story - to yourself! I wrote a page on how to commission a bespoke corset, click through to read: