The Costumes of ‘Nosferatu’ Are Gorgeous — They Also Tell a Story About Female Repression and Liberation

With “The Witch,” “The Lighthouse,” “The Northman,” and now a grand remake of “Nosferatu,” genre auteur Robert Eggers has directed four ambitious, period features in the last decade — all of which costume designer Linda Muir dressed to perfection. 

“When he decided to come to Canada for locations for ‘The Witch,’ I interviewed with him in Toronto,” Muir tells IndieWire of meeting Eggers. “Robert and our production designer Craig Lathrop traveled to the north of Toronto doing locations for the exteriors. I stayed in Toronto, working with many of the cutters, seamstresses, and breakdown artists that I normally work with. Robert and I communicated long distance for much of that prep period, which was unique and unusual.”

Born from that first collaboration is their continued creative alliance, one that brings the gothic hues of the legendary “Nosferatu” back from the dead with bite and culminates into the year’s scariest and most meticulously crafted old-school horror movie. A reimagining of F.W. Munau’s 1922 classic, Eggers’ defiantly feminine and cheekily erotic version tells the story of the haunted Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp) and the petrifying bloodsucker Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgård), who’s vampirically obsessed with her. Also in the mix are Ellen’s ambitious husband Thomas (Nicholas Hoult), the couple’s wealthy friends Friedrich and Anna Harding (Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Emma Corrin), as well as Willem Dafoe’s professor tasked with curing Ellen of her “spells.”

“With each production, Robert starts to put together his own vast array of images and they end up in a look-book, which he then passes on to Craig and myself,” Muir explains. “And so I had that incredible amount of very detailed research. When we finally went into production in Prague, I had already designed Ellen, Anna, Thomas, and had started Orlok the previous year. Everything poured out after that.”

Below is our conversation (condensed and edited for clarity) on the film’s feminist themes, period details, character-defining moments, and a legendary vampire who had one very specific outfit.

‘Nosferatu’Courtesy of FOCUS FEATURES

IndieWire: This is a transitional era, post-Regency, pre-Victorian. How did you reflect that in-betweenness in your costumes?

Linda Muir: The first thing to identify was what makes 1838 Germany different from France, England, or North America. And then choosing garments based on scenes, the work that they’re going to have to do. For example, Anna Harding has a very wealthy family. Her fashions are up to the minute. Ellen has a few dresses that are current, but she also has things that are few years prior to 1838. She doesn’t have as many outfits. And she has outfits that are [versatile]. The dress that she wears when Thomas gives her that beautiful, huge bouquet of lilacs has removable sleeves. So when we see her with the lilacs, she’s wearing the long-sleeves version. The intention was to show a young woman who doesn’t have endless means and is trying to be practical and look fabulous. She still has a certain degree of social requirements.

As for the era, it’s definitely post-regency, but even more specific than that. At the beginning of the 1830s, we have very large gigot sleeves. The bonnets are tipped forward, and the hemlines of the dresses are shorter—you see more ankle and more slipper. When we move into 1836-37, if you look inside the dresses from the period, it’s not like they took the sleeve off and recut it to a different shape. They would fold it and pleat it and stitch it down and it’s all in there. So it’s actually quite ugly on the inside, beautiful on the outside. I would imagine they wouldn’t want to get rid of the fabric — the style could quite easily change yet again, and you’d want to be able to accommodate that as fabric was very expensive. 

For menswear, we predate standardized tailoring techniques in this era. You might have a tailor that does your frock coats one way, and your friend might have not-quite-as-good a tailor who does frock coats. And you might have a frock coat that has a much fuller skirt that would take more fabric, so that you would have to be a man of means to have that kind of style detail, like the way one ties a cravat. I found a really fabulous little pamphlet from either 1836 or 1838, and each of the ways of tying a cravat had a great name. 

‘Nosferatu’©Focus Features/Courtesy Everett Collection

Knowing we would never be able to afford or even find the kind of lush, incredible, expensive fabrics [of the era], we had to start to find ways to approximate that. We built the mockups and did a first fitting to get a sense of what worked. From that, we did a second mockup and fittings and refined them even more.

You’re playing with the notion of female oppression and liberation in costumes. And your use of corsets in that regard is interesting, like in that scene between Ellen and her doctor who ties her in a corset.

One of the traits of Robert’s writing that really drew me to him is that he’s a feminist. And he doesn’t clobber you over the head. He simply presents the facts: A viewer only needs to watch the scenes to realize the gender politics and such. And so the corset was definitely a really fascinating notion — men and male doctors would feel a woman needs to be contained by tightening her corset, having her wear that in bed.

When I was researching how these huge period sleeves were supported, I found that there were beautiful little feather pillows that tie onto the arm. And the corded petticoats and all the foundational pieces that give us the woman’s shape of 1838. And then I found this curious corset. I think it’s called a fan-tie corset, and basically, the woman wearing it can self-tighten the corset because the ties extend around the front. It seemed like a really incredible opportunity, knowing that we had repeated scenes [with the corset]. And that scene in particular, when the doctors were trying to force her down in the bed and tighten the corset even more. If we used a corset that tightened up the back, then her face would’ve been down in the mattress. And we wouldn’t have had the opportunity to watch Lily’s trance.

Costumes also come to represent a sense of liberation, especially when the film leans into eroticism.

Conversations around these [themes and scenes] start early because I try to flag things that I think might be potentially problematic in shooting. For example, when Ellen and Orlok come together in the end, she’s wearing a complicated multi-layered wedding outfit and all of the foundational pieces. And Orlok is wearing a number of garments. When we see them come together, that silhouette of the bride and the groom is very important. And so I go through the script with all of the other elements of prep and address those things. 

And it’s not so much that she’s liberated. But her true nature [takes over] in the end. She liberates herself by ripping herself open, ripping her striped dress open. She liberates herself by wearing the same garment over and over and over again when she’s staying at Harding’s home. So she’s liberated herself in that she doesn’t feel the need to dress up completely each and every day. And then she liberates herself completely in the end. And her mind is reflected in the choice of colors, patterns, and the boldness, for instance, of the stripe dress compared to the delicate and demure flowers at the very beginning; the stark and bleak black of the morning outfit, against, say, the pale lilac evening dress that she wears at the beginning, or the white wedding dress that she wears. So that was a part of the thinking, the transition of colors.

‘Nosferatu’©Focus Features/Courtesy Everett Collection

How did you collaborate with Lily-Rose Depp through these layers of details? She is truly terrific.

She was fantastic. She always wanted to know what would be accurate and work within those restrictions, believing that it would inform her portrayal of a woman at that period. I really admire that as it’s not always the case. Actors don’t always embrace those kinds of difficulties so willingly. For instance, when she and Hutter are making love on the settee, she would ask, “How would this happen with the things that I’m and he’s wearing?” And so I would talk her through it. We don’t see it, but when both of the actors have that information in their minds, [that makes it work]. The scene where Lily-Rose is out of the wheelchair, down in the mud and convulsing and communing with Orlok and grinding her hands into the mud, those moments with the costuming need to be plotted [alongside Lily-Rose]. Like, [how will we have] separation between her and the sand [when she is] at the shore? Hence, we used a green shawl.

I’m so glad you mentioned that green shawl; what a gorgeous shade of green that is.

Just to give you an indication of how much work we did on this film: You would think, “How difficult could it be to find a shawl that would approximate a shawl from 1838?” Well, it’s pretty difficult! That was two shawls sewn together, and we created the fringe that is all the way around it. There are very few things in the film that haven’t been either made specifically for that image or that moment or altered. I had a friend at one of the screenings and she went, “Oh my God, the children’s nightcaps!” And I said, “Yeah, too cozy, two parts!” You take it apart, and you have two nightcaps.

You’ve mentioned earlier that you couldn’t have found or afforded some of the specific fabrics of the era. What were some of the informed compromises that you had to make for materials?

Buttons, for instance, on Orlok’s mente, the very large overcoat that he wears. We looked and looked and couldn’t find anything that even remotely evoked the kind of wealth I was seeing in photographs of museum pieces. And we ended up making all of the buttons that you see — very fine gold thread, and they are embroidered. They are all drawn up into that shape, and weighted so that they have a heft and luxe look to them. As for the fabrics, his mente is silk-cotton-chenille. And the tunic that he wears underneath is silk velvet with gold lace overlay. But then we took it down so much, we just stressed those fabrics to give the impression of a corpse of 300 years. The surface of all of those textiles had so much work done to change the way that it read on camera — you know, significantly lining it with fur, which gave it a huge heft. I also tried to find textiles that had gold threads in them in order to reflect the light, because I knew Jarin [Blaschke, cinematographer] was using very low light levels. 

Do you have an overarching principle about costuming? I remember Ann Roth once told me she often would like to see something just a little off or out of place when costuming a character. I think it had to do with authenticity. Do you have any particulars like that?

I don’t have a strict notion. But, for instance, if garments are supposed to look handmade, figure out what you can [get away with] machine-stitching. And how much of each of those garments needs to actually be handmade in order for them to fall in the correct way, so an audience that is used to dressing in 2024 can go, “I don’t look like that when I look in the mirror. My clothing doesn’t look like that when it’s over the back of a chair.” Generally, I don’t want to make each character look like a fashion plate. I try to have each character read as a person. 

Any particular costumes you’re most proud of?

It’s like choosing your favorite child. I love them all. There were definitely costumes that were much more challenging. Orlok’s costuming fo,r instance: He has one costume. It’s meant to evoke so much. He was intended to look like a Transylvanian count from about 1580. It was up to me to find out what the garments that comprise that outfit are, what they would be made out of, what sorts of textiles, accessories, and so on.

I think had I not had Robert leading that journey of discovery, I probably would’ve been much more freaked out about the notion of designing such an iconic character. So I am really proud of Orlok — it’s a successful element to the film for sure. It was really lovely being on set, being constantly transported and feeling like, “Wow, it does feel like I’ve been shot back in time!”