Siân Miller has everyone lusting over Jacob Elordi’s mutton chops

When Jacob Elordi first debuted a dramatic pair of sideburns at a film festival in Berlin last February, the internet went wild. ​“I didn’t know Jacob Elordi was Amish,” read one comment; ​“he’d play a great werewolf from 1845” read another. Newsweek called them ​“shocking” while GQ admired ​“The Sublime Audacity of Jacob Elordi’s new mutton chops”.

These mutton chops, of course, were crafted in aid of Emerald Fennell’s adaptation of ​“Wuthering Heights”, in which Elordi plays Heathcliff alongside Margot Robbie’s Cathy. In the run up to its release, more look reveals from the film have produced reactions running the gamut from surprise to awe and outrage (not least Cathy’s wedding dress). Were costume designer Jacqueline Durran and hair and make-up designer Siân Miller surprised?

“No” is the simple answer from Durran, who’s calling from her home in Surrey. ​“I knew after Saltburn that this film would conjure a lot of debate and that’s not a bad thing,” she says. ​“As a British actor once said to me, ​‘we’re creating drama, darling, not a documentary.’”

Despite the swathe of historians and Brontë loyalists clutching their pearls on socials over all this, a non-literal reading was always the aim for Fennell and her team (hence the apostrophe marks around the title). ​“I had early roundtable meetings with Emerald, [production designer] Suzie Davies and Jacqueline, which really helped me tap into the world that they were beginning to create,” Miller explains, looking through an oversized pair of glasses. ​“Nothing is pulling against the other: there’s make-up drawn from set design and set design drawn from Cathy’s hair colour.”

This symbiosis is likely at play given so much of the cast and crew had last collaborated on Saltburn: Jacob Elordi and Allison Oliver both starred in the film, Margot Robbie produced it, and Davies was the production designer on set and Miller worked on the make-up. Anthony Willis was the composer on both films, and Linus Sandgren the cinematographer. A proper family affair.

To create the visual world of ​“Wuthering Heights”, the team refused to be restricted by the original text nor the historically accurate aesthetic of the 19^th century. Instead, they drew from disparate elements such as runway imagery, Brutalist architecture films, Far from the Madding Crowd, The Night Porter and The Postman Always Rings Twice.

“For me, the script is everything,” she says, of choosing to work with Fennell again. ​“Emerald is such a smart, great visionary. She’s so knowledgeable across the board, in terms of her [familiarity with] the zeitgeist, cultural and historical references, literature, films. You’re drawing from a vast arena of knowledge to tap into and collaborate with.”

*There are spoilers in this interview, but we’re sure you’ve read the book…*

Hi Siân! Could we get into the references that you developed with the team for ​“Wuthering Heights”?

A lot of them were trying to tap into a kind of mood, which is not always easy to pin down to an image. But that’s our job. There were blown trees bent over backwards on the Moors, grass stains on knees, images of animals in a farmyard that had been slaughtered. All very visceral stuff. That was a starting point and then I amassed a lot of images on a private Pinterest board that I would periodically share with Emerald and [vice-versa].

Is there a hairstyle that we see Margot in most often?

At the last count, there’s about 35 hairstyles. The only time that we see her looking more consistent is in the earlier part of the film when Cathy is at her opulent childhood home. Her hair’s wind blown and she’s got flushed cheeks and freckles. Nothing is too contrived.

What’s the secret to a good wind-swept cheek?

On Margot and Jacob, we used the Chanel N°1 Lip and Cheek balm in Berry Boost. I love Chanel, I always use it somewhere on my jobs. And on Nelly, who’s played by Hong Chau, I used the Maq Pro Fard Creme Palette and the Pixi Sheer Gel.

What was your relationship with the book?

I didn’t really delve into it. I’d read it as a child but this is very much Emerald’s version. It’s an adaptation of a book seen through the same eyes that she’d seen it through when she was 14, when she read it for the first time. When we read, we all conjure up an image of what we imagine the world to be and nine times out of 10, I’ll get to set and say, ​“This isn’t how I imagined it.”

So it’s not always good to go back and look at what was done before. I think it’s good to go in with your own fresh pair of eyes and treat it as a new text, because we’re conjuring an almost fairy tale-like experience of the book as opposed to something literal.

Did the outdoor locations have any effect on hair and make-up?

We only went to the Moors for about two weeks, but with Jacob, I had to convince Emerald to let me use a hand laid beard, where every hair is individually added, as opposed to a wig. But in order to demonstrate that it would withstand the potential weather on the Moors, we put a stand-in in front of a water cannon and a Rolls Royce engine wind machine and blew this thing to see whether it would stay on and luckily, it did!

What’s a technique you always have in your back pocket?

Now there’s a product for everything, like something literally called ​“dry lip”. Back in the day, we’d have to mix it with colour theory and grease palettes, which had 12 colors in. You can almost do anything from that. And I think it’s great when you can draw on that ability and that knowledge – training is invaluable to give you those tools.

Let’s talk about Heathcliff and his visual journey. How did you express his transformation?

We see him at the start of the film as a boy, bought by Earnshaw and taken back to Wuthering Heights. There’s a couple of scabs in his hair, his clothes are very scruffy and I would just rub dirt and fake blood across anything that was exposed. And then, when we see him older, he’s hiding slightly behind his long hair. And as much as I think it’s quite clear that he does have resolve, and he’s been toughened by his treatment from Earnshaw, there’s still a shyness. And it made sense that nothing about him is stylised.

But when he returns and we discover that he’s bought Wuthering Heights, he needs to come back completely transformed. We knew we wanted that quintessential regency look, which suits Jacob so brilliantly. And it had to be that weak at your knees moment. We had three camps for his looks – the Jesus Elordi, the Darcy Elordi and the camp that’s both – but it was so important to show his transformation from a storytelling point of view.

Was there a long conversation about the sideburns? Or were you set from the start?

We were pretty set from the start, because it’s what was accurate for the look. Jacob just looks great with them paired with a cane and long boots. Another thing I should add was he’s missing a tooth as a boy. But when he returns with money, he returns with a gold tooth and an earring, so little details like that were added in there as well [to show his journey].

Was there a certain man that you were trying to evoke when he came back as a confident Heathcliff?

Yes, and this is going to be a misleading response, because visually, it’s not the same, but the mood of Terence Stamp in Far from the Madding Crowd.

One of my favourite looks is Margot in that red latex-like dress. What was your thinking behind the hair for that?

That was an up look because it’s got the shawl collar. So much of the hair was to do with the necklines. My first point of reference for that was a fantastic image of Vivien Lee from Gone With The Wind in 1939, it looks like horns [coming from her head]. People have talked about how that’s reminiscent of the ​’40s, but it certainly wasn’t meant to be that. It’s just how they grew. They grow in stature and definition as Cathy becomes tougher and harder.

I’ve already seen some tutorials on TikTok of people doing the braids from the film. Is there anything that you’d especially love to see on the streets?

Maybe some of those lovely little crystals on the cheeks and more of those latticed ribbon looks. Ribbons and bows! Why the hell not?

For those in need of more hairspo, ​“Wuthering Heights” is in cinemas now