In ‘Nosferatu,’ the Breathtaking Period-Accurate Costumes Make the Horror Even More Real

In the opening scene of Robert Eggers’s Nosferatu, Lily-Rose Depp—in a star-making performance as the tormented 19th-century German housewife Ellen Hutter—is having a vision. Possessed by desire for the distant Transylvanian vampire Count Orlok, she runs through the halls of an eerie mansion and out into the grounds, where she writhes and flails with feverish intensity in the wet grass, lustrous under the glow of moonlight. Just as striking as Depp’s extraordinary gymnastics, however, is the nightgown she wears: an optic white as pale and lucid as the moon itself, it’s gauzy enough for the form of Depp’s body to be subtly revealed, but has a heft that allows it to flow theatrically as she moves.

According to the film’s costume designer (and longtime Eggers collaborator) Linda Muir, it took testing multiple iterations of the gown under the exact lighting used in the movie to get it right. “I tried to think, okay, you want to give the audience the feeling of this ethereal, otherworldly, somnambulist character, but also the reality of not exposing too much, especially in the scene where Lily runs out into the pouring rain,” she says. This exacting eye for detail has become something of a calling card for Muir in her work with Eggers, from her meticulous recreations of 17th-century New England settler dress in his breakout supernatural horror The Witch, to her mind-boggling work on Viking epic The Northman, which involved working with numerous historical consultants to imagine what people of every social strata living in that great medieval civilization might have worn with unprecedented accuracy. “While it’s fun to do stylized costumes—and often they are absolutely appropriate—I think that for the sensibility of what Robert goes for, it’s more terrifying to think, Wow. This is a world that really did exist.”

In Nosferatu, Muir delivers some of her most powerful work yet. There’s Depp’s wardrobe of delicate nightgowns and middle-class, post-Regency finery—and a very memorable mourning bonnet that almost steals the entire show—as well as the wild tailoring Muir creates for Willem Dafoe’s occult-obsessed scientist. Then, of course, there’s the costume she conceived for Count Orlok himself, played in a transformative turn by Bill Skarsgård, taking its cues from the dress of Transylvanian nobility in the late 16th century (the film is set a few centuries later, but he is the living dead, after all). As his lavish furs slowly come into focus over the course of the film, they only add to his strangely seductive horror.

Just as exciting for Muir, too, has been seeing the spirit of the film’s costumes playfully reinterpreted on the red carpet, with Depp working alongside stylist Spencer Singer to pull a series of ethereal Chanel gowns as well as more avant-garde looks by cult labels Judy Turner and All-In, while Emma Corrin and stylist Harry Lambert have delivered spine-chilling fashions from McQueen and Miu Miu. (Could this be the winter of Nosferatu-core?) “I’ve done quite a few films set in the past now, and I’ve come to believe that really fabulous, beautiful design that makes a person feel a certain way—regardless of the period it’s from—always feels contemporary,” Muir adds.

Here, Muir shares the story behind her extensive historical research, working with Depp and Skarsgård, and why now—on her fourth film with Eggers—the team that surrounds him is just about able to finish each other’s sentences.

Vogue: I know that Nosferatu had a few false starts. As a longtime collaborator of Robert’s were you there every step of the way?

Linda Muir: Yes. Every time, I’d have it all in my head, and then we’d go, “Oh, we’re putting it on pause again. Okay.” We even got to a point where we were traveling to Prague to start pre-production, but then Robert had to do additional photography for The Northman, or he was maybe still doing the edit, and it became clear that it was just going to be too crazy, so we postponed it to the following year. Then, once we started for real, it was full speed ahead.

Did the costumes evolve at all with each iteration?

I think so, although I didn’t actually start putting pencil to paper until the time we traveled to Prague. Prior to that, I was watching films, reading books, doing plenty of research. But we also had cast changes between the false start the year before and when we actually did start, so some sketches had to be changed because they were for the wrong actor, and as I did more research and Robert did more research, we elaborated on certain things. But the basic bones were always there. Once we started in Prague, I also dove into the research for all of the Roma village people, trying to really pin down where exactly in Romania is this place in 1838. What specifically am I designing and what kind of embroidery are we doing? What kind of headpieces, what kind of coats, what kind of footwear?

I read that Robert was keen to ground the film in that historical authenticity in order to make the supernatural elements feel more believable and terrifying. How did that factor into the way you approached the costumes?

It’s an idea that I totally agree with. While it’s great and it’s fun to do stylized costumes—and often they are absolutely appropriate—I think that for the sensibility of what Robert was going for, it made it more terrifying to think, Wow. This is a world that did exist. And who knows? Maybe there are things like this that happen that we don’t know about. That was the thinking for The Witch, and The Lighthouse, and The Northman. This film was even more difficult than researching The Northman, actually, because with that film, most of the clothing was dead and gone. For this, the difficulty was the fact that the area, the characters, and the people that were in Romania were constantly shifting, and the boundaries for these countries changed depending on what year it was. So are we looking at Romania, are we looking at Transylvania, are we looking at Hungary? Plus, I don’t speak Romanian, I don’t read Romanian. For the Bucovina Convent, trying to ascertain exactly what the great schema nun would look like was fascinating. We had to choose a name for her, we had to choose a psalm that would be from her Bible, and then have that all translated from the Cyrillic alphabet. The layers of complexity in the research felt pretty mind-boggling on this one.

I also read that it was quite a challenging period to costume because that decade, the 1830s, was the end of the Regency era and the beginning of the Victorian era. How did that translate into the clothes?

When I started my research, because it’s set in Germany—in this fictitious town of Wisborg, which we modeled on Lübeck—I was trying to find fashion journals that were German. It’s not that I didn’t look at Parisian or London fashion too, but I really wanted to know what was happening in Germany. I don’t speak German, so I was constantly asking, “Can somebody go to a library and get this for me?” Also, for each of the films that I’ve done with Robert, he’s always given very detailed lookbooks to both myself and Craig [Lathrop, production designer]. I think he also presents them to the studio so that they can see the scope of the films that he’s imagining, and he uses that research to inform the script, so he’s not describing things and then ends up discovering, “Oh, they didn’t actually have that,” or, “Rooms weren’t like that.” It’s like a very detailed skeleton that Craig and I can take and start to do deeper research around.

Ellen is really the beating heart of this story. Were there any real-life figures you looked to for inspiration?

It wasn’t so much that it was a particular historical character or image. The inspiration was more words and feelings: fragility, vulnerability, dread, intense love, all of these words that evoke weights of fabric, delicacy, what part of the body might be visible. I was restrained by what would have been inappropriate during the period. For whatever reason, ankles and wrists? Naughty. But you can certainly show shoulders and neck. Because Ellen has so many scenes in nightgowns, I tried to think, okay, you want to give the audience the feeling of this ethereal, otherworldly, somnambulist character, but also the reality of not exposing so much, especially in the scene where Lily runs out into the pouring rain. So we did tests: I tried nightgowns in three different weights to find out which would show the appropriate amount of body and give the appropriate amount of vulnerability.

In Robert’s female-led movies—this and The Witch, really—I think he’s a very feminist writer. Not by banging us over the head with it, but it’s there in the dialogue and the action. We witness these extraordinarily cruel and bizarre and demeaning scenes that show how women were viewed and treated at that time. The corsets in particular are actually painful, so to think that would be something that would be beneficial to wear in your bed when you’re sick, is just crazy. But I found a reference for what is called a fan corset, or what I’ve been calling a self-tying corset, which the wearer tightens herself on the front, which presented Robert with a fabulous opportunity to have Lily-Rose’s face looking at Sievers and looking at Harding, even though she’s in the throes of this deranged contact with Orlok at that moment. We can see what’s happening on her face, instead of it being a corset that was laced up the back where she would be more or less face down. Often it’s a journey of finding these tasty little bits and presenting them to Robert.

It’s amazing how some of those details feel strangely contemporary—the corsets over dresses are something we’ve seen on the runways everywhere from Prada to Margiela…

I remember for Lily-Rose’s mourning outfit, we made a black petticoat. She was like, “Oh, my God. I would wear this to a premiere.” And I made Emma a ring that was recreated from a painting, attached to this beautiful bracelet, and they were like, “I’ve never seen anything like this before. I want one.” Everyone seemed to want a pair of the little lace fingerless gloves we made. [Laughs.] I’ve done quite a few films set in the past now, and I’ve come to believe that really fabulous, beautiful design that makes a person feel a certain way—regardless of the period it’s from—always feels contemporary.

I have to ask you about that extraordinary bonnet Lily-Rose wears as part of her mourning outfit. Where did that come from?

During that period, there was actually a particular fabric called mourning crepe, and it was made through a process of heated porcelain rollers, I think—not unlike Fortuny pleating, but not quite the same. Some people said it was poisonous, others said it was just really horrible to wear because it was stiffened with treacle. So I really had a bee in my bonnet, so to speak, to see if we could replicate this. There was a particular milliner that I worked with, but Jarin [Blaschke, director of photography] was concerned about the fact that it made the face very difficult to light, and Lily was wearing this outfit in so many critical scenes, so we couldn’t afford to not see her clearly. Thankfully, the mourning crepe, because of its transparency, worked perfectly. It also created a darker version of the fragility you see in her costumes earlier—the nightgowns give that young-waif sense of vulnerability, but the bonnet carries that through to a more mature woman making this monumental decision.

What was your process in creating a costume for Orlok? I imagine it must have been quite challenging, given that it begins almost as a silhouette and slowly more is revealed throughout the course of the movie. Did you work closely with makeup and prosthetics on that?

Absolutely. Robert, right from the beginning, knew that he wanted his Orlok to be a representation of a Transylvanian count from around 1590. There were paintings of the Esterházy family from around that time that I looked to—clothes with a lot of gold, a lot of fur, a lot of heft. He wears one costume throughout, with or without the mente, the huge cloak. And from the initial fitting at Shepperton Studios, I worked with David White, who designed the prosthetics and body makeup. Bill was also fundamental in all of the fittings, and I always gave him tons of time to be by himself in front of the mirror, feeling it, absorbing it, living it, because he was supposed to have had this for 300 years. I also had to design a harness system to keep that cloak, which was so heavy, floating effortlessly on his shoulders, and to be able to release him from it as quickly as possible, because he was so hot. Given the prosthetic makeup and the amount of clothing that he was wearing on set, he was just roasting.

Do you remember your first time seeing Bill in full costume and prosthetics? Was it terrifying?

I do. We did the first test at Shepperton Studios—not a camera test, but mostly for Robert and David and myself. Then we did a camera test in Prague quite early on—that was amazing. It was like, right, this is actually going to work. And then to see him obviously on set, when we shot the exterior greeting and he’s off in the distance in this dim light with the castle behind him, and he’s got the cloak and the whole nine yards on, I was just like, “Whoa! This is fabulous.”

One of the standout aspects of the film for me was the extraordinarily cohesive world-building—everything from the production design to the costumes to the cinematography, it all fits together so beautifully and elegantly. Having worked with Robert and the same team for quite a few films now, do you find there’s a sort of unspoken language between you all that helps you achieve that?

Definitely, and it started pretty quickly. I would say that during The Lighthouse, which was the first film we all worked on together, we had already begun to finish each other’s sentences. Then I think The Northman, which was… with COVID and shooting in Northern Ireland and horizontal rain and wind, it was just such a crazy personal experience for everybody. That certainly furthered the ability to work together. But really, it’s Robert who’s the conduit. I speak with Craig, Craig speaks with me, we speak with Jarin, we speak with the production people, we speak with hair and makeup. But Robert is always available to talk things through. If there’s something where I can’t find a reference, and I say, “It could be this, and it could be this, and it could be this,” he’ll say, “This is what I’m thinking.” You go, “Oh, okay.” It’s not often you have a director with that much going on in that noggin. It’s this constant back-and-forth of information and images, and it’s always articulated so clearly. That’s very rare.

This interview has been edited and condensed.