Best known for her collaborations with Director Robert Eggers, Linda Muir is well-renowned in the fashion world for creating authentic-looking and historically-rooted film wardrobes.
Muir has won twice for Lilies (1996) and Exotica (1994) and has been nominated four times for the Canadian Screen Award for Best Costume Design. She is currently nominated for several awards, including the Satellite Award for Best Costume Design for her most recent collab with Eggers— the highly-anticipated Nosferatu.
In this age-old story of ‘Dracula’, Nosferatu depicts the tale of an estate agent Thomas Hutter who visits Transylvania in the 1830s to meet with Count Orlok, a potential client, in a pivotal encounter. Their friends Friedrich and Anna Harding are left to look after Hutter’s new bride, Ellen, while he is away. Ellen, plagued by terrifying images and growing fear, soon comes across a malevolent power that is well beyond her control.
To tell this story in the truest manner possible, Muir designed the outfits worn by the cast including Bill Skarsgård, Lily-Rose Depp, Nicholas Hoult, Emma Corrin, Aaron-Taylor Johnson and Willem Dafoe.
One Lash Shot had the opportunity to speak with costume designer about the behind-the-scenes of the Nosferatu wardrobe.
What made you become a costume designer?
You know, initially, when I was in grade school, I thought I would be an English teacher. I loved reading, and I loved the fact that characters, situations, and stories were so incredibly imaginative and not the world that I lived in. I absolutely loved entering those worlds. Throughout high school, I had theatre classes, and I ended up being the one who directed, acted, and made the costumes and sets—the whole thing.
I became involved in community theatre because it was fascinating again at that age. I went to a latter part of high school that was combined with high school and university, which was an initiative here in Toronto called ‘Free School’.
I attended university classes, and there I learnt drama, plays and theatre— it was kind of like a step into other worlds. And then I realized that I wasn’t so fond of the idea of auditioning. I really am not an actor. I could never do it, and now, having worked with actors for almost 50 years, I certainly do not have that facility. I think it’s extraordinary the kind of abilities that actors have.
So, kind of the route via theatre. I worked in theatre and became a costume designer very young. Initially, I mostly worked in alternate theatre. What I loved there was working with the director initially on the text and once we had actors cast, working with the actors on the designs.
So, I worked in theatre exclusively for the first bit of my career and people kept saying “You put so much detail into the costumes, you know, it’s fantastic for the actors! But really can the audience see it all? You know, you should work in film!”
So, I kind of branched out—it was completely the universe working, like things that were offered. So, for a while, I was working in theatre and film/television.
Then because of the demands and schedules, I began working exclusively in film and television. And now, I exclusively work in films and mostly with Robert because his projects are fantastic!
So, that’s kind of my story!
Out of all the movies you worked in, which one was your favourite?
That’s like choosing your favourite child! More or less they all have something I found interesting because I agreed to do them and tried my best to bring to each project what was needed.
Exotica was a favourite. There was a really quirky film that I did in the 1990s with director/screenplay writer John Greyson called Lilies, which was based on a French-Canadian play. That featured an all-male cast and they played male and female parts in 1910 and 1953, I think. That was a very interesting and fabulous film experience. Very difficult— a man’s 40 chest is not a woman’s 40 chest, in terms of costuming.
But all of Robert’s films I have completely loved. And because he is so particular about detail and information that brings an audience into the world, it is incredibly fulfilling and satisfying in terms of costume design.
How did you and Robert Eggers collaborate in the first place for each project you’ve worked on?
Robert spends a great deal of energy, time and devotion in building everything while he is writing the scripts. He will collect images that are inspirational, you know, things that help him build the world that he is writing. Not necessarily costume, it can be set, it can be props, it can be action, it’s all the world that the characters belong to.
Between him and I, the collaboration begins once I get the script and build my questions. Then, he will bring me into the world and we will address what he sets in the form of the lookbook. Like, how do you see these images, why did you choose these images and what about these images? Whether it’s a character-driven image or it’s an abstract image?
Sometimes, there are just adjectives at the top of the page. It’s not necessarily a character name. It could be something mood-oriented or atmosphere-oriented.
The initial part of the collaboration is that he is luring me into that world. And, I love it. So, then I start the research process—each of his films is set in a different period. I joke with my family that if I work with Robert long enough, I’ll understand history! (Laughs)
So, the research process means that I am looking into whatever period the current film is set in. For instance, for The Witch it is 1630 New England; with The Lighthouse it was 1908/1910 New England again but this time nautical; with The Northman, it was 895 AD Viking with nothing other than carvings, texts or sagas.
With Nosferatu, it is 1838 Germany with different social standings/statuses. It has within its world— because it’s near the harbour, it has military, it has nautical clothing, oils skins again out on the water, all of the hospital nurses and attendants, chambermaids, governesses, all the different strata of society. That research takes me to fashion journalists that are German, they are written in German and they are dedicated towards German period audiences. So, trying to access those and find those images is challenging.
But there are also the Romanian locations. Choosing which of the many counties in Romania, the Transylvanian county of Hunedoara where the inn that we see is located— there’s very specific folk clothing, very specific embroidery, sheepskins, hats, shoes. Also, the convent, for instance, is situated in Bukovina and the nuns have outfits that were hand-embroidered and none of it was in English. We had to create a name and choose a song from that non-English Bible and have that all translated and then embroidered.
Transylvania between 1580 and the early 1600s, we were looking at paintings, illustrations, reading stories in folk material written in languages like Romanian and German. We had to find specialists in those fields who helped translate those documents. We keep collecting these breadcrumbs along the way and the more and more we get closer to shooting, the more urgent the information becomes. You have to costume people and the notion is to costume them authentically.
Obviously, we are not using garments from that period but we are trying to replicate that look.
I heard that Robert always has a look book. When did you first see the one for Nosferatu?
Nosferatu is kind of interesting after the four films because it really started as whispers after The Witch. I cannot remember at what point I read the script but certainly, the images were vaguely sometime around after The Lighthouse.
But it was really sort of complete, robust, the lookbooks came a year before we started shooting. I actually went to Prague with my assistant and we already started sketching. We had lookbooks and then we had a very significant cast change. Then it was on hold for a little bit and then we went back the following year and by then, everything had been assimilated and the look books were even more helpful.
Technically, ‘Count Orlok’ is 300 years old so he’s dressed from another century, is that correct? And there were a lot of prosthetics involved, so you might have worked closely with the makeup team on that, right?
Yes.
David White. I first met him in Robert’s previous film, The Northman. David was extraordinary at creating a dead warrior who was buried in a Viking ship in the funeral mound. He is the dead person who is a magical being holding onto the sword ‘Draugr’ which the protagonist played by Alexander Skarsgård has to obtain in order to reach his destiny. That scene which is incredible has this dead warrior awakening and battling this ‘Amleth’ character an underground Viking burial mound. David did the prosthetics for the hands and face for that. It was such a joy to work with him then.
We made a trip from Prague to London’s Shepperton Studios, where David was putting together the first version of the prosthetic pieces for Count Orlok. The number of appliances used on Bill Skarsgård is incredible. I don’t think there was much of Bill’s body that wasn’t covered with prosthetic devices. Bill lost a lot of weight for this part. And he is already a long, tall, thin guy. So, he was even thinner.
I think that first fitting, I took prototypes of the costume pieces and most importantly for us. Prototypes of the boots we were making were based on Hungarian military footwear from somewhere around 1600. They were leather mules with these 4-inch stiletto heels and leather socks that slide into the foot. We made it as one piece. The combination of everything was that we could see the beginning of this character. And then in the prep, we had a series of progressive fittings, that David would come for, with improved and more developed prosthetic appliances. Finally, when we did a test with light, in costume, not completely finished by any means and certainly not aged yet, there were extensive alterations needed to make him appear as if his clothing had a rotting body on the inside and being affected by the elements on the outside.
By then, the prosthetic pieces were very developed. David had a bust created of Bill as ‘Count Orlok’ and we ended up having that bust in costume, which really helped because he had a very pronounced hump, so the pieces that we were building, like the tunic that goes under the very large mente (that’s the overcoat), that really helped us with the shape.
When Bill came in for fittings, we continued developing the costume pieces. That very large mente ended up becoming very heavy because we kept adding fur, adding sleeves and enlarging the collar, all to Robert’s specifications. That became quite heavy. So, with this and all the prosthetic makeup, it was quite hot. Plus, this huge hat called ‘kolpak’. With that overcoat, we actually created a body harness that Bill wore, under his costume and it came out through the shoulders of his tunic and there were quick-release clips attached to the inside of his massive cape. What that meant is that the cape when he was wearing it looked like it was just floating in his body. It looked magical and it also helped relieve the wait as it didn’t slide back and because of the quick-release clips, Bill could take it off between takes, which helped him cool off.
It also meant that Bill had the freedom as this super-thin character, to hide himself within that cloak quite effectively, without worrying about having to adjust it. He could just move his body around with that cloak.
Robert wanted ‘Count Orlok’ to not be visible to the audience initially. Actually, for quite a bit of the film, he is hidden— either he is in the dark or he is in the shadows.
Which was the hardest dress for you to make in Nosferatu? Was it ‘Ellen Hutter’s wedding dress or something else?
No, not the wedding dress. The wedding dress took the longest in terms of how to do that amount of embroidery. The amount of embroidery on it is extensive. We did a combination of machine embroidery and depending on where it was on the dress, we did hand embroidery over that and it kind of disappeared into the machine embroidery.
We had a scene that was cut in the ending process where ‘Ellen Hutter’ (played by Lily-Rose Depp) lifts her wedding dress and veil out of a trunk and she’s remembering her wedding. You could see much more of the wedding dress, the headdress and embroidery work. But currently, you can only see that at the end of the film and in much-reduced lighting. Obviously, the main crux of the scene is the two of them coming together. So, it took a while to figure out the technical aspects of her embroidery.
The most difficult outfit is the pale blue dress that she is wearing while receiving the lilac bouquet from ‘Thomas Hutter’ (played by Nicholas Hoult) at the beginning of the film because that dress is fascinating actually as it was designed to play in two different scenes.
In the period of 1838, young women who didn’t have a lot of money would try to economize. You would make a dress that had two different sets of sleeves. Short sleeves and it actually has long sleeves as well that you can pull on over. That dress has two sets of sleeves. It has the long sleeves that you see in the lilac scene. In the scene where she is in her own room, absolutely worried about her husband, she’s taken her wedding dress out of the trunk and she thinks of her husband. Because she is in her own room, she is wearing the dress with short sleeves and the long sleeves are over in the background of the dressing screen.
That was kind of a nice way of utilizing facts, that I enquired during the research process and bringing the audience into the world and illuminating what this life is like. We certainly don’t have that kind of clothing now. And, we lost it because of the trimming of the story. But that happens.
I would say that the dress was the most complicated as there was a lot of finishing there and the pleating.
The pleating in the womenswear of the period, the lines of the bodice remain the same. The skirt is the same construction of material that is pleated and gathered into the waistband. But what distinguishes one dress from the next and one dress of a lower status, compared to somebody of a higher status, is the amount of detail that goes into the sleeves and the embellishments of the whole thing.
So, for instance, if you’ve got pleats across the sleeve and it’s all piked— if you look at the outfits worn by ‘Anne Harding’ (played by Emma Corrin), they were so much fun to do! There was a lot of thought that went into the process of singularizing one dress to the next, braiding, trimming, etc. We did that more for Emma because she plays a wealthier character.
How many costumes did you make for this film? I am assuming it’s quite impossible to source so many outfits.
For all of the principal characters, everything that you see on their bodies, from their skin, their shirts, their petticoats, their corsets, their boots, their shoes, their jewellery— we did it. We made some very complicated jewellery, even for the nurse at Harding house, although she didn’t have any lines, she had an incredibly complicated shuttling made for her with household items.
So, all of their caps, their bonnets, their capes, their coats, their cloaks, their nightwear, the odd Bukovina stableman’s costume that ‘Thomas Hutter’ steals to ride away on the horse— all of that is made and most of it has at least some hand embroidery or some kind of embellishment, depending if you see them undress.
All of Lily’s corsets were all hand-embroidered. The one that she over her nightwear as a prescription to calm her, for example. So, it’s quite a process to research it all and design it all. It’s also quite a process to figure out the schedule because many of these things have multiples.
You know, when she is riding in the water and Lily-Rose is tearing the front of her dress— I tried to be systematic about it, very practical about it and conscientious in terms of budgeting. How many bodices can we make, can we pair them with fewer skirts, can we attach them, can we repair them?
My costume supervisor and I counted a number of handmade pieces, but I can guarantee it’s substantial. Because, again, Robert creates these stories that have very specific locations and very specific time periods, therefore finding things to rent for each of his films has been very difficult, if not impossible.
For instance, with The Northman, we ended up making a huge number of costumes, even for the crowd scenes. For the crowd scenes in Nosferatu, if you notice, like when they first come through the road, there are very specific uniforms for the military. Uniforms for the military were made, emblems were made and hat devices were made. We even made a really specific cattle drivers’ hat that really locates that place to Germany in that time period. The audience would know that they haven’t seen that before. The buildings that they are walking in front of, and the actions, you know, that all roots it in the place and time it is intended to be.
In the hospital scenes where we follow Dr. Sievers (played by Ralph Ineson) and the head nurse down the stairs and then through the corridor, again, we have a certain number of rentals, but we completely have to do more women’s clothing, more cloaks, more hats, more gloves, more shoes and boots. Shoes and boots are for every film really problematic. They don’t last usually, so they are certainly not for principals.
All of the outfits for Emma Corrin and even for Aaron Taylor-Johnson have appropriate footwear that goes with those costumes. You don’t see them necessarily, but there’s no guarantee that you won’t.
Because Robert and Jarin Blaschke, the cinematographer, do such long and complicated shots, there’s a good chance that anything in any shot can show at any time. We try to be prepared. Robert and Jarin do very detailed storyboards and we all — Craig in sets and production design, Tracy in terms of make-up, Susan in terms of hair, myself, props— we are all contestants asking, “Is this the shot?”
Sometimes it becomes wider, sometimes it shrinks down a bit. Once we get on set and Jarin is finalizing the lighting and camera moves, everything has to be ready.
Which was your favourite look from the film and who specifically did you enjoy designing for the most?
I love all my children (laughs)!
For this reason, ‘Count Orlok’, whether we call him ‘Dracula’ or ‘Count Orlok’ or ‘Nosferatu’—is an incredibly iconic character in literature and in film.
I would say that from the beginning, Robert was very clear in what he saw and what he wanted. And, it was a really fascinating journey to design those pieces and to track down what these men during those periods would have worn and what they wanted to project!
This goes back to the first question you asked about why I wanted to become a costume designer. You know, considering what people, male or female, at all of these different points along the way in history— How did they convey feeling sexy? How did they convey feeling powerful? How did they convey fragility and sexuality? It’s all so different from what we think now!
Hopefully, thinking about these things and discussing them with a director/writer like Robert who has these things in the front of his mind induces the visuals of these characters in his films with more than simply dressing them. The crux is to dress them individually and with purpose and with intent that hopefully conveys what’s in the script.
So, Count Orlok (laughs)!
One of the boons of starting and stopping, I think as an afterthought, is that it actually relieved the potential for being intimidated by how famous that character is. And Robert’s confidence and conviction that this is what he wanted— those two things together I think made it a really happy experience!
[Author’s note: Thank you to Linda and her team for bringing such fascinating outfits depicting the realism of 1830s Germany through the outstanding work in Nosferatu. Can’t wait to see many more collaborations between Linda and Robert!]