How Did People Really Dress in the ‘Wuthering Heights’ Era? A Primer on Georgian Fashion

Another year, another classic literature adaptation on the big screen. The latest book getting the Hollywood treatment? Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë’s gothic novel about the unbridled passions of free-spirited Catherine Earnshaw and her tortured soulmate, Heathcliff. Emerald Fennell directs the ultra-stylized interpretation of the story, which stars Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi.

When the first trailer dropped for the film, Robbie’s on-screen attire caught the Internet’s attention. A see-through bridal look even went viral. Wuthering Heights is set between 1771 and 1802, leading fans to wonder: was the real Georgian era that daring? 

Not quite. The film’s costume designer, Jacqueline Durran, told British Vogue she and Fennell weren’t aiming for historical accuracy. “Our dates are all confused in the sense that we’re not representing a moment in time at all—we’re just picking images or styles that we like for each character,” she explained.

Wondering what the novel’s characters may have worn in real life? Here’s a breakdown of how people dressed in the late Georgian era, the historical period that backdrops Brontë’s Wuthering Heights.

Women layered undergarments for structure and support.

Before putting on their gowns and coats, Georgian women had to assemble their base layer of clothing. First came a shift or chemise, typically made of linen, according to the Victoria & Albert Museum. Then, they put on stays—boned undergarments for shaping and offering structural support.

“A pair of stays was a sort of early example of a corset,” curator Anna Reynolds explained in a video promoting the Royal Collection Trust exhibition Style & Society: Dressing the Georgians. “They shaped the body and they provided support, a bit like a modern bra. They fasten at the back with a single lace.” Next came the ever-important petticoat, an underskirt which was often purposely exposed when worn with a robe à la polonaise—more on that later. 

Finally, there was the matter of shaping the skirt to achieve a fashionable silhouette. By the late 18th-century (aka the Wuthering Heights era), wide panniers—side hoops extending from the hips to dramatically spread out a skirt—had fallen out of fashion everywhere but the court, per FIT’s Fashion History Timeline. Taking their place? Rumps, or bum pads filled with cork, which created the appearance of an exaggerated posterior.

Gowns ‘à la polonaise’ grew in popularity—and political pressures ended extravagance.

An exposed petticoat sounds scandalous to modern ears, but in the mid-1770s and early 1780s, it was all the rage. FIT’s Fashion History Timeline explains that the trend known as the robe à la polonaise (‘Polish dress’)  had distinctive swags where the outer skirt was drawn up by ribbons or other fastening. Its cut included front and back pieces without a waist seam—a contrast to the defined waists of the robe à la Française and robe à l’Anglaise.

The French Revolution radically changed the course of fashion, as the rise of anti-aristocratic sentiment toward the end of the 18th century led to a decline in the popularity of ostentatious and extravagant forms of dress. Britain looked to Paris as its beacon for all things taste, and so followed suit by trimming down their own gowns, notes a 2023 Discover Britain article.

“By the end of the 18th century, we start to see quite a clear shift in the silhouette of women’s dress. It’s much more columnar, and it’s probably one that’s most familiar to us when we think of novels and television adaptations of Jane Austen,” Reynolds explained in the Royal Collection Trust video. In other words, think of the simple, straight up-and-down frocks of Season 1 Bridgerton—the beginnings of Regency-era fashion.

Standards of modesty didn’t get in the way of serving looks.

The 1780s brought the dawn of the chemise—an early take on the underwear-as-outerwear trend, perhaps—often made of muslin and tied with colorful bows. The sheerness of such gowns could scandalize, per FIT’s Fashion History Timeline, but cries of immodesty didn’t hamper its popularity as both a practical and stylish daywear option for women of all classes.

One through-line amidst the changing styles of Georgian-era dress? Low, square necklines reigned supreme, albeit often worn with a neckerchief or kerchief to maintain modesty. Art UK describes a kerchief made of muslin, while Historic UK makes reference to the “muslin ‘buffon’ neckerchief” which could be starched to create the illusion of a fuller bust.

The ‘redingote’ brought masculine tailoring to women’s fashion.

Marie Antoinette, ever the trendsetter, helped bring the redingote (a Gallicization of ‘riding coat’, per FIT) into fashion for French women. The term describes a style of coat-dress inspired by the menswear of the same name, featuring lapels, buttons, and a high collar. The FIT Fashion History Timeline highlights how the redingote’s “visual similarity to men’s dress prompted the same critiques that were leveled at women throughout the century for transgressing gender boundaries by their adoption of tailored riding suits.”

Men wore linen shirts, breeches, stockings, waistcoats, and frock coats.

Georgian-era men’s fashion had a decidedly simpler makeup than women’s. They began with a linen shirt—”the staple undergarment for men throughout the century,” FIT explains—and stockings. 

“Men’s stockings would have been visible,” Reynolds said. “They would have covered the lower leg, and then you would have breeches above. Whereas women’s stockings were usually completely concealed by skirts reaching to the ground.” Breeches, a kind of tight trouser hitting below the knee, completed the first layer of the everyday outfit. 

Next was a waistcoat (a kind of button-up vest), which could be made of decorated brocade if one was wealthy enough to afford it, or plain wool or linen. Then came the coats. For daily affairs, men wore frock coats, characterized by a turned-down collar, tight sleeves but a less stiff body fit, and ornamental buttons. At the end of the 18th century, the coat’s cut was altered at the front so it revealed the breeches and a short waistcoat beneath.

In Aileen Ribeiro’s book Dress in Eighteenth Century Europe, she explains that in the 1770s and 1780s, “the mood…was for ‘the agreeable negligence in dress’ typical of the English country gentleman”—hence the popularity of the frock over the formal full-dress coat, which could feature more elaborate detailing like sequins and embroidery.

Fashion was becoming more accessible.

While being fashionable had long been restricted to the royal, aristocratic, and otherwise wealthy, a changing global economy brought style to the masses in the decades leading up to the time of Wuthering Heights. “A growing professional class, who had made their money in trade or the burgeoning financial industry, were able to afford many of the same items as the established elite,” Reynolds told Discover Britain.

Cotton garments weren’t just popular—they were able to be mass-produced, alongside linen and wool styles. Country girls could wear “bodices of chintz, straw hats on their heads and scarlet cloaks,” Reynolds explained. Working-class and upper-class people would thus be seen in similar dress, although the materials and quality of one’s clothing could still give away their class status.