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Tuesday, February 11, 2025
“There’s a Large Audience for That”: ‘Nosferatu’ Costume Designer Linda Muir on Oscar Nomination, the Undying Popularity of Vampires, and Her Proudest Achievements
collider.com: It’s been a killer year for horror, and today’s Academy Award nominee announcements prove exactly that. Alongside fellow genre titles The Substance and Alien: Romulus, Robert Eggers’ fourth feature film, Nosferatu, was one of the biggest earners of the year. The production’s nods are proof that who you surround yourself with matters, as it was all the folks working tirelessly behind-the-scenes that landed the kudos.
I love what Nosferatu costume designer Linda Muir has to say about why the film being made in the present day is so important: ““There's a whole generation who grew up with either Robert Pattinson or Interview with the Vampire, and there are numerous other examples that might have whetted an appetite.” (Muir). Even though Nosferatu is one of the original classic vampire stories, the post-2000 saturation of sexy, less-terrifying vampires makes it feel new and subversive. Count Orlok is not the same appealing breed of leading man that we see in The Vampire Diaries—there’s no market for shirtless posters of him—but there’s an appeal in how starkly it goes against what we expect from a vampire film today. Semiotically, the viewer understands it is both classic and disruptive to the tropes we’re used to, and that context (semiotics!) makes the film so much more interesting to watch. Muir’s dark, period-accurate costume design only adds to this effect.
I thought it was really cool how Linda Muir talked about strategizing around which dresses Ellen wears in which scenes. She likens it specifically to how Ellen would have had to carefully select her dresses when going on a trip due to price and practicality- the costumers for the show had to be very selective about which dresses they spent their money on because it took so much labor to make them. Which is no surprise, the 1830s had stunningly intricate dresses that I know would take a lot of planning and effort to execute. I just think its really really cool how the costume designer had to make choices just like how the character would (which is already the point of costume design but I digress) because of practical constraints, which in this case were very close to the constraints the actual character would have faced! (With said constraint being money.)
I think Linda Muir totally earned that Oscar nomination. The attention to detail in these costumes for Nosferatu are actually crazy. She really nailed all these details especially like the removable sleeves on Lily-Rose Depp’s dress, which is such a cool historical touch that also adds so much more to the character’s depth. The whole process of making dresses that would rip apart, like in The Northman, but with a new twist, shows how much she’s really thinking about how the clothes fit into the story. It’s clear that she’s got a deep love for the details, which always makes a costume design stand out more to me. I also love how she just gets that vampire stuff is such a classic, and Nosferatu really taps into that obsession with vampires in a way that feels super fresh. It’s like mixing old-school vampire vibes with something new that draws people in, and that’s what makes it so cool.
3 comments:
I love what Nosferatu costume designer Linda Muir has to say about why the film being made in the present day is so important: ““There's a whole generation who grew up with either Robert Pattinson or Interview with the Vampire, and there are numerous other examples that might have whetted an appetite.” (Muir). Even though Nosferatu is one of the original classic vampire stories, the post-2000 saturation of sexy, less-terrifying vampires makes it feel new and subversive. Count Orlok is not the same appealing breed of leading man that we see in The Vampire Diaries—there’s no market for shirtless posters of him—but there’s an appeal in how starkly it goes against what we expect from a vampire film today. Semiotically, the viewer understands it is both classic and disruptive to the tropes we’re used to, and that context (semiotics!) makes the film so much more interesting to watch. Muir’s dark, period-accurate costume design only adds to this effect.
I thought it was really cool how Linda Muir talked about strategizing around which dresses Ellen wears in which scenes. She likens it specifically to how Ellen would have had to carefully select her dresses when going on a trip due to price and practicality- the costumers for the show had to be very selective about which dresses they spent their money on because it took so much labor to make them. Which is no surprise, the 1830s had stunningly intricate dresses that I know would take a lot of planning and effort to execute. I just think its really really cool how the costume designer had to make choices just like how the character would (which is already the point of costume design but I digress) because of practical constraints, which in this case were very close to the constraints the actual character would have faced! (With said constraint being money.)
I think Linda Muir totally earned that Oscar nomination. The attention to detail in these costumes for Nosferatu are actually crazy. She really nailed all these details especially like the removable sleeves on Lily-Rose Depp’s dress, which is such a cool historical touch that also adds so much more to the character’s depth. The whole process of making dresses that would rip apart, like in The Northman, but with a new twist, shows how much she’s really thinking about how the clothes fit into the story. It’s clear that she’s got a deep love for the details, which always makes a costume design stand out more to me. I also love how she just gets that vampire stuff is such a classic, and Nosferatu really taps into that obsession with vampires in a way that feels super fresh. It’s like mixing old-school vampire vibes with something new that draws people in, and that’s what makes it so cool.
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