At the heart of Robert Eggers’s Nosferatu is the grossest, gooiest, most outwardly decaying version of the vampire that we’ve seen in a while. Costume designer Linda Muir worked hard to make Bill Skarsgård look like he’s actually rotting in these clothes: “We’d bring Robert into the process and we’d say ‘What do you think?’ And he’d say ‘Go further, go further,’” Muir explained.
In the film, Count Orlok is a black magician who goes full Vamp Mode after a life in ye olde one percent. And after 300 years in the afterlife, he hasn’t bothered to change his shirt once. “Orlok dates more than 200, 300 years before [the 1838 start of the movie], so his costuming reflects that time period,” Muir said. “He was a living, vital nobleman, very entitled, very wealthy.” Muir then aged and distressed his fit to reflect centuries of decay. She even plotted the points of greatest wear and tear. “The more skeletal he becomes, the more fabulous you can start to do the shoulder blades,” she said. “This is also, perhaps, the first time that I’ve done as much distressing and breakdown inside of the costume, because his body was rotting. He was really, basically, a putrid sack.” You can watch Lily-Rose Depp fight her seemingly irresistible attraction to a “putrid sack” when Nosferatu comes out on Christmas Day.
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