It’s not exactly that the new version of Count Orlock, in the just-released update of Nosferatu, is wearing any latex to speak of. However, the costumes in Robert Eggers’ latest take on this classic tale are still rather stunning. And all a result of the hard work of his longtime collaborator, costume designer Linda Muir.
This reimagining/update/remake/homage, call it what you will of the 1922 silent film masterpiece “Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror,” directed by F.W. Murnau, surely based on Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula, sees its characters traipsing in high gothic style. To achieve what was needed of the movie’s couture, Muir revealed in interviews about the film that every stitch of clothing, be it coats, stockings, or anything else was made for the movie, all in exacting detail of the textiles available in the first few decades of the 19th century, a historically creative time for patterns.
Also playing with candlelight and shadow, lighting sources characters of a movie like this as much as people, we see plenty of silver and gold woven into the wardrobe to reflect the specific light sources.
To be sure, this new Nosferatu is not the only time the Dracula legend has enjoyed a stylish retelling. Familiar as we are with vampire couture tropes like deep rich capes of red and black velvet, women dressed in Victorian-era gowns, and men in their layered suits and high collars, lest we forget the stunning costumes (and color) Frances Ford Coppola brought to the costumes in his Bram Stoker’s Dracula. And the creepy count played by Gary Oldman who wore some spectacular clothes in that movie.
In the new movie though, there seems to be a return to the rich history of gothic wear, as rendered by the creativity of Linda Muir.
A delicious side dish to all of the above is that actor Willem Dafoe plays the vampire hunter in the new Nosferatu. Dafoe played a wildly inventive and oh-so-comic Max Schreck, the actor who played Count Orlock (Dracula) in “Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror,” in the 2000 movie Shadow of the Vampire.
 Again){kind=link}