Just over a month after its premiere, I’ve been bringing up Wuthering Heights to any friend willing to indulge me. This isn’t an invitation to spar over whether adaptations should cleave more faithfully to the text; whether you skew more literary snob like me, or are a full-on Emerald Fennell adaptation apologist, there’s one point of consensus: Wuthering Heights was a visual feast. What I didn’t anticipate was the aftershock—specifically, the fervor surrounding Margot Robbie’s Catherine Earnshaw and her now-viral blush. It feels safe to assume Emily Brontë couldn’t have anticipated her anti-heroine inspiring a beauty trend 200 years later (among other things, of course). And yet here we are, talking about Wuthering Heights blush.
I clocked it myself at Vogue Book Club’s screening of the film. In an 18th-century makeover reveal, Robbie’s Earnshaw steps down from a horse-drawn carriage, with her berry-stained cheeks set against a crimson petticoat. It was the kind of detail you register instinctively—the saturation of it, the romance—before the next scene pulls you under. At the time, I noted it and moved on, with plenty more scenes to digest. A week later, I found myself seated across from my friend, designer Kim Shui at cozy Greenwich wine bar. She barely had time to settle into our corner table before asking, with urgency, “Have you tried the Wuthering Heights blush? I need it!”
The product in question, I discovered, was Chanel’s N°1 de Chanel lip and cheek balm in the shade Berry Boost. In an interview with Allure, BAFTA-nominated hair and makeup designer Sîan Miller (AKA the brains behind the beauty looks in “Wuthering Heights”) revealed it was her go-to whenever Cathy was at Wuthering Heights, later switching to berry toned shades of Merit’s Flush Balm (a more semi-sheer finish) when at Thrushcross Grange to juxtapose the more elaborate costuming.