Prior to watching Guillermo del Toro’s highly anticipated Frankenstein (2025), I made sure to do my research. This largely consisted of watching numerous Instagram reels of Jacob Elordi (forgive me, for I have sinned) who plays the Creature. Upon conducting my ‘critical investigation’, I discovered that he had spent 11 hours in makeup. This was highly believable upon viewing, given how utterly unrecognisable the starlet was. This film is certainly not for fans of Elordi’s precursory heartthrob era. However, the painstaking attention to the visual identities of each character and the hours spent perfecting textures, tones, and silhouettes, underpins what I believe the film does so beautifully. I found myself completely immersed in del Toro’s constructed world, and notably drawn to Mia Goth’s Elizabeth, which I feel was a particular testament to the costume department.
Mary Shelley wrote the original Frankenstein novel in 1818, a time of scientific curiosity, industrial upheaval, and Romantic introspection. Del Toro, however, relocates his adaptation to the Crimean War (1853–1856), a setting rife with political turmoil and human suffering. This serves as fertile ground for his exploration of mortality, and the blurred boundaries between human and creation. Costume designer Kate Hawley (The Lovely Bones, Crimson Peak, Suicide Squad), in conversation with Vogue, describes attempting to avoid the dull browns and greys commonly associated with this time period. She is extremely successful in doing so. The jewel tones and opulent gowns of Elizabeth dazzle onscreen, illuminated even in flickering candlelight. Costume becomes a visual dialect, intertwining the tale’s central juxtapositions.
Interestingly, Goth plays a double-role, as Victor’s mother in the first act, and later as Elizabeth, his brother’s (Felix Cammerer) fiancee and object of his desires. Del Toro externalises Freudian horror through this very literal casting, blurring the boundaries between mother and lover; life and death. This casting decision also mirrors the passage in the original text, in which Victor dreams that he is kissing Elizabeth, only for her to morph into his dead mother’s corpse. Arguably, both of Goth’s characters embody a maternal and gentle, yet strong femininity amongst the flesh and gore of Frankenstein’s setting. This contrast is embodied through Hawley’s silhouettes and ethereal fabrics.
We meet Elizabeth, and get to know her better at a sit down dinner with Victor and his brother. Here, she is adorned in cerulean blue, and an archival Tiffany & Co. scarab beetle necklace. The iconic jewellers partnered with Hawley for the film, so she had access to archives as well as some pieces that they designed in partnership. The feathered headpiece and fluttering of her fan evoke fragile wings: the delicacy and intricacy of her own insect obsessions. Like the butterfly that Victor later helps her to trap in a glass jar, Elizabeth’s outfit appears that it could take flight, if only given the chance to.
Hawley’s designs are clearly evocative of the botany, beetles and all manner of small, complex creatures that Elizabeth is so avidly enchanted by. She is later shown in emerald green silk, crimson bonnets of roses and dainty black lace. A palette that oscillates between blood and moss; decay and love.
One of the most notable of Elizabeth’s looks, has to be her final – the wedding dress. Del Toro has previously cited Catholic imagery as a source of inspiration, and here the scene is entrenched in religious iconography. Goth appears almost transcendentally angelic. The gown’s ivory folds glow with divine light. I was also immediately reminded of royal paintings of Elizabeth the first I had seen in school as a child. With a torrent of long auburn hair streaming down her back, she certainly is the very picture of ‘The Virgin Queen’. The scarlet beads of her cross necklace gleam like droplets of blood, a final merging of life and death. The blend of which encapsulates del Toro’s entire vision.
In her final moment, Elizabeth ceases to be merely woman or wife; she becomes an icon. A figure of divine tragedy, halfway between saint and spectre. It’s a visual culmination of del Toro’s film, the sacred made monstrous.
Image Credits: The MovieDB
