Emily Brontë is this season’s style icon

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Winter in Haworth, some time in the 1840s. Emily Brontë steps off the wild and windswept moor where she has spent the day walking, and into the warmth of the family parsonage. She kicks off her pattens, the wooden overshoes that protect her cloth slippers from the elements, but finds the weather has got to them anyway. They are soaked through, and she trails damp footprints behind her. Mud splatters the hem of her dress (I picture it as a thick, heavy silk because the Brontës’ father insisted on this material; he was terrified that, in an era of open-flamed gas lamps and stoves, dresses made of a more flammable fabric would lead to disaster). In addition, Emily wears a winter bonnet and a heavy wool cloak; sufficient to have kept her warm, perhaps, but not entirely weatherproofed. The Brontës certainly knew what it was to be overwhelmed by the elements, in spite of one’s best efforts.

I am imagining this scene not only because it’s the season to reread Wuthering Heights (nor only as a new adaptation is incoming from director Emerald Fennell), but also because, at the outset of my 14th winter in Scotland, I am faced once again with preparing my wardrobe for the months ahead. And, living at the edge of the Yorkshire moors, the Brontës understood better than many how our environment shapes our everyday life.  

There is a richness in paying deep attention to the elements

Emily borrowed “wuthering” from her local West Yorkshire dialect, an adjective that would be poorly replaced by any word in standard English. The novel opens with Mr Lockwood, a faint-hearted southerner, encountering this term for the first time: the name of Mr Heathcliff’s dwelling, he learns, describes “the atmospheric tumult to which its station is exposed in stormy weather”. It is a place of “pure, bracing ventilation” that leaves what few trees and hedges survive there “craving alms of the sun”. Accordingly, coats, cloaks and furs recur through the novel, designating not just social class but also whether a character is capable of refinement or instead belongs to wild, unrepentant nature. After all, readers’ first glimpse of Heathcliff, as a mysteriously orphaned child, is as he emerges from Mr Earnshaw’s bundled-up coat. There’s something foreboding about this coat; it protects but it might also contaminate, as if it brings something from the outside in. 

The novel is testament to the richness that comes from paying deep attention to the elements. We may not all be endowed with Brontëan literary genius but we can all heighten our awareness of the environment and draw something from it. 

Dressing is integral to this. Over the years I have learned that the pleasure of cold-weather clothing lies in attuning myself to the specifics of where I am. I find the east coast of Scotland drier but windier, lashed by icy gales from the North Sea that make maximum coverage a priority. Edinburgh is also graced with the lingering haar that can blanket the city in thick sea fog for days at a time. There, I favour an old suede Creenstone that covers me from chin to ankle. Conditions on the west coast are different: more rain but less wind, and a tendency to be temperate and muggier if also more volatile, thanks to the warming Gulf Stream. In Glasgow, boots and jackets to slick off the rain and dreich are a priority.

We can formulate our delicate “winter palette” with a glance out of the window: grey and dark skies, sombre browns and the occasional snowy white. But even once the autumn leaves have fallen, a short walk shows that winter is not only muted and monochromatic. There is the indigo of heather, the deep green of holly, the bright red of yew berries and rosehips and the eerie yellow stars of witchhazel. In Scottish Gaelic, terms for colour move through scales of shininess, saturation and hue, weaving a richer vocabulary for plotting the interplay of weather and landscape: “gorm” and “glas” both refer to shiny greens, but “gorm” is bluish and saturated while “glas” is grey and unsaturated. Both may be used to describe vegetation, metals, seas and eyes, but their accurate deployment depends on how much attention we are paying. 

Attuning is an ongoing process: the season never stands still, and there is always more to see. The trick, as Emily knew, is to be prepared for unpredictability, but perhaps not so insulated that the elements can’t touch you at all.

Daisy Lafarge’s latest book, Lovebug, is published by Peninsula at £10.99 

Models, Aliza Jarmon at Elite and Raffaele Giolli at Lis Rutten. Hair, Kei Terada at Julian Watson Agency using Balmain. Make-up, Lynski. Casting, Ben Grimes at Drive Represents. Photographer’s assistant, Ariel Mihaly. Stylist’s assistants, Emeline Tavern and Grayce Cooper. Production, Parent