Haunt Couture

Fashion and the macabre have been bedfellows since the days of guillotine haircuts and witches robes, and they still are.

"Fashion often becomes very interesting in difficult times,” Karl Lagerfeld, in New York for various events, told The Daily Beast last week.

He’s right, of course. Take fashion and the macabre: As perfectly paired as gruyere and wild mushrooms. The French Revolution taught us that frivolities like fashion were worthy of a beheading, but leave it to the French to turn one’s march to the guillotine into something chic: Victim’s Balls. The only way to get invited, of course, was to prove that one of your relatives had been killed at the guillotine, causing some desperate party crashers to forge documentation in order to get in. Victim’s Ball trendsetters cut their hair “a la victime,” which meant choppy locks imitating the ‘do real victims would get just before heading to the chopping block. Other trends included red ribbons worn around the neck (for obvious symbolic effect).

Horror films have capitalized on the allure of the twisted—haunted characters from bloodcurdling B-movies look unsettlingly glamorous, and their victims are always (drop-dead) gorgeous.

Horror films, too, have capitalized on the allure of the twisted—haunted characters from bloodcurdling B-movies look unsettlingly glamorous, and their victims are always (drop-dead) gorgeous. Is it their actions that make them so otherworldly and desirable—the wielding of hatchets, the biting of breasts, the brooding in dark shadows and the blood-curdling screams? More likely, we’re drawn to them because they’re always so impeccably dressed, having turned their spooky sensibilities into an enviable fashion statement. This exploration of the dark side has been a favorite reference point for designers, too, and the Museum at FIT has devoted a show of fashion with that theme, “Gothic: Dark Glamour.” Seems like the right time, then, to embrace the doom and gloom.

With Halloween on the horizon, designers this fall seem to have ghouls on the brain. In the gallery, see how this season’s fashions provide not-so-subtle nods to creepy cult films.