Aesthetic: Gothic Empress/Emperor

I love and work in (not nearly often enough) a number of different aesthetics and I'll cover them on the blog, explaining each as I have my names for them and don't expect anyone else to know what the hell I mean by them.

One that I love is vintage Halloween. The early part of the last century's ornate, odd postcards, the creepy-that-was-cute-at-the-time style of the '20s and '30s, on up through the '70s and '80s. And don't forget the Beistle decorations!

Crimson Peak

Another one is a Halloween version of a style I call Empress Aesthetic, which I'll go into in more detail in a later post. Empress Aesthetic is richly ornate but not Gothic. Damasks, brocades, silks, satins, furs (fake, of course - fabulously, extravagantly fake but not so fake that it looks like Muppet pelts instead of "animal." Tastefully, elegantly over the top, not tackily). Perfume, incense, draped fabrics, bed canopies, candles, long skirts flowing.

Now, take all of that and turn it darker for Halloween. Not just trading the greens

and yellows and blues for reds, purples, and black, but the whole theme.

Think Crimson Peak, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow, Nosferatu (Werner Herzog's 1979 version specifically, though the original is gorgeous in its own dark way).

Lush and darkly elegant, spooky and ornate. Look for the occasional photo, collage, or likelier, jewelry, in times to come.

If you like this style and want to bring it into your space and your wardrobe, admittedly, it can be a difficult one to source these days.

Time was, you could go into a store and buy swaths of fabric with which to decorate your home or sew a long, flowy skirt or curtain panels or whatever, but private equity destroyed Joann Fabrics and Michaels isn't quite there yet. There's nowhere currently to just pop in and thumb through racks of various colors of velvet.

Nosferatu, 1979

Thrift shops are a great option for flowy skirts, menswear suits in interesting colors, fabrics, and cuts, sheets that can be used for curtains, canopies, elegant glass bowls, brass candlesticks, etc.

Lean toward jewel tones; deep red, burgundy, deep purple, black. For wood furniture, go with dark finishes like walnut or dark cherry. Nothing modern, no straight clean lines. Victorian or Edwardian style is more like it.

For personal style, think flowing scarves and long skirts for a feminine-leaning style, and the above-mentioned suits for a masculine-leaning style. If in doubt, picture a member of the Addams Family introducing you as their stylish cousin; what do you step out of the shadows looking like? See yourself wandering the halls of an abandoned mansion; what does your dressing gown or smoking jacket look like, and what is your candelabra made of?

Happy hauntings!