Views: 23
Over the summer, I fell in love with Luca Guadagnino’s Suspiria. The remake of the 70s classic was, like many of Guadagnino’s films, fashion-led. Costume designer Giulia Piersanti created the wardrobes of young ballerinas, unknowingly training in a witches-coven-come-dance-academy, from scratch, drawing inspiration from Sibylle, the best-known fashion magazine in East Germany (she described the title as ‘a socialist version of Vogue.’) Dakota Johnson and Mia Goth train at the Helena Markos Dance Academy, in post-Cold War Berlin, in graphic prints on blouses and skirt. Tilda Swinton, as Madame Blanc, the coven’s artistic director, wears restrained jersey dresses and one violent orange maxi that I think about constantly.
Pierscanti drew on a palette of muddy army greens, rusty browns, camels with sudden slashes of red and orange to bring to life the vivid world of witches lurking beneath the drab surface of post-Cold War Berlin and the film is so stylish there are multiple Reddit threads devoted to one coat Mia Goth wears. (She admitted she asked to keep it and was refused.)
It occurred to me that some of cinema’s most stylish moments have come courtesy of witchy films. The misfit schoolgirls of The Craft with their PVC coats, dog collars, rosaries and tartan skirts. Nicole Kidman’s moss green Monah Lidelle slip dress in Practical Magic, which I have an eBay alert for. The modern witch in cinema has typically blended elements of folk and hippy culture — counterculture movements rooted in nature — with Victorian Gothic aesthetic, the era in which witchcraft truly came into vogue, with Ouija boards and the work of Aleister Crowley exploding in popularity.
Now, with a Practical Magic sequel on the agenda, Margot Robbie’s woven hair, Wuthering Heights red carpet looks and looks all over the runway, witches are back.
The ELLE Edit: Witching Hour
BARED
Rockfinch Heeled Boot
DOEN
Elowen Anniversary Skirt
MILLIE SAVAGE
Heart Hoops
VIOLETTE_FR
Lip Nectar in ‘Dahlia Noir’
There’s a long association between increased interest in occult practices and alternative spiritualities with moments of feminist insurgency. In her nonfiction book Strange Rites: New Religion for a Godless World, Tara Isabella Burton writes of the ‘kaleidoscopic panoply of spiritual traditions, rituals and subcultures’ young people are embracing because they align with their institutional preferences, which view hierarchies as oppressive and promise self-empowerment. As Lionel Obadia observes in Spiritual Witchcraft and Magic 2.0 As Weapons of Resistance, ‘in the 2020s, modern witchcraft is turning more spiritual and spirituality is — to a certain extent — becoming more witchy.’
In the 2020s, TikTok has been flooded with somatic healers, astrologers and digital tarot readers, but women are also turning away from traditional treatment modalities towards traditionally ‘occult’ practitioners like hypnotists, somatic therapists and psychics. This makes sense. History tells us the women who were hunted as witches in the 17th century were most likely healers.
Witchcraft has always been visually coded, so as it makes a cultural return, we’re gravitating towards some of its iconography in fashion. Corsetry and lace have been prevalent not only at McQueen, Dilara Findikoglu and Ann Demeulemeester (the usual suspects) but also at Ralph Lauren, where pagan and medieval metalwork accented ready-to-wear pieces. Fringing and tassels are adorning everything from scarves and shawls to jewellery.
Paisley was all over the Spring/Summer 2026 runways. At McQueen, creative director Sean McGirr drew inspiration from The Wicker Man, the 1973 British horror film set on a Scottish island where residents practice a form of Celtic paganism. The set, conceived with artist Tom Scutt, featured maypoles constructed from 8,000 meters of hessian ribbon and natural foliage — a consecrated space for McGirr’s exploration of faith, fertility and feminine power through bumster trousers, corsets with asymmetric cutouts, and billowing gowns in watercolour florals.
The famous black pointed-toe boot — a style of the Edwardian era — was modelled by New York City’s first lady, Rama Duwaji, at her husband’s inauguration. Duwaji wore the Miista ‘Shelley’ with a midi skirt and coat: perfectly practical, pointedly stylish. We’ve also seen witchy style in the return of Napoleon jackets, Victorian ruffles at Dior menswear, and then there’s Margot Robbie’s Wuthering Heights press tour wardrobe, which featured clothes and accessories woven with hair — a key element in witchcraft and a symbol of “The Beast”. At the London premiere, Robbie wore a custom Dilara Findikoglu silk tulle corseted dress accented with synthetic hair hand-dyed to match the hair of Emily and Anne Brontë, a reference to Victorian mourning jewellery. She paired it with a replica of the Charlotte Brontë bracelet, a piece of mourning jewellery constructed from the author’s dead sisters’ hair. Ghoulish? Perhaps. Stylish? Undeniably.
The ELLE Edit: After Dark
MAISON MAYLE
Soli Luna
THE ROW
Barina Midi Dress
VALENTINO GARAVANI
Fringed Velvet Scarf
COACH
Suede Fringe Brooklyn Shoulder Bag
Beauty is also following suit. Pinterest announced Vamp Romantic as a major trend for 2026, with the look centring on long dishevelled and dark hair—think Odessa A’Zion and Charli XCX on their respective campaign trails.
Culture is only going to get more occult. Greta Gerwig is adapting The Magician’s Nephew, part of The Chronicles of Narnia, written by C.S. Lewis. Beyond being a children’s author, Lewis was a Christian theologian obsessed with concepts of good and evil who authored The Screwtape Letters, a satirical series of letters written by a demon to his nephew offering guidance on deceiving and manipulating humans to evil ends.
That we’re seeing witchcraft emerge in fashion right now speaks to a broader cultural appetite for something that feels genuinely countercultural, resisting institutional control and celebrating soft power outside traditional structures. We’ve seen this pattern before—spiritualism and occultism tend to flourish in moments of social upheaval and feminist insurgency. The 2026 witch isn’t wearing a pointed hat or cackling over a cauldron. She’s wearing McQueen corsetry, a Doen skirt and Miista boots.
The post There’s Never Been A Better Time To Be A Witch appeared first on ELLE.
