Could we be that we’re in the season of the witch without knowing about it? The Autumn Winter shows referenced The Crucible and the trials in Salem, with catwalks featuring capes (Prada, Giorgio Armani), neck collars (Osman), floaty Massachusetts channelling gowns (JW Anderson, Alexander McQueen) and bonnets (Maison Margiela and Christopher Kane). Meanwhile, the choker proving to be the go-to goth accessory of choice, amongst the Insta It Girls (Gigi Hadid, Kendall Jenner, Zoe Kravitz) and on the high street.
Culture is riffing on alt.#squad vibes too. Emma Cline’s novel The Girls (a story inspired by the Charles Manson murders with a collegiate female “family” at its heart) is one of the most talked-about books of the year. Films such as the Harry Potter prequel Fantastic Beasts, the Blair Witch sequel, The Love Witch and a new season of Scream Queens all deal with malevolent femininity.
The mass hysteria at the centre of Arthur Miller’s play (which was an allegory for McCarthyism) feels apt for 2016, with its endless political ruptures. Theresa May has been painted as witch-like, while Amy Chozick from the New York Times aligned Hillary Clinton with the Salem narrative. She said that Clinton had been “forged in The Crucible of all these battles and all this coverage she has hated, and she thinks turned her into this caricature”.
The idea of “caricature” is what the witchy aesthetic is about, distilling femaleness down into opposites. It’s a high-fashion update of goth, with its incorporation of Victorian fashion and the tension between bold, dark colours, delicate fabrication, malevolence and timidity. Standing in opposition to the unfussy silhouettes of athleisure, it retains a certain otherworldly mystique and is all the more interesting for it.
