From runway monsters to red-carpet gore, the horror genre has always been a ripe frontier for fashion.&nbsp;

Lights flicker off suddenly, accompanied by a shy, breathless gasp from the audience. Smoke rises, and a fleet of high-pitched strings crescendos suspensefully. Given only this scene, it is equally likely that the crowd awaits a horror movie or a fashion show.
Horror and fashion exist in symbiosis: horror builds atmosphere and character through costuming, while fashion expands its visual vocabulary through cinematic reference points. Here, horror encompasses not only the genre itself, but also the imagery, atmospheres, and visual conventions associated with fear, discomfort, and the macabre.
Around October, commercial horror merchandise becomes almost ubiquitous in variety stores and the like. It is the season for Jack Skellington pajama pants and Hot Topic Voorhees hoodies. But this is not the horror-fashion relationship under examination here. Beyond Spirit Halloween, which has its own merits, lies a deeper interplay between garments and frightful motifs that work on the psyche when fashion and horror converge. This interplay extends beyond couture and critically acclaimed cinema to the red carpet and the cheesiest slashers. But first, high fashion: some designers are exceptionally adept at pushing fashion's capacity to unsettle.

<h2 style="text-align: center;">High Fashion Horror</h2>

Undercover "Under the Cover" Spring/Summer 1996. Courtesy of IDEA Books.

Maison Margiela Artisanal Collection Spring/Summer 2024. Courtesy of Maison Margiela.

Alexander McQueen Fall/Winter 1997. Getty Images.

Undercover Fall/Winter 2019. Courtesy of Undercover.

The creative liberties of the runway and haute couture unleash fashion’s potential for radical disturbance. Nods to familiar fright flicks may be as overt as a graphic-printed top (see Raf Simons for Calvin Klein, Spring/Summer 2018). More often, however, designers draw on horror’s broader symbolism: the supernatural, the occult, possession, and so on.
John Galliano’s recent couture collections for Maison Margiela are prime examples. Most notably, his Spring/Summer 2024 collection explored haunted objects, with models appearing to shed their humanity in favor of doll-like personas. Dramatic silhouettes and figurine-like puff sleeves were heightened by Pat McGrath’s porcelain-like “Glass Skin” makeup, doll-like curls, and fractured, puppet-like walks.
Another master of world-building, Alexander McQueen built a universe crawling with monsters. His runways were masterclasses in manifesting inner darkness through fashion. Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, his shows became cinematic experiences in their own right. Spooky acoustics, two-way mirrors, fog, and flame: McQueen understood how atmosphere could transform the perception of a garment. His creatures took shape through styling, too, like the wolfish manes and feline eyeliner of Fall/Winter 1997. His breed of horror extended beyond the monstrous to the macabre. On the last day of London Fashion Week in 1998, The Daily Telegraph declared, “McQueen Goes to Hell and Back.” Dominated by a palette of red and black, with blood-red contact lenses, the spectacle culminated in a model surrounded by a ring of fire, blurring the line between runway show and psychological horror.
Yet another horror fanatic in fashion is Jun Takahashi of Undercover. His fascination dates back to the label’s early years, particularly Spring/Summer 1996’s Under the Cover. Drawing on the grotesque imagery of cyberpunk and body horror cinema, Takahashi transformed the body into a canvas for punk-inflected experimentation, pointing to a broader history between punk, New Romanticism, gothic style, and horror.
These collections are best understood, and most viscerally felt, in their original runway context. Yet their designs are frightening enough to feel as though they belong under the bed or lurking in the closet.

<h2 style="text-align: center;">Possessed by Film</h2>

American Psycho (2000). Getty Images.

LGN Louis-Gabriel Nouchi Fall/Winter 2023. Getty Images.

Eyes Without a Face (1960). Courtesy of Film Forum.

Rick Owens Fall/Winter 2016. Getty Images

Hungarian Poster for The Birds (1963).

Jacket from Look 33 of The Birds. Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Poster for Hellraiser (1987).

Thom Browne Fall/Winter 2012. Courtesy of Thom Browne.

Rosemary's Baby (1970). Getty Images

Altuzarra Spring/Summer 2024. Getty Images.

Moving into more explicitly film-inspired fashion, cinema offers an infinite well of costumes and special effects for the runway to reinterpret.
In 2012, Thom Browne found his muse in the Cenobites of Hellraiser (1987), masking several models in pin-studded coverings. Set atop hypermasculine shoulders, the coverings make the male body an imposing canvas for the film’s imagery of torture.
McQueen’s ode to Hitchcock’s The Birds (1963) in Spring/Summer 1995 was not particularly frightening, yet there is something creepy about how its gulls, crows, and ravens subsume the blazers, much as Hitchcock’s birds overwhelm Jessica Tandy’s character.
Other shows appreciate the graphic aesthetics of horror cinema more than they seek to evoke terror. Moschino referenced Scream in 2020, while Prada drew on Bride of Frankenstein the year prior. Rather than evoke outright terror, these collections translate horror’s colors, exaggerated motifs, and camp theatrics into fashion. These same qualities extend beyond the runway, finding expression in the campy costumes and carefully constructed personas of celebrity culture.

<h2 style="text-align: center;">Celebrity Shock Factor&nbsp;</h2>

Lady Gaga, 2010 MTV Awards. Getty Images.

Celebrity culture is particularly revealing of the fascination with fear. When Lady Gaga attended the 2010 VMAs in her infamous “meat dress,” the dress that launched a thousand scowls, opinion was divided, but above all, shocked.&nbsp;
 The ensemble draws on several horror motifs; its complexion is body horror in itself, with frightening levels of exposure. Meanwhile, her boots are squeezed by thin ropes, harkening a fear of restraint.&nbsp;
 Yet another celebrity who relishes in fear factor is none other than Heidi Klum, Queen of Halloween. Klum’s annual party costumes are sometimes gory, sometimes anthropomorphic, but always grotesque. As a peacock and Medusa, she leans on the discomfort of mutation. Her costumes as a skinned human body and an old woman confront the viewer with mortality.&nbsp;
 On the runway, these expressions are muted by distance. But when a celebrity engages with horror, in this case via dress, it quickly loses its fictive bubble. In the same way, a home invasion movie is especially scary because the viewer can imagine the nightmare scenario manifesting in their own life. The power resides in the uneasy proximity between spectacle and reality.

<h2 style="text-align: center;">Still Sinister</h2>

Rosalia in Rick Owens, 2021 Met Gala. Getty Images.

Olandria in ManMadeSkins, 2026 VMAs. Getty Images.

Chappell Roan. Getty Images.

Lady Gaga at the 68th GRAMMY Awards. Getty Images.

One byproduct of fashion’s fascination with horror is its seepage into more implicit expressions of style, where psychological tension becomes an aesthetic element rather than the motive.
Rosalía’s custom Rick Owens look for the 2021 Met Gala explores the space between horror and beauty. As previously explored, Owens is no stranger to the uneasy intersection of beauty and revulsion. Through exaggerated proportions and deliberately defacing the body, his designs embrace monstrosity. For Rosalía, a cape trimmed with long, scarlet leather fringes leaves a trail of blood in her wake. Yet she is no victim: her gloves suggest perpetration.
While these types of looks do not immediately unsettle, their allure draws on something more deeply ingrained: the connections between clothing, the body, and fear.

Fashion’s Enduring Fascination With Horror

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