January 2026
Permission to Scream
January doesn’t politely knock — it kicks the door off the hinges.
The Permission to Scream issue is an exploration of pressure, desire, sensuality, grief, rage and release, tracing the moments where restraint fractures and something more raw and authentic breaks through.
Across fashion, music, kink, travel, wellness and mental health, this issue spotlights women who refuse silent suffering in favour of expression that is embodied and alive.
This is not catharsis as spectacle, but as survival, as transformation.
Each month, The Lace Ledger delivers a free digital issue directly to your inbox, filled with gothic culture storytelling without dilution or apology.
Subscribers receive curated style, fashion, beauty, sensuality, music, art and cultural commentary, early access to monthly contests and giveaways, and the chance to vote on the products, artists and obsessions we feature next.
Consider it your standing invitation to linger with the hauntingly beautiful things worth experiencing loudly.
All articles are available now below.
Style
Garments with a Pulse: A Conversation with Beloved Fashion Designer, Evan Clayton
An exploration of early inspiration, gothic influences and his latest collection
By: Amanda Albert
Fashion, at its highest level, is wearable sculpture. It is an art form designed to move the body and the mind, in tandem.
Because it resists practicality, it is often misunderstood as excessive, theatrical or, frankly, weird. What it truly resists is complacency.
Evan’s work belongs to this lineage of fashion as cultural intervention. Each collection is built as an emotional architecture rather than a seasonal offering designed to dress trips to the grocery store.
In an era that largely flattens fashion into trend cycles, Evan insists on depth. He designs not to decorate the body, but to transform how we experience it.
We had the pleasure of sitting down with Evan to discuss his latest collection, what came before and what we can expect next.
Dressed for the Downturn: Sad Girl Chic
Styling for emotional authenticity and rituals for release
By: The Lace Ledger Staff
Some days are heavy, and pretending otherwise only makes them linger.
Sad Girl Chic is not about wallowing, but about letting the feeling move through you until it loosens its grip.
This is an aesthetic built for emotional honesty, where dressing becomes an act of self-regulation.
Think of it as wringing out a soaked rag, so tomorrow arrives softer.
The Discipline of Dress: Tracing Fetish Fashion Through Couture Collections
Designer inspo, market shopping guide and functional (but discreet) fetish adornments
By: The Lace Ledger Staff
Fetish fashion did not begin on the runway, but it has also never stayed confined to the bedroom.
Long before latex and harnesses became street-style shorthand, designers were borrowing the visual language of kink to challenge how clothing relates to power.
What began as taboo iconography evolved into a design vocabulary that speaks fluently in silhouette, material and intention.
Today, fetish fashion moves easily between couture ateliers, city sidewalks, quiet luxury wardrobes and mass-produced fast-fashion brands, no longer requiring shock value to feel transgressive.
Opiumcore in Winter: Dark Elegance Against the Cold
A visceral style edit inspired by couture collections
By: The Lace Ledger Staff
Opiumcore surfaces when minimalism feels much too polite. It restores tension to the act of dressing by pulling in avant-garde influences.
As a style concept, opiumcore draws from darkness and devotion, favouring inky blacks and jewel tones shaped by silhouettes that mix close-to-the-body forms with oversized flow.
The aesthetic thrives on contrast. Rich, saturated colour presses against winter’s stark light.
This season, opiumcore resonates because it reflects the season honestly. Winter strips the world all the back to simply shadow and structure. This is a style that meets that severity in the snow without softening its edges.
Alt Activewear for Getting After It in 2026
A Goth-Girl Style Guide and Playlist for Workouts that Bite Back
By: The Lace Ledger Staff
Your hair is wrecked. Breathing, heavy. Cheeks, flushed. Body, tired. You have never felt better.
There is a specific peace that arrives after a hard workout. It lives somewhere between exhaustion and clarity. It feels earned.
This edit is for that moment, pairing goth-coded activewear with music that pushes you through the wall and carries you back down.
Culture
Heretics and Headliners: The Women Who Rewired Rock
From the architects to the agitators shaping the genre now
By: The Lace Ledger Staff
Right now feels different.
Not quieter, not softer, not diluted; but, volcanic and disruptive.
Women are not entering rock again. They are reclaiming it, backed by decades of women who screamed into rooms that were never built to hold them.
Women have been consistently ranked among the most influential rock musicians of all time, with Janis Joplin, Tina Turner, Stevie Nicks, Patti Smith and Joan Jett shaping entire movements rather than moments.
Today, that lineage is no longer symbolic. It is audible in festival lineups, metal charts, touring rosters and a new generation of artists whose rage is articulate, intentional and unapologetically feminine.
This is not a revival. It is an expansion.
The Year the Noise Comes Home: Must-See Rock, Metal & Alt Tours of 2026
A field guide to the tours and festivals defining the year ahead
By: The Lace Ledger Staff
There is a difference between hearing a song and feeling it pulse in your chest.
Live music collapses the distance between sound and self, turning memory into muscle and strangers into co-conspirators.
This year’s calendar is stacked with festivals that feel mythic, tours that read like cultural milestones and one-off shows that you’ve got to see.
We’ve curated a list of confirmed festivals, announced tours and verified 2026 performances, alongside anticipated moments already lighting up ticket platforms.
See you there.
House of Steam: Inside Canada’s Most Haunting Winter Hydro Spas
The Canadian winter is a creature of contrast: frozen air that bites, trees stripped to bone, stillness that feels older than snow.
Step into steam rising against that cold, and the world realigns — warmth unfurls muscle tension and settles thought like a cathedral organ.
Outdoor hydrotherapy in the depth of winter feels mythical. Water that heats the skin becomes a balm, cold plunges elicit a sharp intake of breath and the virgin white surroundings focus every sensory moment.
This is not mere relaxation; it is a pilgrimage into sensation, a communion with heat and ice that feels sacred.
Hide Under the Covers: A Goth-Coded Psychological Thriller Watchlist
Fourteen films designed to unsettle the mind
By: The Lace Ledger Staff
National Cuddle Up Day (January 6) does not necessarily require sweetness. It asks for closeness, lowered lights and something unsettling enough to make you pull the blankets higher.
Psychological thrillers thrive in this space.
They trade jump scares for tension, spectacle for intimacy, comfort for proximity; these are films that crawl under the skin slowly.
The Mind, Reframed: A Watchlist Inside the Psyche on Screen
How 24 films portray mental health, harm and healing
By: The Lace Ledger Staff
Film has long been fascinated with the complicated workings of our inner selves. The portrayal of mental health on screen ranges from being cast as mirror for our deepest fears to empathetically-driven epilogs or funhouse distortions, depending on who is telling the story.
Some narratives offer care and complexity, while others lean into spectacle at the expense of truth.
This watchlist examines how mental health is framed across genres, decades and tones, from compassion to controversy.
The Arts
Sylvia Plath, Still Singing
Art, mental illness, the ache of perception
By: The Lace Ledger Staff
Some poetry doesn’t age because it never belonged to its moment of conception.
Sylvia Plath wrote from a place that continues to feel familiar to anyone who has lived inside their own mind for too long.
Her work sits at the intersection of brilliance and fragility, without ever asking the reader to choose between them.
House & Haunt
Exhibits of Devotion: Fetish, Fashion and Music Around the World
Immersive galleries and exhibits to explore cultural inheritance
By: The Lace Ledger Staff
While on the surface, fetish, fashion and music may not appear to have a much in common, they share a through-line of devotion; each category is sustained by cult followings and has visible cultural impact.
Fetish carries its lineage through material commitment and coded practice while fashion preserves its heritage through silhouette, masterful craft and reference. Music sustains through sound … first of a generation and then by nods from the artists that came after; while you also find it in lived memory, ideals and distinct communities.
Exhibits of Devotion examines how culture persists when lineage outlasts trend. What survives and why? What can it teach us? And, how to we celebrate its lessons and legacy?
How to Host a Gothic High Tea at Home
A Victorian-inspired winter ritual for dark romantics on snowbound afternoons
By: The Lace Ledger Staff
January invites a slow, sacred relationship with time.
The month encourages warmth, ritual and intention, whether gathered indoors or framed by falling snow.
The ceremony of high tea offers a refined way to mark the season, whether your alone with a book or seeking sanctuary from the weather with friends.
High tea, as we know it today, emerged a tradition in the United Kingdom during the Victorian era as both a snack between lunch and dinner and an opportunity to entertain. The ritual balanced elegance with practicality, serving structured tiers of delicious treats alongside conversation, quality time and ambiance.
In gothic households, the ritual of high tea invites opportunity to brew up a witchy concoction, enjoy storied heirlooms or beloved antiques, curate a themed menu or wear en elegant outfit; the possibilities are endless.