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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
His garments carry narrative, emotion, defiance and devotion with weight meant to endure. On the runway, the story each collection carries unfolds as performance art.
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.
The Cold Kiss: A Gothic Guide to Winter Beauty From the Inside Out
FW25 rituals of softness and survival to see you through the dark season
By: The Lace Ledger Staff
Winter arrives without tenderness. The air turns brittle and the body begins to forget its own warmth.
For the gothic woman, beauty becomes a negotiation with the elements. Hydration replaces indulgence. Every stoke of eyeliner and brush of mascara is a small defiance.
Here are the tools you need to arm yourself for the battle at hand.
2026 Wellness Guide: 18 Best Products to Start Your Year Strong
From mushroom elixirs to gemstone-infused hydration — the most soulful essentials for a renewed year ahead
By: The Lace Ledger Staff
Across North America, women are entering 2026 with heavier wellness burdens than ever. In Canada, 67% of women report ongoing stress, driven by workload, financial pressure and emotional labour according to Mental Health Research Canada). In the United States, the Kaiser Family Foundation confirms that 50% of women say they struggle to maintain their physical and emotional health, citing burnout and competing priorities.
These realities shape a world where wellness must be intentional — a daily practice rather than an occasional luxury.
The products below were curated to help you feel restored, supported and aligned as you step into the new year.
Goth-Coded Cozy Clothes That Don’t Suck
FW25 comfort through a dark-feminine lens
By: The Lace Ledger Staff
You deserve loungewear that matches your vibe, even when your plans involve nothing but a couch, a snack, a scroll and a playlist turned all the way up. These pieces let you stay comfy without compromising your aesthetic. No matter what you’re getting into at home, there’s a perfect cozy uniform waiting on this list.
5 Ways to Wear Pantone’s 2026 Colour of the Year “Cloud Dancer” with Gothic Energy
From Victorian to Vampire and Castlecore, here’s how to turn fashion’s palest shade into something deliciously dark
Cloud Dancer may look innocent at first glance, but the shade carries a haunted softness that feels pulled from marble statues and Victorian night gowns. In the hands of those who adopt a darker aesthetic, the Pantone becomes operatic. The colour of myth, memory and moonlit stone.
The runways of SS26 laid out a blueprint. Designers leaned into palest neutrals with a gothic undertow, which means the shade is not only wearable for the alt-inclined—it is inevitable. Our Pantone edit moves through five distinct themes, each inspired by 2025 + 2026 couture designer collections and timely cultural moments in film.
Festive Errand-Wear: Dark Femme Looks for the Goth On the Go
Fast to style and built for cold-weather utility, these looks prove even errands deserve allure
By: The Lace Ledger Staff
Cold weather is no reason for dull dressing. These errand-ready outfits move with you—through grocery aisles, miscellaneous appointments and afternoons in motion.
Each look reflects its archetype’s essence: easy to assemble and layered for warmth.
A Gothic Guide to New Year’s Eve Style
New Year’s Eve is the one night that you get to toast the ups and downs of this year and everything you’re daring enough to seek in the year to come.
Whether you’re slipping into a formal gala, drifting through a house party with your best pals or keeping the circle small with an intimate countdown, the questions remains the same: what do you wear to honour a milestone that asks for reflection and reinvention?
We’ve curated a selection of clothing and accessories to make that transition feel cinematic.
Festive, But Make It Fashion: A Gothic Guide to Holiday Dressing
The ultimate guide to looking outrageously good at every holiday celebration
By: The Lace Ledger Staff
Holiday season is upon us and, honestly, it’s the best excuse we get all year to sparkle a little harder than usual. It’s the stretch of winter where you celebrate the people you adore and politely unravel with the coworkers you usually only interact with at face value.
It’s gift exchanges, questionable playlists, desserts to die for and the annual reminder that looking stunning is absolutely part of the tradition.
Whatever the invitation says, this is your moment to show up as the most festive, most fashionable version of your gothic self.
Gothic Sleepwear Guide: Decadent Pajamas for the Holidays
Find your darkly festive Christmas morning ensemble that honours your aesthetic and the spirit of the season
The slow, sacred nature of the holidays ask us to show up in softness, especially in the mornings. Often mainstream sleepwear during this time of year can collapse into the trap of fast fashion: novelty flannel with deafening prints that ends up being tossed or donated after only a handful of uses.
While the thrill of a matching photo moment can be fun, the dark feminine tend to crave something more intentionally curated.
This edit is a way to honour the season without sacrificing your identity. It offers an invitation to choose rest with a point of view. It gives you permission to wake up on Christmas morning in a silhouette that still feel both authentic to your personal style and appropriate for your celebration, whatever it may be.
Winter’s Armour: The Outerwear Trends That Refuse to Yield to the Snow
From sculptural funnel necks to liquid finishes, this season’s coats are made to be seen — not hidden
Winter doesn’t signal the death of style — it’s the stage for it. The months ahead invite bold silhouettes and tactile drama, not shapeless layers meant to conceal.
The FW25 collections proved that outerwear can be sculpture and shield all at once. Designers showing collections across London, Paris, New York and Milan fashion weeks turned the season’s chill into show-stopping moments, introducing three dominant directions: the funnel neck coat, the revival of shearling and faux fur and the high-shine allure of liquid-look textures.
For those who dress with intent, these pieces extend your aesthetic rather than obscure it. Each trend offers a different form of power — structured, sensual, surreal — echoing the gothic principle that what protects can also seduce.
The Sagittarius Edit: Tailored Chaos Meets Celestial Confidence
Bold, magnetic and untameable — this season belongs to the zodiac’s wild-hearted muse
The spotlight turns toward Sagittarius — the archer, the philosopher, the wanderer who refuses to stay still.
Ruled by Jupiter, they embody expansion in every sense. Their wardrobes mirror their spirits: fearless and expressive, always in motion.
From Sketch to Sculpture: André Perugia’s Footwear Revolution
There are designers who follow fashion, and then there are those who build its foundation. André Perugia was certainly one of the latter. Known as one of the first truly modern shoe designers, Perugia treated footwear not as accessory, but as architecture. His creations stretched the imagination of what a shoe could be — sculptural, surreal, imaginative; often defying gravity and logic, but never elegance.
Now, in its latest exhibition André Perugia: A Design Legend Unveiled, the Bata Shoe Museum pays homage to the man who turned functional necessity into wearable art. Running through April 2026, the show explores Perugia’s groundbreaking influence from the 1920s to the 1950s, tracing how his designs reshaped both the fashion industry and the consumer’s eye.
The Art of Adornment: Gothic Accessories to Obsess Over
Because style lives in the details
Accessories are the punctuation marks of an outfit — the subtle embellishments that transforms attire into identity. In alternative fashion especially, adornment is more than decoration; it’s declaration. A scarf can frame a mood, gloves can whisper seduction, a necklace can turn mourning into mythology. The gothic wardrobe lives in this space between function and fantasy — where accessories tells the story before a word is spoken.
The practice of adorning the body stretches back to the first civilizations. Shoes evolved from necessity to symbol, their craftsmanship tied to class and ceremony. Jewellery became a form of language, used to signify faith, fortune or defiance. Bags emerged as both practical companions and intimate vaults of selfhood. Across centuries, these items have moved from the margins of fashion to the forefront of self-expression — extensions of who we are and what we choose to reveal.
The Texture of Power: How to Style Black-on-Black With Depth and Mood
Some say black is “safe”. We say black is sovereign.
In the realm of gothic fashion, black-on-black is not a fallback—it’s a love language. A seduction. A study in shadow and contrast, restraint and drama.
But not all black is created equal, and mastering this palette means learning to speak in texture and silhouette.
This isn’t minimalism. This is mystery wrapped in velvet and cinched in leather.
Gothic Outerwear Edit FW25: Bold Jackets & Coats to Rule the Season
Where drama meets discipline: FW25 outerwear takes shape in capes, suede, moto cuts, and sculptural silhouettes
This season, outerwear carries the weight of character. Designers carved silhouettes that recall gothic romance — garments meant to move through the night with mystery and authority.
At Alexander McQueen, capes returned as statements of power, cut with precise shoulders that framed the body like sculpture while Ralph Lauren softened with brushed suede and tactile wool, grounding the gothic sensibility in quiet luxury. Courrèges brought its signature futurism to the classic moto, exaggerating seams and metalwork until rebellion felt refined. Finally, Schiaparelli elevated tailoring into art with blazers molded to the torso, echoing the architectural lines of cathedrals.
Every piece this fall hints at transformation — a merging of sensuality, structure and shadow that defines gothic elegance for the modern age.
Leather Weather: Gothic Archetype Essentials for Fall Winter 2025
From Archetypal Armour to Affordable Alternatives
Every autumn, the mainstream calls it sweater weather — soft knits, pumpkin spice, cozy clichés. But for the gothic soul, it’s something darker, sharper and infinitely more seductive: leather weather.
Since the earliest days of goth culture, leather has been compulsory — not just as a style choice, but as an act of defiance. From post-punk’s studded jackets to the fetish-inspired glamour of the 1980s, leather has always signaled rebellion and resilience, stitched into the seams.
Of course, high-quality leather can be extremely expensive (and rightly so). The cost comes from craftsmanship and durability–a well-made leather piece can last decades, becoming an heirloom of rebellion. But goths have always been resourceful — vegan leather and faux alternatives make the aesthetic accessible at every budget. Whether you’re splurging on handcrafted hides or opting for cost-friendly vegan leather, leather weather is available to every archetype and every price point.