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.
6 Haute Couture Houses With Deep Goth Energy
Where velvet bleeds, silhouettes whisper and darkness dazzles.
Couture is art that the fortunate few get to live inside – but its stories belong to all of us.
Each collection is a narrative stitched in silk and shadow, and we love when those stories lean hauntingly beautiful and unapologetically macabre.
With baited breath, we await collections with mourning veils delicately draped, corsets sculpting silhouettes into regal statues, 90s grunge colliding with Victorian vampires and runways drowning in tulle, velvet and lace.
We’ve curated a shortlist of six goth-coded couture houses that consistently stir our imaginations.