Why Luxury Shouldn't Be Afraid to Be Scary
Today luxury focuses on celebrating love, beauty, craftsmanship, legacy, or nostalgia. This is of course for a very good reason, but there is another emotional register that now sits at the heart of culture, and it’s one luxury largely avoids – horror.
Horror today is no longer in the shadows. We can see in the success of films like Nosferatu and The Substance at the Academy Awards, or the global recognition of writers like Mariana Enríquez and Han Kang, that the world is now taking horror seriously, emotionally and intellectually.
It wouldn’t be hard to argue that our world’s most exciting art today plays deeply with codes of horror - yet luxury rarely touches them, even at the moment when they could really pay off: Halloween.
Halloween has become one of the most meaningful seasonal rituals of the year. In the U.S. alone, spending has reached a record $13.1 billion, with consumers investing in decorations, experiences, beauty, fragrance, fashion. People carve out valuable time for it. They decorate entire homes, and spend upwards of a thousand dollars on luxury ‘pumpkin porches.’ They dress up, host, perform. It is a holiday steeped in imagination, mood, and community.
For a sector rightfully obsessed with seasonal moments, it is thus surprising how little luxury engages with this one. This isn’t to say that luxury should suddenly delve into pumpkin-themed gimmicks, but there is opportunity in approaching the season – and the codes of horror more broadly – with curiosity and confidence, not hesitation.
Take indie brand Régime des Fleurs for instance, which recently launched Blood Spider Orchids, a fragrance inspired by a flower so strange and eerie it looks almost extraterrestrial. Perfumer and founder, Alia Raza, describes seeing it in nature, being startled by its “spidery petals like wispy alien tentacles in a shade of blood-red,” and wanting to translate that unsettling beauty into scent. Luxury could benefit if it more often embraced the frightening without sacrificing refinement.
The new Tiffany & Co. collaboration with Netflix for Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein works similarly. The Maison integrated archival high jewelry into the film and created immersive displays around its release, creating a dazzling reminder that gothic sensibility and high craft are not opposites – both are rooted in atmosphere, detail, the uncanny.
As Anna Bogutskaya – film critic, author of Feeding the Monster, and one of today’s most insightful voices on horror – told us:
“Collaborations between filmmakers and luxury brands can absolutely exist in the horror space too. When that magic happens, like it does in Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein, it is seamless. Horror is not the realm of low culture - it is a fundamental part of our culture and how filmmaking evolves. ”
Rather than being juvenile, horror codes today can actually elevate a brand’s communication.
The Ordinary realised this, with their new campaign that took on skincare pseudoscience through surreal, unsettling imagery that caught fire online. Being confronted by striking imagery, our insecurities, our uncertainties – it can be powerful, when twisted and channeled into compelling advertising. Several other brands this year capitalized on conjuring this feeling: see, Gentle Monster’s thrilling, Hunter Schafer-starring campaign, Zara’s wonderfully strange Halloween collection lensed by Szilveszter Makó, Prada’s Yorgos Lanthimos-directed short film featuring a ‘cloned’ Scarlett Johansson.
All these campaigns tap into a magnetic unknowableness, creating an emotional connection that feels rare and lasting.
At AL DENTE, we had the privilege of crafting the campaign for Boucheron’s Impermanence High Jewellery collection, utilising light and shadow to depict moments of nature frozen in time. Every visual was designed to evoke that same feeling, and spark a sense of almost otherworldly wonder.
If you're interested in how your brand can harness new emotional territories - horror included - while staying ahead of culture with nuance and taste, reach out to us at: contact@aldenteparis.com.
Happy Halloween!
