The Séance: A Fall Capsule for Summoning Better Clothes

You can almost imagine their story or life based on how they dress and carry themselves, and it is fascinating. One older woman really caught my eye this week with her fringe scarf, flowy blouse and impeccable yet bold jewellery.

She also had a cane with what appeared to be some kind of purple or blue jewel knob on the end.

And she looked like one of the ladies you would see wearing those theatrical turbans doing stage magic, fortune-telling, or as a spiritual medium.

Yes, she was as amazing as she sounds, and you can see where I am going with this.

It sent me on a vintage and antique jewellery hunt, which trailed off into Victorian mourning jewellery where I found the brooch from this wardrobe.

And then the whole thing began to be centred around that, and this is where I arrived, so I hope you enjoy it.

I am a sucker for clothes and items with a backstory, but it seems to come even more so as the weather starts to shift to the colder seasons. So perhaps it’s the weather, or maybe it is the rapidly disappearing daylight.

Or possibly after several months of linen and sensible cotton, I am ready to dress as though there may be a locked room somewhere in the house that nobody has opened since 1903.

Whatever the cause, I have apparently reached the part of September where I would like my clothes to suggest that I know something I am not telling you.

Not in an overtly gothic way because I’m not very interested in dressing like a Victorian ghost, although that would be cool and I wish her well.

Nor do I want to build another internet aesthetic where every item has to pass a strict thematic entrance exam before it is allowed into the wardrobe.

I wanted something murkier than that.

Something romantic but not sweet. Historical without being costume. A little decadent, a little severe and maybe a bit strange.

A wardrobe where an antique Victorian mourning brooch coexists with enormous cuffed jeans and silver calf-hair ballet flats without anyone even raising an eyebrow.

So naturally, we are having a séance.

Darkened parlours, heavy curtains, candlelight, mourning clothes, elaborate jewellery, mysterious photographs and tables around which very serious yet anxious people wait for someone who is probably unavailable to make an appearance.

It is almost impossible not to turn this into an aesthetic.

Which is precisely what I don’t want to do. But damn, it would be fun.

The historical reference is interesting, but the goal isn’t historical accuracy.

I don’t want twelve garments that look as though they were selected specifically to illustrate “Victorian spiritualist” on Pinterest. That would be costume design rather than personal style.

Instead, I’m interested in what happens when you take fragments of that visual language and drop them into an otherwise contemporary wardrobe.

• A lace glove
• An antique mourning brooch
• An embroidered black jacket
• A dark, fringed scarf
• A shoe with an old-fashioned shape

That’s enough.

The rest of the wardrobe can live firmly in the present. In fact, it should.

The Séance Is Really About Clothes That Suggest a Past

The more I worked on this capsule, the less interested I became in making it gothic.

What began as a vaguely turn-of-the-century romantic idea became something much more like a wardrobe that doesn’t appear to belong entirely to one period.

And there is a difference.

Modern fashion encourages us to make ourselves visually coherent. Pick an aesthetic. Establish a colour palette. Identify your three style words. Save your inspiration. Buy the pieces. Become legible.

There are benefits to all of those exercises, particularly when you’re trying to understand what you genuinely like. But personal style becomes much more interesting when the rules begin to loosen.

Real wardrobes accumulate.

Something survives from fifteen years ago. Something was inherited. Something was thrifted because you couldn’t stop thinking about it. Something is aggressively contemporary. Something belonged to somebody else first. Something makes no sense with anything you own, and yet you wear it constantly.

Eventually, the wardrobe stops representing a moment in fashion and starts representing time itself.

That’s where The Séance began to make sense to me.

Start With Something That Actually Has a History

One of the smallest pieces in this capsule became its emotional centre: an antique Victorian mourning brooch.

Mourning jewellery is particularly compelling because it wasn’t simply decorative. Jewellery could carry memory, grief and connection to someone who was gone. Even separated from its original owner and story, an antique mourning piece arrives in the present already having had a life.

There is something fundamentally different about that from buying a new accessory designed to look old.

I don’t know everything that happened around this particular object. That’s part of its appeal.

And perhaps this is one reason vintage and antique objects work so beautifully in modern wardrobes. They introduce something contemporary fashion is very bad at manufacturing: ambiguity.

A new item arrives with product copy. An old object arrives with questions. And for a wardrobe called The Séance, questions seem considerably more useful.

The capsule includes lace gloves and ornate embroidery, but it also includes wide grey tailored trousers.

There is a sequinned camisole edged in lace reminiscent of flappers, but there are also enormous dark jeans with exaggerated cuffs. There is a richly patterned fringed scarf beside an utterly ordinary grey crewneck sweater.

The plain pieces aren’t filler. They’re doing some of the most important work.

Romance becomes much more noticeable when it isn’t surrounded by more romance. An antique brooch on an elaborate lace blouse is beautiful, certainly. But the same brooch fastened at the neck of a stark black collarless shirt suddenly looks peculiar.

And peculiar is what we’re after.

This is also what makes historical references wearable rather than theatrical. You don’t have to dilute the interesting piece. Providing contemporary pieces gives it something to argue with.

The Colour Palette Looks Better With the Curtains Closed

Black was inevitable, but I didn’t want this to become an all-black gothic wardrobe.

Instead, the colours are dark without necessarily being colourless: oxblood and burgundy, charcoal grey, ink navy, bruised plum, tobacco and dirty metallics alongside black.

The brownish-burgundy trousers and glossy wine-coloured boots are especially useful because they have the depth of black without disappearing into it. A plum knit performs the same trick. The navy turtleneck brings another cool, almost-black tone into the mix.

Then there are flashes of something lighter or stranger.

• Grey wool.
• Silver.
• Ivory or white.
• Leopard.

The result isn’t a traditional autumn palette so much as one that looks slightly faded, tarnished or overripe.

Which seems appropriate.

Then, Just When Everything Gets Tasteful, Add Leopard

The leopard coat may be one of my favourite decisions in this entire wardrobe precisely because it has almost nothing to do with a séance. It is also a steal.

That’s why it belongs here.

Without interruption, dark romantic dressing can become very earnest very quickly. Velvet, lace, mourning jewellery, dark florals, embroidery. All beautiful individually, but together they can start behaving themselves a little too well.

Leopard does not behave itself.

It brings glamour, vulgarity, humour and a slight disregard for whatever good taste was there before it arrived.

Against grey tailoring, it feels eccentric. Against burgundy, decadent. And over jeans and a plain knit, it’s simply a very good coat.

And beside Victorian mourning jewellery, it creates the kind of visual contradiction that makes me much more interested in the person wearing the clothes.

She may be contacting the dead, but apparently she has plans afterwards.

I initially thought that might make them wrong. It turns out it makes them essential.

Because the goal isn’t to create the most convincing visual world possible. It’s to interrupt that world before it becomes a costume.

The silver flats say now.

And the slightly unusual texture keeps them from feeling generic.

This is one of the easiest ways to borrow from historical clothing without looking like you’re reenacting it: allow something blatantly contemporary into the room.

Shoes That Don’t Quite Belong to Any Particular Decade

The footwear in this capsule has become particularly interesting because I’m avoiding obvious “Victorian boots.”

There are glossy burgundy pointed boots with a low block heel. There is a sleek black ankle boot with an elongated toe and unusual curved heel. There is a multicoloured lace-up shoe that vaguely recalls several historical periods without completely belonging to any of them. And there are those metallic ballet flats.

I added a jazz shoe as the final grounding shoe.

None of them is historically correct.

Together, however, they create the sensation that we’re after. They’re familiar but slightly difficult to place.

And I’m beginning to think that might be one of the secrets to making vintage references feel modern: don’t recreate the original. Preserve the strangeness.

The 80/20 Rule Quietly Snuck Into the Room

Interestingly, the other capsule idea I had been considering this week was the 80/20 wardrobe, and it has ended up inside The Séance anyway.

Because most of these clothes aren’t weird.

• Grey crewneck
• Black shirt
• Tailored trousers
• Turtleneck
• Jeans
• Possibly a white tee

These are remarkably normal clothes. Then there’s the other twenty percent.

• Victorian mourning brooch
• Lace gloves
• Embroidered jacket
• Leopard coat
• Silver calf-hair shoes
• A slightly inexplicable scarf.

And that’s enough to change everything.

I think we sometimes misunderstand interesting personal style because our eyes naturally land on the unusual thing. We remember the leopard coat or enormous ring and conclude that the person wearing it must own a wardrobe full of extraordinary clothes.

Often she doesn’t.

She owns plain trousers too.

The weird thing simply has enough ordinary clothing around it to be visible.

You don’t necessarily need a more interesting wardrobe. You might just need one object capable of making the grey sweater look a tad suspicious.

Personal Style Doesn’t Have to Be Historically Consistent

There is often that annoying voice in your head when using vintage clothing telling you to stay within an era. I argue with it often.

But I understand it. Historical silhouettes speak beautifully to one another, and there are people who build extraordinary wardrobes around specific periods.

But I’m increasingly interested in doing the opposite.

Victorian beside 1980s. 1990s beside Edwardian. Something bought this year beside something made before anyone currently alive was born.

A contemporary trouser with an antique brooch. Big modern denim with an ornate jacket. Leopard with mourning jewellery. Silver ballet flats beneath almost anything.

There is no reason personal style has to obey the chronology of fashion history.

In fact, ignoring chronology may be one of the easiest ways to prevent vintage clothing from becoming costume.

The common denominator isn’t the decade. It’s you.

Clothes Can Carry Things We Can’t See

There is a reason people talk differently about old clothes.

We wonder who owned them. Where they went. Whether the coat was someone’s favourite. Whether the ring marked something important. Why something was saved when so many other ordinary possessions disappeared.

Most of those questions will never be answered.

That’s fine.

We don’t need to genuinely believe that objects retain some supernatural imprint of everyone who has touched them to recognise that old things can feel different. They have physically survived other lives.

Wear them long enough and eventually our clothes begin accumulating our own histories too.

The sweater worn constantly during one particular winter. The shoes bought on a trip. The jacket inherited from someone. The ridiculous thing you nearly didn’t buy and subsequently wore for fifteen years.

Perhaps that’s why a wardrobe assembled slowly can feel so different from one purchased all at once.

One represents an aesthetic. The other eventually becomes an archive.

How to Build a Séance-Inspired Fall Wardrobe Without Looking Like You’re Attending One

I mean…I wouldn’t necessarily mind looking like I was attending one, but realistically that won’t work for all of us.

So the trick is restraint, although admittedly I’m using the word “restraint” in an article containing lace gloves, leopard and sequins.

Choose one historical suggestion and let the rest of the outfit disagree with it.

Wear the embroidered jacket with jeans. Put the mourning brooch on the plainest shirt you own. Wear lace with grey wool. Put leopard over a turtleneck. Wear the strange lace-up shoes with wide trousers. Let silver interrupt burgundy.

The individual combinations don’t have to explain the entire concept. A good outfit can leave a little unresolved.

The Séance Fall Capsule Wardrobe

The final capsule was still shifting as I wrote this, and I rather like that. At the moment it revolves around dark cuffed denim, grey and burgundy tailored trousers, simple knits, a stark black shirt, an embroidered jacket, leopard outerwear, a lace-trimmed sequinned camisole and a handful of shoes ranging from extremely sensible to mildly suspicious.

I’ll add a skirt or dress if I find the right one. There will probably be a fitted navy turtleneck, perhaps a white tee, a loafer and several bags. I don’t want to force any of them simply because a capsule wardrobe is supposed to contain a certain category.

That’s how wardrobes end up filled with technically correct things nobody particularly wanted.

I’d rather leave a space empty until something earns it.

Because perhaps the point of The Séance isn’t really Victorian dressing, gothic romance or even fall.

It’s allowing clothes from different parts of our lives, and sometimes entirely different lives, to sit at the same table.

Some will be ordinary, beautiful, strange. And hopefully some have been here much longer than we have.

But if the table moves on its own, I’m leaving. Or not, because that would actually be so much fun.

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