( Cosmo dubbed it “a look that can only be described as ‘goth teen witch princess.’”) There was the time she briefly rebranded Taylor Swift’s girl squad as a “witch’s coven” in an interview, while posing with her arms outstretched in a dead tree, staring into the camera with the face of someone who is preparing to do some very dark magic. There was the penchant for dark, tentlike dresses and dark lipstick that had Vanity Fair dubbing her “the Queen of Darkness.” (“Sometimes I'll go for a goth-witch vibe,” she admitted to Teen Vogue.) There was the way she moved her hands onstage, like she was casting a spell. And when Lorde arrived, she was immediately lumped into the trend. Think piece after think piece emerged about the sudden and enormous presence of witchery. ![]() The ’90s revival had brought interest in The Craft and Buffy back with it. Lorde emerged into the pop cultural consciousness in mid-2013, releasing her smash single “Royals” and debut album Pure Heroine right around the time the witch aesthetic was getting off the ground. Lorde’s career arc parallels the rise of the witch aesthetic Teen witch. For the witch aesthetic, it’s New Zealand pop star Lorde, whose sophomore album Melodrama is up for Album of the Year at this Sunday’s Grammys. ![]() For the pinup aesthetic of the ’50s, and its attendant obsession with sex and virginity and innocence, that was Marilyn Monroe. ![]() It’s a moment that is, as Mikaella Clements wrote at the Establishment, “tied up in intersectional feminism, in a desire to reclaim power, and to laugh as does so.”Īnd every pop cultural aesthetic needs a celebrity avatar, somebody to perform the aesthetic and thus embody all of the contradictions and fantasies and anxieties the aesthetic creates. Lana Del Rey is casting binding spells on Donald Trump, Tumblr teens are curating witch-vibe aesthetics, and Broad City has embraced witches as a symbol of female power. Pop culture is in the middle of a several-years-long witch moment - an only occasionally ironic, girl-power-inflected, “we nostalgically watch Hocus Pocus” witchcraft moment.
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