Why Not Try a Haunted Little Nightgown?

Can a garment look like a memory you never actually lived, half-remembered and half-imagined? This spring, that unsettling, dreamlike state might just be fashion’s most compelling trend, spurred on by a rash of music and film predicated on ghost stories, liminal spaces, and an uncanny feeling of being suspended between two worlds. 

When weather finally warms and you start shedding the cumbersome coats and sweaters, don’t just stop with the outermost layers—strip down to a gauzy, eerily ethereal nightgown and wear it with the same carefree nonchalance as you would a casual sundress. Unlike more recent sleepwear-for-daywear trends, though, this look is grounded in an understated, downright ghostly feel, with a focus on free-flowing movement and minimal embellishment. It’s less full-on lingerie and more Appalachian apparition, the sartorial equivalent of the unsettling, sepulchral strings in Lana Del Rey’s latest release, “White Feather Hawk Tail Deer Hunter.” 

The Trend

This spooky style might be having a moment, but it’s not without precedent. You can draw a direct line from Stevie Nicks’ storied chiffon layers straight to Ethel Cain’s cotton Gunne Sax silhouettes, with plenty of otherworldly incarnations in between. The difference between this iteration and those of our nightgown-clad foremothers, though, is in the look’s simplicity. Whereas classic Nicks and Florence Welch aesthetics feel mystical and witchy, this is specifically spectral. This isn’t a nightgown for conjuring spells so much as one a ghost would wear for centuries—forever wandering the misty hills, caught between this world and whatever comes next.

We’ve seen hauntingly beautiful nightgown-inspired dresses on the red carpet, from Zoë Kravitz at the Caught Stealing premiere late last year to Lily-Rose Depp both in and out of character during the Nosferatu press cycle, and Greta Lee’s draped, lacy look at her most recent Emmys appearance. They vary in cut and detailing, but the ghostly effect is unmistakable. The garments’ lack of structure and general weightlessness suggest a body beneath them without ever fully revealing it, as if the wearer had already slipped away, leaving only a beautiful gown behind. And long before these looks ever reached the red carpet, they lived on screen—the white lawn dresses of Picnic At Hanging Rock, the gauzy suburban melancholy of The Virgin Suicides, the pale, puff-sleeved nightgowns in The Others. None of these films fit squarely in the horror genre, instead flirting with unsettling or uncanny ideas, all underscored by eerie costuming and liminal set dressing. 

As is often the case, this pop culture fashion resurgence dovetails with what’s happening on the runways. Rodarte has done two collections in the past five years with a similar, glamorously ghostly aesthetic, including a fall 2020 show directly inspired by Bram Stoker’s Dracula—the brand is also behind many of Charli XCX’s ghost-inspired Wuthering Heights music video looks. Chanel’s spring/summer 2026 collection is filled with gauzy muslin layers, pale pastels, and ethereal movement, while Junya Watanabe’s latest presentation featured key looks with shredded lace and otherworldly draping. A far cry from the slip dress revival of the early 2000s—and the rise of “formal pajamas” in the early 2020s—these pieces are firmly focused on storytelling and unsettling romance. 

Anchoring the haunted nightgown look in real life means pairing dresses that feel borderline costume with personal pieces already in your wardrobe, like a worn-in jacket or some anachronistic flats that root the overall outfit in the present. Think of the arrangement as letting a piece of another world exist in this one rather than the other way around—though if you want to sever ties with modern reality altogether, no one could really blame you.

The Best Haunted Little Nightgowns