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In 1938 Elsa Schiaparelli designed a black skeleton dress, which must have been one of the first instances of a designer applying a kind of X-ray vision to fashion. This approach goes far beyond transparency, which is currently trending on the runways. By bringing bones, and sometimes organs out from under—here’s looking at you, Jun Takahashi—it also trumps the innerwear as outerwear trope many times over.
It’s often said that fashion is about surfaces, but this kind of reveal disrupts that narrative by exposing the vulnerability of the body laid more bare even than the proverbial emperor, resplendent in his birthday suit. As Halloween nears, I’ve dug up skeleton looks from the usual suspects (Alexander McQueen and Iris van Herpen, included) and many others. It’s up to you to decide if the designs are tricks or treats.
