Vintage Vixens

This Halloween, it’s only right to celebrate the queens of the season — the gothic icons who made darkness alluring: Morticia Addams, Lily Munster, Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, and Vampira. 

In this post, I explore the longevity and power of these brooding beauties and their spooky aesthetics — plus, as always, I’ve rounded up my favorite places to shop if you’re ready to outfit yourself (or someone you love) as the Vintage Vixen of your dreams.

What Defines the Vintage Vixen Aesthetic

  • Dark Colors: Black, burgundy, and blood red

  • Rich Fabrics: Velvet, lace, satin, silk

  • Dramatic Silhouettes: Bell sleeves, fit-and-flare gowns, sweeping caftans

🕯️ Morticia Addams: The Bewitching Matriarch

My favorite Vintage Vixen has always been Morticia Addams. She was my earliest introduction to the hot goth world and still the archetype of gothic sophistication.


It’s no coincidence that The Addams Family has remained relevant for more than eight decades. The Addamses have always embodied counterculture — surfacing again and again during politically repressive or socially uncertain times.

💄 Turning the Vamp Archetype on Its Head

Before Morticia, there was the Vamp — a cultural archetype born from fin-de-siècle art and early cinema.

The Vamp Archetype Timeline: 

  • 1897: Philip Burne-Jones’s painting The Vampire and Rudyard Kipling’s poem of the same name defined the idea of a female predator: a woman who drains the life from her male victim, inverting traditional gender roles.

  • 1915: A Fool There Was introduced “a woman of the vampire species,” played by Theda Bara — Hollywood’s first vamp and arguably its first true sex symbol. 

  • 1920s: “vamp” became shorthand for sexually assertive women, creating a decades-long binary between vamp and virgin.

  • 1940s: Film noir recast her as the femme fatale — irresistible and destructive. Ava Gardner’s Kitty Collins in The Killers (1946) embodied this: independence as threat.

  • From 1897 to moden goth subculture, the vamp/femme fatale figure is about female power experienced by men as a threat. Her autonomy and desire are seen as a threat to the status quo and the power of everyday men. 

From Burne-Jones to Bauhaus, the vamp archetype has always represented female desire experienced by men as danger.

As Angelica Paller writes in “Unveiling the Uncanny” (2021), gothic fashion and subculture embrace “the macabre, non-conformity, and fashion as personal identity and statement.” It’s not just rebellion — it’s radical self-acceptance, an embrace of one’s own “otherness,” a trait embodied by haunted heroines like Elvira and Morticia.

It’s giving: “Mom, it was never a phase — it’s a lifestyle!”

🌹 Morticia as Feminist Gothic Ideal

Moritcia is such a fascinating character because she embodies that sensuality, while still being a loving mother, romantic partner, and autumoous character. Instead of being a heroine deleted to being a victim, over the years her character has been expanded and deepened. 

She’s not a femme fatale or siren, but rather an integral part of the story. She’s also not a one-dimensional muse- but a fencing, spirited character with agency. It really turns the Vamp or Femme Fatale archetypes on their head. 

In “Gothic Subversion, Social Haunting and Radical Possibility in Popular Media,” Éile Rasmussen describes how Morticia redefined motherhood and marriage in a genre that often punished women for autonomy:

“Morticia embraces pleasure, autonomy, and intellectual pursuits rather than establishing herself as the moral shepherd of her children or domestic caretaker of her husband. Her marriage is strikingly equal and erotic – opposing the sexless, duty-bound marriages of 1960s sitcoms – and she promotes independence and curiosity in her children rather than obedience.”

Rasmussen further notes, “Morticia’s unyielding eroticism haunts the conservative fear of women who refuse to be contained; her sexuality does not diminish her capacity to be a mother, a partner — or a radical defender.”

Similarly, Anya Blackwood’s “Elegance in Darkness: The Dark Allure of Morticia Addams in Gothic Culture” (2024) observes, “Morticia raises Wednesday and Pugsley without forcing them into norms. She encourages self-expression instead of correction.”

A model of authority without control and guidance without shame — Morticia feels strikingly modern in her feminism.

🕸️ Other Vintage Vixens

You see other Vintage Vixens like Vampira, television’s first gothic horror hostess. Created by Maila Nurmi in 1954, the character- a precursor to Elvira- was a glamorous, darkly comedic figure who combined pin-up sensuality with macabre camp.

In “Vampira and Subversion: From Outsider to Icon” Christopher Davis dissects how the character was, “a dark subversive reflection of the seemingly perfect America of the 1950’s, and as such, a figure that should not only be trotted out for Halloween, but be named among breakthrough stars the likes of Lucille Ball (to whom Nurmi oddly enough lost a daytime Emmy).

In contrast to Morticia Addams, though, Davis says that “men were portrayed as scared of [Vampira] — not attracted to her. A surviving bit of footage from the George Goebel Show has Goebel running away when a date with the strange Vampira (and her literal smoking sofa) starts getting a little too weird for his tastes.” 


🖤 Why Vintage Vixens Endure

At the end of the day, it’s clear why Vintage Vixens keep resurfacing in culture — and why they’ve lingered in my own imagination. 

Morticia, Vampira, Elvira, and their descendants are not monsters but mirrors. Their elegance, humor, and refusal to assimilate stand as antidotes to the control mechanisms of patriarchy.

These outrageous, embodied, and spooky femmes act as an antidote to social control mechanisms of patriarchy. 


They are unapologetically themselves — women who make the strange beautiful, who remind us that the macabre can be exquisite, and that the shadows are often where authenticity lives.

Prianna Pathak