Beauty bites back this year. As the days get shorter, the nights grow darker and the cool winds of autumn approach, there is a change coming. The time of pastels and soft aesthetics is over. Now is the time for jet black nails, smudged and smoky kohl eyes, untamed windswept hair and hints of glossy red. It’s time for the haunting and heartbroken, vampire Carmilla aesthetic. Carmilla is a gothic novella by Irish author Sheridan Le Fanu, published in 1872, a full 25 years before Bram Stoker’s Dracula. It’s often credited as one of the earliest true works of vampire fiction. Stoker himself is believed have been inspired by the setting and the slow, creeping dread of the story. The story follows Laura, a lonely young woman living in an isolated castle with her father. She forms an intense, magnetic attachment to the charming, affectionate and mysterious houseguest named Carmilla. As the two women get closer, Laura discovers that Carmilla is actually an undead countess who lives under a rotating cast of anagram aliases. Laura’s attraction and her fear of what Carmilla is has kept readers unsettled for over 150 years. The Carmilla Aesthetic This year Carmilla is finally having