The scene at Salem shop Die With Your Boots On looks like someone tapped Siouxsie Sioux and Tim Burton to stock a boutique.
Mannequins in neon pink Halloween masks model a variety of bat-pattern digs against a backdrop depicting a hellish shopping mall. Cutouts of devil-cherubs dangle over displays for chunky platform shoes (all black, of course). A nearby sign offers a satirical message, next to a very real, very sleek casket: “Now mourning: You. Welcome to Hell. All Your Friends Are Here!”
It’s a weirdo’s haven for revamping their wardrobe — and we haven’t even mentioned the giant witch statue suspended from the ceiling of Blackcraft Cult a few steps away on Essex Street.
It’s not a fall phase, mom. While stylish boutiques have long been a staple of Salem’s shopping scene, Witch City has seen a recent boom of stores strictly selling ghoulish and gothic garb, whether the streets are congested with tourists in October or dotted with locals in the doldrums of winter. There’s an increase in visitors stopping by Salem to revamp their closets — and we’re not talking about purchasing pointy hats.
Spooky SoCal clothing brand Blackcraft Cult took up residence in an old bank building on Essex Street this past summer, making it the company’s only East Coast location. Die With Your Boots On opened near Salem’s Pickering Wharf in 2018, but recently relocated to Church Street and opened a sister shop called The Ossuary at their prior storefront. The three shops form an unholy trinity of alt-fashion shopping destinations, each unlike any apparel stores in the area, if not the state.
“We often have visitors comment that they’ve seen us on social media and just had to travel to our shops,” shares Laurie Moran, special projects manager for Die With Your Boots On and The Ossuary. “We have lots of customers who are locals or live in a drivable distance and regularly visit for a day trip or a weekend.”
On Church Street, visitors can peruse Die With Your Boots On’s massive selection of “mall goth and vaporware” clothes, ranging from pink spiderweb Demonia boots, blouses emblazoned with Illuminati pyramid eyes on the collar, and vegan leather bat harnesses made from Salem’s own Jenny Machete. Down by the wharf, the stock gets a little more extravagant, with veiled hats, flowing “black swan” gowns, and a wardrobe of dresses ready for teatime adorning the inside of The Ossuary.
“Partnering with emerging artists to give them a sales platform and to create collaborative pieces featuring original art is an important part of what we do in both of our stores,” Moran adds. “The Ossuary was created to highlight even more of those creators, with an emphasis on traditional romantic gothic styles and handmade and small batch clothing designs.”
If these shops feel tailor-made to serve “baby bats, metalheads, punks” and proud misfits, that’s because they are; following the loss of goth clothing shop The Fool’s Mansion, the founders of Die With Your Boots On — and now, The Ossuary — were motivated to step up and dress their community.
“When they [The Fool’s Mansion] closed in 2013, we really felt the void, and that was part of what inspired us to open our own shop in 2018 to keep Salem’s dark subcultures in clothing as black as their hearts,” Moran explains. “Since then, several other alternative fashion shops have popped up in Salem, and we’re excited for weirdos like us that there are so many options for shopping locally to express yourself through clothing.”
Other shops around town sell clothing and accessories as one part of their offerings, like the Black Veil Shoppe of Drear & Wonder, a part-tattoo-parlor, part-peddler of prints, apparel, stickers, and accessories, and The Cauldron Black, which stocks clothes and jewelry among their witch wares.
“Folks have been definitely coming to Salem to shop for clothing more over the past few years, and that is absolutely in part to Die With Your Boots On,” shares Jacqui Allouise-Roberge, a witch, ordained high priestess, and owner of The Cauldron Black on Wharf Street. “I personally am a big fan of their clothes, and their staff is wonderful too.”
The Cauldron Black was the first Salem business to stock clothes from Blackcraft Cult, which historically sold well among customers and staff. But with the brand’s new brick and mortar shop now roughly a half mile away — displaying clothes stamped with assorted pentagrams, and messages like “Sinner” and “Dead Inside” in ye old typeface — a culturally sensitive pivot felt appropriate. Allouise-Roberge rolled up her sleeves and began to roll out designs specific to her own shop and practices. The new Cauldron Black clothes don’t just “look witchy” — they are witchcraft, crafted with magical intention.
“The Cauldron Black clothing line features classic designs — paintings, sculptures and woodcuts — of occult themes, along with corresponding color magic details to enhance the design and create a little piece of magic for the wearer,” Allouise-Roberge notes. “I have been working on designs for the past few years, as a side project, and with the opening of the Blackcraft Cult location in Salem, I decided this was the year to get the clothing designs out there, and see how customers respond to more of a true occult theme — the wearer using clothing as a representation of their spiritual practice, relationships with their deities, and as a way to empower themselves with their clothes, rather than just embracing an occult aesthetic.”
After all, picking out a frilly new dress a la Wednesday Addams is one thing; actively trying to encapsulate a practice like witchcraft with just a “look” is another situation altogether.
“I am all for Salem small businesses thriving and taking leaps into new markets, but as a witch, I strive to help educate and encourage customers to look beyond the ‘witch’ aesthetic and engage with the spirits of place in Salem, as well as understand the anti-Semitic origins of the stereotypical witch costume,” Allouise-Roberge concludes. “There is so much more to being as witch than the aesthetic. Modern-day witches are the active fuck-you to the patriarchal society we live in today. We are the sin-eaters for our communities. We are the balance between the worlds of the living and the dead.”
In this case, they’re the people educating tourists and fashion-forward visitors what is it their clothing actually means. Unless, of course, someone just really wants to cover their body with intricate lace and bats, because spooky season only ends when you heart tells you so.
Either way, Salem’s got them covered.
