The early days of November mark a shift from the witchy, autumnal mood of Halloween – requisite horror-movie viewings, trick-or-treating and all – towards the twinkling celebrations of the festive season, and the inevitable march onwards to Christmas Day (and the equally inevitable days of last-minute gifting and overindulgence in all things).
Tim Burton’s stop-motion Disney movie The Nightmare Before Christmas – released on 25 November 1993 – has always straddled the two festivities, reimagining the usually schmaltzy Christmas movie as a gothic musical complete with witches, pumpkins, and a coffin sleigh pulled by a pair of skeleton reindeer. In it, protagonist Jack Skellington, the reigning ‘Pumpkin King’ of Halloween Town, discovers Christmas and attempts to take over the holiday, leading to the titular ‘nightmare’ as he kidnaps Santa Claus (though, befitting the season, the film does have a happy ending and a lesson to learn).
(Image credit: Paul Kooiker)
A new collection from Spanish fashion house Loewe – currently led by American designers Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez – mines the film’s memorable iconography across a range of limited-edition products, from signature leather goods to clothing and fragrance. The designers said they chose the film for its ‘meticulous process and richly tactile quality [which] resonate closely with Loewe’s own relationship to craft, honed over the last 180 years’ (this sentiment has run through the season’s fashion campaigns so far, with both Dior and Prada using hand-drawn animations, seemingly in a riposte to AI).
(Image credit: Leon Prost)
The collection, which is released for the festive season, was developed not only from the film itself, but with unique access to Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas archive, including original sketches and puppets of the film’s characters. These fragments – as well as moments from the final film – were then reimagined through various techniques, from leatherwork and marquetry (Loewe’s signature), to embroidery, enamel, print and embroidery. Notable pieces include a version of the ‘Amazona’ handbag with Jack Skellington peeking from its interior, and the various charms representing the film’s characters. Loewe says the aim is to ‘translate the spirit of the film into a kind of wearable surrealism’.
(Image credit: Paul Kooiker)
It is accompanied by a short film which assembles a cast including Sandra Bernhard, Jordan Firstman, Eva Victor and David Jonsson, who navigate a ‘dreamlike, Burtonesque world’ led by the Giant Snake, a striped orange-and-black snake which in the film Jack Skellington delivers to an unwitting family.
There is also a short documentary (watch it below) by Clara Cullen seeing Burton reminisce on creating the film, which originally began as a poem he wrote in 1982. ‘For me, the best things come when I’m not thinking even thinking about it,’ he says. ‘I would just sit there and sort of draw. It was not so much from a thought, but was just more slightly from the subconscious.’
The collection will be available on 12 November 2026. Watch the documentary below.
There is also a short documentary (above) by Clara Cullen, which sees Burton reminisce on creating the film, which originally began as a poem he wrote in 1982. ‘For me, the best things come when I’m not thinking even thinking about it,’ he says. ‘I would just sit there and sort of draw. It was not so much from a thought, but was just more slightly from the subconscious.’
The collection will be available on 12 November 2026
