page_title: Goth subculture
section_title: Styling
hierarchical_section_title: Goth subculture / Characteristics of the scene / Fashion / Styling
caption_attribution_description: A black and white photographic picture of a gothic girl with medieval look, spikes and piercings. (Kremlin-Bicetre, France, 2001) Português: Vestuário estilo gótico
context_page_description: Goth is a subculture that began in the United Kingdom during the early 1980s. It was developed by fans of gothic rock, an offshoot of the post-punk music genre. The name "goth" was derived directly from the genre. Notable post-punk artists who presaged the gothic rock genre and helped develop and shape the subculture include Siouxsie and the Banshees, Bauhaus, the Cure, and Joy Division.
  The goth subculture has survived much longer than others of the same era, and has continued to diversify and spread throughout the world. Its imagery and cultural proclivities indicate influences from 19th-century literature of the same name and horror films. The scene is centered on music festivals, nightclubs, and organized meetings, especially in Western Europe. The subculture has associated tastes in music, aesthetics, and fashion.
  The music preferred by goths includes a number of styles such as gothic rock, death rock, post-punk, cold wave, dark wave, and ethereal wave. Styles of dress within the subculture draw on punk, new wave, and New Romantic fashion. It also draws from the fashion of earlier periods such as the Victorian, Edwardian, and Belle Époque eras.
context_section_description: Gothic fashion is marked by conspicuously dark, antiquated and homogeneous features. It is stereotyped as eerie, mysterious, complex and exotic. A dark, sometimes morbid fashion and style of dress, typical gothic fashion includes colored black hair and black period-styled clothing. Both male and female goths can wear dark eyeliner and dark fingernail polish, most especially black. Styles are often borrowed from punk fashion and − more currently − from the Victorian and Elizabethan periods. It also frequently expresses pagan, occult or other religious imagery. Gothic fashion and styling may also feature silver jewelry and piercings.
  Ted Polhemus described goth fashion as a "profusion of black velvets, lace, fishnets and leather tinged with scarlet or purple, accessorized with tightly laced corsets, gloves, precarious stilettos and silver jewelry depicting religious or occult themes". Of the male "goth look", goth historian Pete Scathe draws a distinction between the Sid Vicious archetype of black spiky hair and black leather jacket, in contrast to the gender-ambiguous guys wearing makeup. The first is the early goth gig-going look, which was essentially punk, whereas the second is what evolved into the Batcave nightclub look. Early goth gigs were often very hectic affairs, and the audience dressed accordingly.
  In contrast to the LARP-based Victorian and Elizabethan pomposity of the 2000s, the more Romantic side of 1980s trad-goth − mainly represented by women − was characterized by new wave/post-punk-oriented hairstyles (both long and short, partly shaved and teased) and street-compliant clothing, including black frill blouses, midi dresses or tea-length skirts, and floral lace tights, Dr. Martens, spike heels (pumps), and pointed toe buckle boots (winklepickers), sometimes supplemented with accessories such as bracelets, chokers and bib necklaces. This style, retroactively referred to as Ethergoth, took its inspiration from Siouxsie Sioux and mid-1980s protagonists from the 4AD roster like Liz Fraser and Lisa Gerrard.
  The New York Times noted: "The costumes and ornaments are a glamorous cover for the genre's somber themes. In the world of Goth, nature itself lurks as a malign protagonist, causing flesh to rot, rivers to flood, monuments to crumble and women to turn into slatterns, their hair streaming and lipstick askew".
  Cintra Wilson declares that the origins of the dark romantic style are found in the "Victorian cult of mourning." Valerie Steele is an expert in the history of the style.
caption: Photography with aesthetics close to the Goth aesthetic (black and white), showing a woman dressed in that style
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