Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of Graph Search.
Concept
Gothic fashion
Summary
Gothic fashion is a dressing style marked by dark, mysterious, antiquated, homogenous, and often genderless features worn by members of the Goth subculture. The typical gothic fashion style includes dyed black exotic hairstyles, dark lipstick and dark clothing. Both masculine and feminine goths can wear dark eyeliner, dark nail polish and lipstick (often black) for a dramatic effect. Male goths use cosmetics at a higher rate than other men. Styles are often borrowed from the punk fashion (such as spiked wristbands and chokers) and can also draw influence from Victorians and Elizabethan fashion. Goth fashion is sometimes confused with heavy metal fashion and emo fashion.
Cintra Wilson declares that "The origins of contemporary goth style are found in the Victorian cult of mourning." Valerie Steele is an expert in the history of the style.
Goth subculture is stereotyped as eerie, mysterious, and complex, and the fashion is used as an outlet to express these characteristics. Goth fashion can be recognized by its stark black clothing. 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".
Nancy Kilpatrick's Goth Bible: A Compendium for the Darkly Inclined defines "poseur" for the goth scene as follows: "goth wannabes, usually young kids going through a goth phase who do not hold to goth sensibilities but want to be part of the goth crowd (...)". Kilpatrick contributor "Daoine O'" denigrates poseur goths as 'Batbabies' whose clothing is bought at [mall store] Hot Topic with their parents' money".
One female role model is Theda Bara, the 1910s femme fatale known for her dark eyeshadow. Siouxsie Sioux was particularly influential on the dress style of the Gothic rock scene; Paul Morley of NME described Siouxsie and the Banshees' 1980 gig at Futurama: "[Siouxsie was] modeling her newest outfit, the one that will influence how all the girls dress over the next few months.
Official source
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.