Gothic Clothing, Gothic Fashiion, Gothic Jewlery

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Goth is definitely a high-maintenance lifestyle. The process of dyeing hair alone is time-consuming, and when the color is black, it requires constant touchups. Dramatic makeup takes much longer to apply than the natural look. And anyone who has regularly laced up a pair of twenty-eyelet boots really understands the phrase, "He died with his boots on."
Goths, unless they favor the Industrial look—basic black T-shirt, pants and boots, and a few good chains—face amazing and unique clothing problems as they promenade through life. Torn fishnet might have been inherited from punks, but goths have adopted it as a necessary style. Both fishnet and lace snag on just about anything, especially chains, crosses, and full-finger snake skeleton rings with spiky points along the spine. Brocade is easily stained and requires dry cleaning, as do silk shirts. Candle wax seems to find its way onto velvet dresses at an alarming rate. (A trick for getting wax out of most fabrics is to place waxed paper on the wax, turn the fabric over, and press the inside of the fabric using a low-heat iron. The wax will go onto the paper.) Latex rips easily, and once it does, this cousin of the plastic garbage bag can't be stitched back together. (Duct tape on the inside of the fabric can hold it together for an emergency wearing.)
Manic Panic's Tish and Snooky
Courtesy of Sic F*cks

the n>ool
In 1977 the Bellomo sisters, Tish and Snooky, opened a punk boutique in New York. It was their mom who termed their activities Manic Panic, so we can only guess at their energy level! The sisters were performers in their own right, and their shop catered to early punk bands like Blondie. Tish admits, "I always leaned towards the morbid punk Morticia Addams look—we even share the same name!" Snooky adds, "Tish always loved the Vampirella look, but punk came first!"
The energetic sister act felt driven to open a shop, and it survived by word-of-mouth. "The underground community needed something like us!" Snooky says. "No store existed till ours, and since people always imitated our style, we thought we might be able to sell it. Goth as we know it today did not exist back then, but we always loved the vampire look and sensibility." Tish adds, "We were creatures of the night! The goth look was beginning to emerge back then, but there was no name for it."
Today, their clientele includes Marilyn Manson; Davey Havok (of API); Kembra Pfahler (from the Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black); the Cramps; the Damned; and their own punk band, the Sic F*cks. The little shop is gone, and they now work out of a huge warehouse in Long Island City, where the offices and showroom are a goth/punk blend. Snooky describes the "black curtains with cats, skulls, a (fake) fireplace with cherubs, candelabra, dead roses around the doorway." Tish adds, "And our five-thousand-foot storage closet resembles The Addams Family basement!"
Trish goes on to confide, "We had a lovely goth girl working her way through mortuary school in our sales department. She dyed her hair green, her skin was milk white (naturally), and she listened to goth music nonstop. It took her a long time to get a job because no one would believe she was strong enough to lift a dead body. Happily, she is now a successful mortician!"
Many Goths dye their hair at home and use those little Manic Panic jars of cream-color shades like Deadly Nightshade, Black and Blue, After Midnight Blue, Raven, and, especially Vampire Red. Manic Panic also
46 4- THE GOTH BJBLE
does cosmetics, with lipsticks and claw colors in Tramp and Venom, Belladonna Child, and Nightmare, among others.
Snooky describes their oddest product: "Vampyre's Veil tattoo defender and pallor protector, an SPF 45 sunscreen cream for the face, inspired by people like us, who run from the sun, crave that white pallor, and also want to prevent our tattoos from fading. We picked this gorgeous little black bottle that looked so 'witchy.' Tish designed the logo out of lilies and dripping vampire letters. We packaged it in a coffin-shaped silver box with black gothic writing. The counter-top display was a huge black coffin with a bat and black lace covering it. It was the coolest product ever!" And Tish adds, "I can't live without it."
Wigs, braids, and other fake hairpieces also continue to be popular in the goth world. Initially, goths would dye streaks (usually dark red, or blue), and sometimes weave in synthetic hair to contrast with the main color for a tribal effect. Now, wool is often woven into real hair for goth-style "big hair," full of color. Brands have blossomed to take advantage of this fashion trend—at a recent Convergence, Hair Police didn't have a minute to spare making woolen dreads and adding synthetic hair wisps to goth heads.
Sonia Peterson opened Hair Police in Minneapolis in 1986, and a branch in Amsterdam in 1993. The company has been online since 1997. Now they do "dread tours," where they take the show on the road.
"A few years ago," Sonia says, "I realized that goth clients had great style and great clothes but bad hair. I thought our hair extensions would be a good alternative for goth-inspired styling, both human hair exten-sions/synth extensions and all kinds of dreadlocks. We started serving the San Fran community in the mid-nineties."
Hair Police specializes in extensions and dreads made from human hair and synthetics, and in dread perms, which they developed in 1986. One NYC goth DJ had them "create a single dread cone on her head, with tendrils of her own hair coming out the top of the cone like a volcano." About one quarter of their clientele is goth, and the styles the company is famous for hinge on the Industrial, Tribal, and Cyber goth look. Sonia sees her own look as "spaceship captain."
The future of goth hair styles as Hair Police envisions it tends toward a Cyber look and involves "more unique ways to attach hair, with plastic clips that can be installed like hair extensions, and then the hair can be
* 47
THE ACCOUTREmEHTS OF GOTH
changed. I call them ports and plugins." Sonia went as far as Hong Kong to find some!
otherworldly eyes
The Eye of Horus (600-400 B.C.), a popular ancient Egyptian symbol, was frequently invoked during funerary rites. In ancient Egypt and Rome, eye beads were employed to ward off evil. But it took the Late Georgians to make eye jewelry a fashionable fetish.
One variation of mourning jewelry was the painted eye, sometimes with an eyebrow of real hair, or a teardrop either painted on or simulated by a small diamond, made into rings, brooches, and memento boxes. Charles I, when he was Prince of Wales, gave a locket with a painting of his right eye on it to his morganatic wife. Many people have been fascinated by eyes and eye jewelry, including film director Alfred Hitchcock, who often used images of eyes in his films.
The first reported surgery involving removal of a human eye was described with text and illustrations by the French surgeon Ambroise Pare in the sixteenth century. At that time, there were three different types of artificial eyes available: eyes worn over the eyelid and fixed with a steel spring attached around the head; enameled oval-shaped gold and silver bowls; and oval-shaped glass eyes partially coated with lead—which, of course, ultimately proved harmful to human health. By the seventeenth century, Paris became the fashionable center of glass eye manufacturing. The first German artificial eye made of glass was developed by Ludwig Muller-Uri in 1835. Cryolite glass, still used today, was invented in 1870. Over the centuries, almost every material known to man has been used as an orbital implant: gold, silver, ivory, glass, silicone, cartilage, bone, fat, wool, rubber, catgut, acrylics, magnets, asbestos, peat, agar, paraffin, sponge, rubber, cork, titanium mesh, polyethylene, and hydroxyapatite. A variety of shapes have also been tried, including a sphere with small knobs projecting from the surface. The British Optical Association Museum has a collection of 160 glass eyes.
The Eyeglass Museum in Cadore, Italy, displays an extensive collection of all types of eyewear, including pince-nez, lorgnettes, and monocles. Also on display are walking sticks with compartments, snuffboxes, and fans (all popular concealments for spyglasses and monocles). Cadore, the place the spectacle industry was reborn in 1878, is home to 312 of the 650
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THE GOTH BIBLE

companies in Belluno, Italy, where 80 percent of today's eyeglasses are produced.
Sunglasses, that staple of daytime gothwear, were invented in 1752. Those first prescription lenses, made of blue or green glass, did not shield the eyes from UV rays. Sam Foster (Foster Grant Company) in 1919 created the first protective sunglasses, and by 1929 was selling them in Wool-worth's on the boardwalk of Atlantic City.
Combined, all of the innovations in eyewear cannot hold a beeswax candle to the leap made when contact lenses were developed. 9mm SFX is a company with a large theatrical and goth clientele that makes unusual custom contact lenses, which can be ordered (with a doctor's prescription and measurements) over the Internet. They have created a variety of vampire lens styles, including: Vampyre Lestat (eerie blue), Vampyre Louis (eerie green), Vampyre Armand (otherworldly brown), Vampyre Lilith (black pupil, red iris, black rim), Alien Vampyre (out-of-this-world purple), Lost Boys (creepy yellow), and Forever Knight (distorted yellow), as well as many other types of cool and weird lenses, such as Spider (the pupil is a black spider over a pale blue iris), Spiderweb (ditto with a web), Manson (white iris, black rim, black pupil), Blind Eye (all white), Dark Angel (black pupil, blue iris, black eyeball), and even glow-in-the-dark lenses. Goth-specific lenses can be found everywhere now, for example with tiny black Celtic crosses imitating the eye's pupil.
oenul Accessories of the OAttmeo
Vampire fangs come in a variety of forms, everything from candy fangs and the cheap plastic variety bought around Halloween, to filed incisors that create the hungry undead look. Many goths go the dental cap route for permanent, no-muss, no-fuss teeth.
Serrated Smiles is an online company in Maryland run by Michael Bray. "I was offended at the prices of some of my competitors. Out of spite I decided to create a fang company that offered high quality fangs at a reasonable price."
Michael makes the fangs in a studio that "looks a lot like an empty classroom—a few desks, a fume vent, and small windows."
About 75 percent of his customers are of "the gothic/vampire persuasion, or way of life." Michael doesn't consider himself goth, "although I don't own a piece of clothing that isn't black."
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THE ACCOUTREDlEnTS OF GOTH
Serrated Smiles fangs are hand sculpted from high quality dental acrylic, and they focus on blending the bridge with the natural teeth. Fangs come in long, medium and short lengths, and besides natural shades, in gold, silver and a variety of colors. Styles can span Dracula, Nosferatu, vampire queen, parasite, werewolf, etc.
Michael's customers often take on a vampire persona, so he's used to that. One, though, rattled him: "I received a letter from a thirteen-year-old boy who'd written that he was at his wits' end trying to convince his parents he was a vampire; he didn't have the money to buy our fangs. He wanted us to send him a pair on the house, and for this, he would be eternally grateful. I was a little shaken by the letter, to say the least. I fully embrace the gothic/vampire lifestyle and I blame no one for the problems this little boy was going through, but I found it hard to enable this kind of behavior. In the end I told him I'd send him a free pair of fangs if he would convince me he wasn't a vampire."
A genderless lipstick called bruise
Goths, the visual drama queens that they are, wear a lot of makeup. It comes with the territory. It takes time and the skill of an artist to apply enough black eyeliner and lipstick to replicate the Morticia Addams look.
"Does pink make you puke?" is Urban Decay's slogan. Launched in January of 1996, the company began with "two friends, searching for a shade of purple nail polish to satisfy their alternative makeup tastes." Those friends, Sandy Lerner and Wende Zomnir, began marketing makeup, lipstick and Lip Gunk (lip gloss) in street-savvy shades called Bruise, Frostbite, Roach, Gash, Axphixia, Burnout, Paranoid, and S&M, with matching nail polishes to paint fashionable acrylic Vampira-like claws.
Few goths do not wear makeup. Those over thirty-five generally wear much less than they used to, but will still make the effort for alabaster skin when clubbing. Black is a great color to help the young look mature. It is a disastrous color for Elder goths, because it tends to make them look ... elderly! Elder goths use shades like dark browns and reds for hair and lips, which provide an effect similar to black without being unforgiving. The f Section overwhelmingly prefers black lipstick and polish, usually buying "the cheap stuff," as several said. The chain Hot Topic has been a godsend to nonurban Goths, who used to have to wait for Halloween to, like TankBoy, "stock up on purple and black then." Rots says, "I prefer cheap
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makeup, since I melt everything off in a matter of minutes. The cheap stuff stains, so it'll stay when everything else has sweated off." They also wear red, dark red, or browns that are very dark. Vena Cava uses "dark-brown dried-blood color. Metallic, shiny, wet red or copper."
Some goths like a bit of color on their lips and nails and over their eyes. Blue in hair or on lips and nails, especially pale shades, results in an asphyxiated look. This is cyanosis at its sexiest, O2 depletion, a delightfully cadaverous pallor. Mold, slime and the gooey corpse look aren't the most popular, but some goths tackle green in makeup.
Green lipstick is not new. Called "magic" lipstick because it is green in color but turns red on the lips, this artifice has been popular for centuries with women from Morocco. This is the country that gave us that green shrub grown in the Draa Valley that, when ground into a powder and mixed with water, turns into a paste the color and texture of pea soup, called henna. David Bowie in his Ziggy Stardust phase twigged us to the coppery delights of henna as a hair dye. It can also be applied with a fine brush or pointed stick to the skin as it is in many countries, like Morocco, and India, to create tattoo-like patterns called mehndi that will fade with washing . . . eventually.
for centuries
Goth and pallor is pretty much a media invention. Kindergoths often go for the shocking corpse-white skin with the help of foundations like Manic Panic's Goth White, but generally as goths age, less and less makeup is used, and the first to go tends to be white foundation.
Many goths prefer night, which means they avoid daylight as much as possible. This has the added benefit of lowering the risk of melanoma (skin cancer). And energy somehow increases after sunset for subcultural types, probably because what is inspiring is found in the darkness. While a lack of Vitamin D can cause ricketts, thanks to multivitamins, goths can remain out of sunlight. Lack of sunlight keeps the skin paler. Of course, not all goths are WASPs (white Anglo-Saxon Protestants), but goths of color like paler skin too — it seems to be in the goth gene.
For those who want a paler look without resorting to makeup, Gawth-Pallor has an entire Web page of tan remover and skin lightener recipes (see Chapter 4 URLs).
THE ACCOUTREmEHTS OF GOTH *f 51

X

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crosses ... crosses... ano more crosses ...
Contrary to popular belief, the symbol of the cross was not incorporated as a Christian symbol until about the seventh century A.D. Prior to that, Christ was represented by a lamb, or a shepherd—the good shepherd.
Crosses are ancient symbols, used in many cultures and religions. Some have fallen out of favor, like the Iron Cross, which came to represent Nazis' insanely driven belief in genetic purity that resulted in mass murder.
But for the Latin Cross and its variations, the obvious symbolism is that two (or more) elements are intersecting—for instance, life and death. A cross to bear means carrying a burden, as did Christ. When Christianity adopted it, the cross took on a power it had not found before. A vampire or a suicide should be buried at a crossroads, the idea being that the cross representing Christ will keep both unholy spirits from rising again. The metaphor is clearly one of power, transformation of the physical to the spiritual and vice versa. Being buried at a crossroad also confuses the returning spirit—which way should I go?
Psychologist Carl Jung saw the cross as a symbol for the creative process, and most goths are artistic. The creative process usually leads to a crossroads, a place where the artist can go this way or that and a decision must be reached. In both the artistic process and in the process of creative living, that decision requires contemplation and soul-searching. There are always two obvious choices. But following "process," as most goths do, often involves not choosing, but holding on, waiting out the tension of indecision. Process is about being patient until a third, unforeseen, unanticipated alternative spontaneously emerges. Human life itself is the best example of process: an ovum and a sperm join, out of which, when the time is right, comes a third thing, neither the one nor the other, a magical blending of the two—new life.
In 1998 AntiSally of Washington State went to a party. "I noticed people wearing traditional rosaries and thought they would look much gother if they had skulls on them."
The Goth Rosary was born. AntiSally makes every rosary by hand in a production area of her home where "there are beads in boxes that stack up to my knees and completed items hanging from every possible hook, pin head, lamp, or nail. Around my computer are yellow Christmas lights and five tiny Day of the Dead figurines."
Her rosaries on first glance resemble traditional ones. She does custom
1 # #
Courtesy ofHugues Leblanc

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THE GOTH BIBLE

orders, but her four basic styles are: Type O, Type A, Type AB and Type AB Negative, with a choice of beads which include pewter Our Father skulls, connectors that can be, among other things, a Madonna, a pentagram, or a spiderweb, and a talisman to dangle at the bottom, ranging from a traditional crucifix to a skeleton, raven, gargoyle, or red devil's head. She also sells clergy shirts and last-rites crucifixes. Besides goths, her satisfied customers include: "Catholics, Satanists, Pagans, Wiccans, vampires, SCA [Society for Creative Anachronism] members, Grateful Dead followers, rockers and people wanting me to copy an item of jewelry worn by a hip-hop singer. I am always pleased that they find me, and I really enjoy the whole process of making their items become a reality."
AntiSally excels in packaging too—the rosaries arrive in little plastic coffins that include candies. The secrets of her success: "Subvert the dominant paradigm, and keep prices low and service high!"
One of the most startling pieces of information from The f Section is that a third of them own no crosses—which, of course, goes against stereotype. In some cases, they are not now nor have they ever have been a part of the Christian faith, so wearing a cross doesn't feel right. For others, who were part of the Christian faith, hostility toward a religion they feel has oppressed them lingers. The nearly two-thirds of The \ Section who do like crosses own over 800 of them. Roughly 75 percent of those crosses are for jewelry, and the rest are used in home decor—this includes a few ankhs.
In Egyptian hieroglyphics, the ankh can mean both "life" and "hand mirror." The ankh represented the great Goddess—a narrow triangle, surrounded by crossbar arms and an oval head (similar shapes come from Africa and represent fertility goddesses). In ancient Egypt it became known as a symbol of sexual union, as well as of immortality for the gods, which they might confer upon their priests and priestesses. The loop of the design was often painted red, to indicate that this gift came through the blood—the menstrual blood—of the goddess. Most Egyptian deities are depicted wearing or holding an ankh.
the gupc revrisiteft
AntiSally of The Goth Rosary fame has also developed a series of scents that goths can relate to. She says, "Due to the lack of truly interesting fragrances on the market, I have taken it upon myself to fill the void. I have
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THE ACCOUTREmEIITS OF GOTH
Hair Mourning Jewelry
Courtesy of Nancy Kdpatrick
formulated and produced a line of uncommon scents for uncommon people. The line includes Graveyard—the smell of rich loamy soil, fresh green grass with a note of flora; Nocturnal—black clothing; Dark Streets—the smell of clove mixed with patchouli and nag champa; and Gothic Rose— bloodred Roses, the smell of unfurled deep crimson petals."
jetrelry to weep ot>er
The people of the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries took Death seriously. Two hundred years of plagues barely left a family that had not lost someone to disease. No parties were thrown to celebrate the life of the deceased. Death was a grim reality.
During this time, cemeteries, which had formerly been grounds for mass burials, became organized cities for the dead. Mourning evolved into ritual where fairly strict protocol was followed. Charms and amulets to ward off death have been used by human beings since antiquity. But it became fashionable between the 1600s and World War I (1914-1918), especially in Britain, but also elsewhere in Europe and in North America, to wear jewelry to commemorate the death of a loved one.
The trend seems to have begun with King Charles I of England in 1649. After his execution, loyalists wore his portrait in miniature set in the bezels of rings, with a lock of his much-treasured hair hidden behind the picture. On the ring the words were inscribed: "The glory of England has departed," accompanied by a skull and a crown.

In the late 1600s, memorial rings were made and given to family and friends as keepsakes after a funeral. In the early 1700s, the French introduced a light-hearted rococo element, including ornate lettering, to mourning jewelry. And in the early 1800s, the fashion in Germany and elsewhere was Berlin iron and cut-steel mourning jewelry, lacquered black.
Initially memorial rings featured death's-head motifs—a skull, or a skull and crossed bones—against a background of silk, ivory, or perhaps hair, all under heavy rock crys-
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tal. Then bracelets, brooches, lockets, stickpins and earrings joined the rings. Mementos were formed out of gold and silver, decorated with pearls and enamel, carved in ivory, bone, Whitby jet (lightweight coal), vulcanite, bog oak, horn, French jet (black glass), or gutta-percha (tree sap), or cut out of steel or iron.
Skulls fell out of fashion, replaced by motifs that included clasped hands, funereal urns, carved silhouettes, Gothic archways, hearts entwined, roses, painted eyes, and the lovely image of a woman weeping over a tombstone with foliage like a weeping willow as a backdrop. The words "Memento Mori" (Remember that you must die), and "Mizpah" (from Genesis 31:49: "And Mizpah: for he said, The Lord watch between me and thee, when we are absent, one from another.") were often used, or the more impersonal "In Memory of."
The most intriguing material incorporated into mourning jewelry was human hair. The earliest jewelry from the 1600s sometimes included a lock of hair. But by the early 1800s, hair became a basic material in its own right. Usually the hair was braided on a braiding table, to form shapes like fleurettes for earrings, or crosses for a necklace, but was mainly just plaited, with gold clasps for the bracelet or watch fob. Some of the more interesting pieces were hairs flattened against a background and swirled into lovely curlicues held together with a strip of gold.
As Godey 's Lady's Book of May 1855 said: "Hair is at once the most delicate and lasting of our materials, and survives us, like love. It is so light, so gentle, so escaping from the idea of death, that with a lock of hair belonging to a child or friend, we may almost look up to heaven and compare notes with the angelic nature—may almost say, 'I have a piece of thee here, not unworthy of thy being now.' "
The range of mourning hair jewelry runs from the cheap knockoffs of the day—with complaints that professional weavers substituted horsehair for the hair of the departed—to the work of fashionable award-winning hair weavers such as Antoni Forrer, hairworker by appointment to Queen Victoria, and Lemmonier et Cie of Paris, who embellished pieces with turquoise and gems. Today, Victorian mourning hair jewelry is expensive, and highly collectible.
Another interesting facet of Victorian funereal custom is the hair mourning wreath. Anywhere from four to twenty inches in length, it is made entirely out of woven human hair, sometimes added to over genera-
1n pisions of the OArk night
1 bAPe oreAtneo of joy oepArtco
But A nulking oreAtn of life Ano light
fJAtb left m< broken-hearted. Ah! WbAt is not A orcAtn by oiy
Co hint whose eyes Are cast
On things Arouno hint n>ith A ray
Curneo bAck upon the pAst?

THE ACCOUTREtTiEriTS OF GOTH *$• 55
Logo by Alchemy Gothic England

tions, often displayed in a deep shadow box. These wreaths are rare, delicate, and astonishing artwork.
TM
Poe 's Attic is an on-line Victorian mourning jewelry resource. The dearth of information about mourning items makes this site special. Images and articles predominate, accompanied by written descriptions.
Rachell Frazian, who set up the site, says most of the people who visit are "women who have an interest in mourning items." One type of mourning memento she displays on her site is casket plaques from the 1800s which were attached to the coffin but removed before burial and kept by the family as a keepsake. Occasionally, visitors have a more direct connection to the items they see. "An American man wrote regarding an English funeral receipt I'd displayed. The receipt, dated 1878, was from a 'Carpenter & Furnishing Undertaker' for a coffin and other funeral items. The undertaker was an English ancestor of this man. He wanted to include it in his collection of family artifacts, which he did."
Rachell believes, "The Victorians addressed the pain of loss with a prescribed social structure of custom, dress, and jewelry. This gave the bereaved a way to channel their grief, providing comfort and direction at an emotionally devastating time. Mourning jewelry gives an insight into how one group of people coped with the inevitable conclusion that all of us face."
otb jewelry
In 1977, Geoff (Deth) Kayson and Trevor Phillipson, two out-of-work English youths, were making metal jewelry for punks and rock bands. Their interest in history and art contributed to their unusual designs, and they earned a modest living, enough that by 1980 they could start a company. Today the name Alchemy is legend, and about half of their customers are goths.
What is the mysterious Alchemy workshop like? "Despite having ambitions and pretensions to owning and working out of the attic of a remote Medieval castle in forested Central Europe," Geoff says, "the reality of business dictates that we confine ourselves to a practical, fully regulated environment convenient to our zealous, Renfield-like, but mortally dependent staff. The place is still, however, infested with coffins, skulls, altar-crosses, church benches, nooses, black makeup mirrors and countless
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other sinister reminders testifying to the temporary insanity of our darkly deranged staff."
Alchemy designs and produces a variety of products, including T-shirts, furniture, even crystal balls! But it is their high-quality jewelry and accessories for which they are renowned, particularly items like necklaces, armor rings and poison rings. Their classy Medieval, Renaissance and Victorian motifs incorporate vampires, crosses, dragons, and pentagrams, in silver, pewter, and other good metals. Because they are designers, they like to do one-of-a-kind items when they can. Geoff describes "The High-gate," a remotely controlled, six-foot-long, hand-carved, solid oak "coffin on a tomb" gothic cocktail bar—standing seven feet high when opened, with a built-in fridge, stereo system, lights, and a full eighty-plus-piece set of hand-cut leaded crystal."
The company moved gracefully from punk to goth. "The goth community has a need for its own highly specialized, dark strain of aesthetic individualism," Geoff says. "This, however, as far as fashion and lifestyle is concerned, needs to be achieved with taste, and within the confines of an unspoken but intellectually understood protocol. Variety, quality, and authenticity are essential ingredients of such eccentric self-expression." Twice yearly, they travel to the Whitby Goth Weekend, an event "where we meet and cavort with thousands of the best, most outrageous and fun characters in England in a bizarre three-day orgy of darkness and noise."
Twenty-five years of catering to goth tastes requires devotion, Geoff agrees. "You have to live it and feel it to understand it, and to earn the respect of your potential clientele. The experience we have gained and put back into our chosen discipline makes Alchemy, probably, the most comprehensively skilled and practiced creative craftsmen in the genre anywhere since the mid-nineteenth century."
Pre-Raphaelite arts and crafts design workshop founder William Morris would have been proud.
fcmmc ftule jewelry
The word "abiosis" means "absence of life." Collections d'Abiose from Quebec is anything but lifeless. The antique-silver plated line incorporates the delicacy of historical jewelry design with modern materials.
Eight years ago Ann d'Abiose appeared out of the mists with an old Victorian suitcase lined in red satin, a Rococo mirror and a couple of candle-
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I
sticks, displaying her exquisite creations at goth events. Her original handmade designs have been sold at and worn in fashion shows at several Convergence conventions. She sells to only a few shops around the world. "I'm picky about the people I deal with. I want to have fun, and also to deal with nice people. If someone treats me as if I'm a big manufacturer and does not want to understand the person that I am, that's too bad, because I won't deal with him or her. I don't care about the dollars I will lose."
Collections d'Abiose consists of four types of jewelry, with various motifs possible, for example: delicate vampire necklaces, dainty Versailles metal headbands, ornate Baroque finger tips, Gothic gloves of metal and rubber that hook over one finger. Ann loves to sell directly to individuals via the Internet. Three quarters of her customers are goth, and it's common for her to receive much-deserved "sweet comments on my work."
Her collection is available directly from her Web site for North Americans, and for those in Europe and the Far East from the distributor in Italy, Lacrime Degli Dei.
widow's weeos And other grAt>eyArd trendsetters
The epitome of goth fashion is the widow, dressed in black from head to toe, the skirt kissing the soil beneath her granny boots, the black lace-trimmed handkerchief applied delicately to her nose hidden by the multi-layered mourning veil.
The wearing of black around a corpse is an ancient practice. There has always lingered within the human psyche a fear of the dead. Spirits of ill will can hover near the lifeless body, and when the living wear black, they are less conspicuous, especially during those long nighttime vigils beside the coffin.
Queen Victoria is our role model for mourning, thank you. After all, she did manage to mourn her dead husband for forty years. Quite a feat.
Victorian mourning veils were multilayered, so that a shorter or a longer veil could cover the face, while another part draped down the back. The fabric, often crepe, ensured that the bereaved's face was well hidden with but the vaguest sense of features behind, keeping tear-stained cheeks a private matter. One difficulty with original mourning veils is that the fabric was frequently colored with indigo dye, which contains sulphur and arsenic, both of which are poisonous when inhaled. This could explain why more than one Victorian widow fainted at the graveside.
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Azrael's Accomplice Designs is an online store run out of Texas for the last seven years by Batty, who is well-known to the net-goth community. She offers, among many other items, black veils. The shop also has a nice line of men's clothing, from ruffled neck cravats to PVC coats. "Being part of the gothic subculture for many years, my designs naturally reflect my love of that style of dress. A lot of stores try too hard to be 'goth' . . . sticking to some sort of 'must look spooky' mantra. I just try to make things that appeal to my tastes, and are well made. Perhaps I want to help expand the gothic fashion horizons. I'd say about 60 percent of my customers are goth."
Batty designs all the items herself, save a few collars created by her boyfriend. "I don't want to be one of those stores that has the same old stuff by the same old designers." Her veils come in a variety of lengths: single, double, or multi-layered, and are either clip-on or anchored to a mini-hat or cluster of flowers. The styles range from classic to fairy. Something for every mournful occasion.
angel, fccwl, fairy twngs
Imagine a room full of corpses, skeletons, and coffins propped against the walls, wings hanging above them as if about to take disembodied flight. This is home to Deviance Designs, a two-person Las Vegas company, owned by Subrina Khan (who goes by the name of Ange) and Mike Dunn.
Wings are extremely popular fashion accessories for dark moths. All types of wings, from delicate and fragile gossamer fairy feathers to hard, stainless-steel, metallic, demon-from-Hell wings. Deviance Designs is the first company to specialize in making latex wings. "A lot of people in underground subcultures have a deep love of latex. Some like it because it looks nice, some because the feel excites them, some for other reasons. People like our wings because they have a realistic look and feel to them. When we make our evil butterfly wings, we offer them with scales, for an ultra-real look." Their best-selling wings are rounded, lace-style.
Deviance Designs also creates . . . corpses. "We're one of the few companies that makes full-body corpses over a skeleton. Many companies we "ve seen make only the head and hands, and construct the bodies from cotton and dowel rods! We give a lot of attention to realism." Always important to fill that empty chair and even out a dinner party!
THE ACCOUTREmEIITS OF GOTH V 59
iok b^nos; or, working for the oetril!
It was when Louis XVI ruled France that brides took to giving their personal fans to their bridesmaids as wedding presents. The fans were hand-painted, the theme usually mythological figures; they were works of art.
Purses in Victorian England ranged from fabric drawstring bags known as reticules to tiny silver or metallic mesh purses. Victorian goths still carry replicas, and original items if they can find them. House of 111 Repute makes a satin reticule with fringe trim at the bottom and the funeral letters IHS embroidered across the front. Gwyn Strang has been running her shop in Toronto since 1994. "Goth was my lifestyle. I couldn't have opened any other type of store." Most of her products are of her own design. One of her hottest-selling items is her bat-shaped purse.
Other goth purses in vogue range from industrial hardware like workers' stainless steel lunch pails and old military ammunition cases painted black over their camouflage, to coffin-shaped purses in a variety of fabrics, and cyber insect-pod backpacks.
Goth took to gloves instantly. Wasn't it Boy George who started the trend of the fingerless glove, one he picked up from the Victorian upper and lower classes? The upper class wore gloves—kid, silk, satin, lace— with and without fingers, the latter for doing embroidery and needlework. The Cockneys cut out the fingers of their woolen gloves to separate items like the Dickensian matchsticks. Ladies of the night clipped the fingers from their net gloves to count the money.
Ever ingenious, goths took gloves a step further. They stabbed a hole in the wrist seam of a fishnet or mesh long-sleeved shirt and hooked their thumb into the opening, creating an insta-fingerless glove.
Kambriel, the owner of Kambriel (formerly the well-known Salem, Massachusetts, goth shop Atrocities), says, "When we began in 1994, we used to offer handmade tombstone- and bat-shaped candies, which we made little velvet pouches for. We also used to offer tiny hooded velvet cowls for 'children of the night'!" Now their line includes an array of clothing, and accessories like gloves, hats, handkerchiefs, black Victorian bloomers for women, and opiate (smoking) jackets for men. They also make hand-sewn black mourning veils, both floor-length and blusher-length (covering the face).
Kambriel says their work environment is important. "We tend to surround ourselves with images to inspire our creativity and stimulate our
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imagination. This can help when we're drafting new designs. Some examples would be pre-Raphaelite vignettes, vintage photographs, Art Nou-veau illustrations, and photographs of awe-inspiring architecture. We create a lovely and exotic environment to work in since we are there so much, and can't help but think some of that beauty and influence rubs off on the items we produce!"
She also says about her partner, Curse, and herself, "We consider ourselves to be gothic in our own sense. We would likely fall into a Romantic gothic realm, with a sense of mystery, drama, and the fantastical. We do adore those classic gothic elements such as soaring cathedrals, eerie and powerful classical music, the romanticized interpretations of past eras. Majestic environments lit by moonlight and the like all hold an allure for us."
the curse of sunshine
Canes and parasols became fashionable with goths in the nineties. Early goths were too close to punk to carry such apparatus, even if the cane handle was carved ivory, and the stick pulled apart to reveal a knife or sword hidden within. Canes, of course, smack of the dandy. They also double as a fetish toy.
For a long time, the only frilly umbrellas available to goths—unless they made their own—were from China. White lace umbrellas with pale wooden handles might or might not dye black. Another option was Chinese paper umbrellas, with Oriental designs in bright colors for the China Girl look.
Tenebrae (meaning "shadows") is a seven-year-old gothic parasol company, run by Mirabai Vayne, who says, "Tenebrae is the culmination of a lifelong love of history, spurred on by a dissatisfaction with our present era and a desire to bring back an aesthetic of beauty, elegance, and mystery that has been absent from our society for far too long."
Goths, she believes, need parasols, for practical purposes, and for aesthetic reasons—for example, "to preserve their lovely pallor. Our sun-loving culture has all but forgotten this once-essential accessory. While in recent years many have become aware of the damaging effects of sun exposure and have taken steps to choose a daily lotion with SPF, the cult of tanning one's skin as a symbol of health and leisure (particularly in America) still holds strong. People continue to bake until well done, regardless of consequences. At one time, history told quite a different story. For
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thousands of years a porcelain complexion was the much-heralded mark of elegance and refinement."
Tenebrae's debut line features an elaborate hand-carved and lacquered hardwood handle meticulously reproduced from an 1870s original. "We have improved upon the past by offering new and elegant fabrics such as velvet and PVC, and a more dramatic canopy shape. Our parasols match the quality found in fine antiques. Our customers do not want a mere parasol, they want a Tenebrae."
Mirabai feels strongly about recapturing elegance. "Sadly, for those of us who embrace this culture as self-defining — our very souls — the worldly perception of 'What is gothic?' as propagated by our media-obsessed culture is disheartening. What has been forgotten and /or for the most part ignored is that what was once commonly termed 'Gothic' gained its roots from Romanticism, dating from roughly 1760—1830. This era was best known for Shelley, Keats, Byron, Coleridge, Emerson, Goethe, and countless other brilliant minds whose works put an emphasis on the sublimity of individualism, a retreat from the artificiality of the world and its conventions, the belief that imagination is superior to reason, a devotion to beauty, love of and worship of nature, and a fascination with the past. The Gothic genre originated in novels of this time — mid-eighteenth century; the catalyst being Horace Walpole's The Castle ofOtranto (1764), as Romanticism's natural counterpart. Its focus: exploration into the subterranean shadow realms of the human psyche, offering up a predilection for the macabre, the mysterious, the supernatural, and the terrifying, particularly in the pleasure of terror. It is in this history that I live, breathe, and find my very defining element and inspiration."
Goths like to wear leather. And chains. And if they are vegetarians, they like to wear veggie-leather (usually vinyl) and chains. Because black and silver are basic goth colors, these accessories work well with most outfits. Leather and metal combined bring out the seriously sexy of the Industrial look. They also hint at, and sometimes overtly identify the wearer as someone who has an interest in fetish or S-M.
Like many purveyors of gothic leather accessories, Hugues Leblanc of Montreal's Tapholov "made my first items out of necessity, since I couldn't find anything in the shops. Then I made things for friends, and
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they convinced me to start putting my products in stores. It became a nice way to make the acquaintance of goth shop owners and others in the goth community. I'd say 100 percent of my customers are goth, and they wear my armbands and wrist cuffs for several reasons. For some, it's strictly fashion; others are a bit kinky and indulge in erotic sports. I've always felt there's a huge crossover between goth and fetish."
Hugues has been making his items for five years, and "I still work out of my apartment, on the floor mostly, as they do in Asia." His goods are high quality, using two layers of leather, stitched as well as glued, adorned with studs, spikes, and rivets that form designs. Every piece, he advertises, is "made one by one." His top-selling items vary, since fashion changes a bit from year to year, but some perennial favorites are vampire gauntlets, boot extensions, and Oriental hair cones, which come with four black lacquer chopsticks or four stainless steel chopsticks. He admits that "Success won't pay your rent unless you order everything from a Taiwanese manufacturer. I do it my way, the slow old-fashioned way, because I like the work, and I like to make people happy. Sometimes my customers even buy me a beer!"
HOW TO LACE A CORSET
1. Loosen lacing before getting into the corset
2. Crisscross the corset lacing from top to bottom.
3. Tie a knot in the two free ends at the bottom.
4. The lacing now is a continuous loop with no free ends.
5. At the waist, pull out the loops on each side.
6. Begin tightening lacing from top down to waist, then from bottom up to waist Waist loops will become longer.
7. When corset is tight enough, pull the waist loops tightly, making sure to keep pressure even.
8. Tie the waist loops together. They can be knotted and hidden inside the back of the corset or tied in a bow, or tied in the front of the corset. The Victorians allowed 1" per decade of a woman's life. Lace accordingly.
the Agony And the ecstasy
Despite Napoleon's dire warning that "The corset is the murderer of the human race," these fashion accessories have had a long and illustrious history.
The women and men of Minoan society — 1500 B.C. — loved their sports, including bull-jumping, which required support for waist and back. Both genders wore corsets as overgarments, and goddess figurines that have survived display them prominently as outerwear. Tiryns and Theban frescoes show corsets over the waist and hips, the framework seemingly made of metal plates. The ancient Greeks wore leather bands to slim the waist and flatten the hips. Gowns from 1 170 suggest manipulation underneath clothing, and although Chaucer referred to corsets, fashion being the fickle creature it is, not much was heard of them again until the 1400s.
About that time, the Spanish dictated fashion. They favored the tiny waist and flattened chest. The corset, with the help of the farthingale (like a hoop skirt), would allow a long slender waist to end in a point. These corsets, worn by both genders, imprisoned the body, forcing an upright posture and a "dignified" walk.

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Somewhere in the 1500s the Italians created the cache or early busk, an object placed under the lacing, which allowed a smooth straight line. By the late 1500s, corsets had become hinged metal cages resembling armor, sometimes perforated with airholes. Catherine de Medicis, an Italian princess reigning in the French court, was responsible for the flexible steel framework innovation, making life a bit less painful. She also determined that waist size should correspond to a lady's position in the court. Men at this time also wore corsets of a similar style, although the female body was encased more rigidly.
It took until the middle of the 1600s for the French to propagate their titillating decollete fashions, which revealed some bust. Corsets were stiffened with paste. A true busk was invented, made of wood, ivory, silver, and later whalebone, which could be removed and played with by a lady much as she would a fan. Some busks were shaped like daggers!
Corsets were worn at court, horseback riding, by pregnant women, and by children, who were corseted from the moment they could walk, to give them the coveted "upright carriage." They have been worn under clothing, over clothing, and as a bodice only. Lacing happened in the front, in the back, on the sides, or all of the above. Materials have ranged from silk, satin, cotton and linen to metal and rubber. The boning was usually whalebone, later supplemented by cane and metal strips.
By the 1700s, the textile industry adopted mechanical processes that made proliferation possible. Corsets fastened on either side by a "stomacher," a triangle that masked the bodice opening. For a while, the French Revolution put a crimp in corset sales in that country, because the garments were associated with the debauched nobility.
In the early 1800s the divorce corset came into vogue—not spouses but breasts being divorced (separated) one from the other. Another fashion was the pregnant stay, which covered the body from shoulders to below the hips. In 1848 metal eyelets were invented. Prior to this, lacing holes were sewn around with silk, and consequently corsets could not take extreme lacing without damage to the material. Tighter lacing became the trend, and the seventeen- to twenty-one-inch waist was the standard. Every girl's ambition, it seemed, was to have a waist measurement not exceeding her age. There is no real proof that women removed a rib bone for a tinier waist, but there are allusions to tightening a corset as a way of controlling behavior.
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-.ourtesy ofAMF Korsets
By the mid-1800s day corsets with shoulder straps were in vogue, and eight- to ten-inch demicorsets were worn for domestic work. Small straps and buckles adorned the front, and one model sported a spring latch that apparently popped open at the most inopportune times! Overpetticoats attached directly to the corset, and suspenders sewn onto the bottom hooked onto stockings, replacing garters. A brief attempt in 1851 to kill the corset and substitute trousers for women met with horror.
By the end of the century the long-waisted, sleek-silhouetted Gibson Girl look was all the rage. One Paris corsetiere created a specimen halfway to the knees, which probably made certain of nature's calls nearly impossible.
In the 1800s men did not usually wear corsets except for therapeutic reasons, although dandies had their tail coats waisted and corseted to create the hourglass shape. Ready-made corsets became available, and mid-1800s the first rubber corsets were sold, ostensibly for hygienic purposes.
By the initial decade of the 1900s the wasp waist was passe, and the "natural" waist fashionable. Corsets turned straight-line. Clock-spring steel covered with hard rubber or celluloid knocked out the whalebone industry. Nineteen-ten saw the elastic step-in corset, and the ventilated corset made of net or mesh. In 1930 latex panty girdles were mass produced. The foundation garment, a combo of corset and bra, appeared. In 1947 the waspie, or waist cincher, was born.
Corsets per se virtually vanished until the 1980s, when they again hit the big time as an overgarment, or in the fetish world, the only garment. The rest is history in the making.
Corsets worn on top of clothing are a staple in the goth wardrobe, for both genders. Dianna DiNoble has been designing and making corsets from different eras since 1993. "I quit college to turn Starkers! into a full-time business." The name is one of those delightful British idioms meaning "stark naked"!
Dianna's Toronto workshop is Victorian parlor meets computer geek. "On the other side of the fish tank is the apocalypse-land production area," says Dianna, who admits, "I'm not sure if I'm [still] goth. My fiance describes me as the woman from Terminator 2!"
What makes Starkers! corsets unique is that Dianna heavily researches eras—Edwardian, Victorian, Georgian, among others—replicating original designs but using more comfortable modern materials. "I love roman-
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tic style and historical clothing, as do most of my clients. Starkers! reflects my own tastes. We encourage goths to have their unique shape and sense of style incorporated into a corset, instead of being at the mercy of retail store size and style availability."
Her corsets are so popular she once made a black leather "Batty" corset for a woman in Sweden, "who went to a bar one night and ran into a woman who was wearing a white patent leather 'Batty' corset. They looked at each other and yelled, 'It's a Starkers! "Batty"!' They both e-mailed me with this story. Apparently it sparked a friendship."
Probably the most unusual corset shop in the goth world is the decade-old A-M-F Korsets (Aesthetic Meat Factory), of Germany. Louis Krebs started the company out of necessity. "I was running a bondage club in Berlin, and I needed to be able to create unique leather gear and bondage equipment. Over the years, interest has grown rapidly, and for the last five years, leatherwork has been my sole source of income." The name and the corset designs reflect Louis's philosophy: "Aesthetic Meat Factory is a division of Aesthetic Meat Foundation, an organization to spread the virus of apocalyptic art and culture and infect the consciousness of a vacant mass of soulless meat-machines."
Half of Louis's business comes from the goth-industrial crowd, and half from the S-M/fetish world, with a bit from the film industry as well. A-M-F Korsets creates wearable artwork, made of sculpted leather, painted in striking hues, and some designs seem to challenge gravity. "We turned an ancient style of armor into a line of comfortable corsetry and accessories so our customers can unleash their demonic beauty and elegantly enter the apocalypse. A-M-F supports the need of the individual to express him/herself."
Louis goes on to say, "It is A-M-F's philosophy to push the evolution of subcultures, and therefore shift the social focus away from a mass media—invented reality, and mutate the idea of self-awareness, creating a rupture in standards of reality, and dissociation from cultural and social boundaries."
Such an and—established-order philosophy can lead to problems. "I received a death threat about a T-shirt I designed after Columbine; the shirt contained a statement on the back declaring that Violence is not a product of the entertainment industry, but rather, is a direct response to the suppression of the individual, a suppression that has its roots in a social neu-
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"Writhe and Shine" comic
Copyright by Robert Tritthardt
rosis that spreads fear of individual thought, change, and self-expression. I proudly present this death threat in the history section of my Web site, for the public's perusal."
In addition to corsets, A-M-F's original designs include fetish items like masks, chokers, cuffs, and wings. "The oddest piece in our line," Louis says, "is the Destroyer, a male chastity belt made with daunting spikes, as well as metal and chains that engulf and protect the male geni-talia with six locks, assuring the wearer a vampire-proof, demon-withstanding night of abstinence!"