Gothic Charm School (27 page)

Another good thing about a collection of basics is that they are easy to customize. For example, you can change the buttons on the blazer or shirt. If you're feeling really crafty, buy a kit for making
your own fabric-covered buttons. (The Lady of the Manners has a stockpile of buttons covered in pink taffeta to add to whatever strikes her fancy and is still searching for fabric with a good skull print in order to start making her own skull buttons.) Add band patches and pins (you can make your own designs for patches by using iron-on transfer paper with an ink-jet printer, or you can paint or stencil designs onto fabric, cut them out, and use them for patches). Make your own appliqués by tracing a design onto fusible interfacing (found at any fabric store), ironing the interfacing onto fabric, cutting out the design, and then sewing on the appliqué. Try your hand at embroidered details, be they a decorative stitch in a contrasting thread or black-on-black designs to add a subtle flair. Find someplace that sells safety pins in bulk quantities and cover side seams in them. (If you want to go really over-the-top, take apart the garment along the seams and then “sew” it back together using rows and rows of safety pins.) If you're skillful at drawing, use fabric paint or bleach pens to add designs to any garment you wish. Grommet tape (wide cotton ribbon with grommets placed every inch or so) is now readily available at most fabric and craft stores; sew that down two of the back seams of a jacket or dress and use ribbon to create corset-style lacing.

The Lady of the Manners's favorite stores are thrift shops, consignment boutiques, eBay, and Etsy.com. In fact, when the Lady of the Manners isn't writing, she is sure to be found altering and decorating her latest clothing find. Yes, searching through thrift stores and customizing items does take time and patience, but it is worth the effort if you want to avoid looking like a run-of-the-mill mallgoth. There is immense satisfaction in being able to answer, “Oh, I made it!” when someone asks you where you got a particular item of clothing.

Speaking of “Oh, I made it!”—learn to sew. Wait, don't run
away in terror. While learning how to sew things completely from scratch is the ideal path, learning how to sew just enough so you can do your own alterations is
essential
. It doesn't take professional-level sewing skills to sew on buttons or add some trim; it just takes patience. Teach yourself tailoring skills on inexpensive clothes you buy at thrift stores; while the Lady of the Manners still regards making a dress from scratch with a bit of apprehension, she feels no such qualms about unpicking the hem and lining from a jacket so she can add darts to enhance its hourglass silhouette. You can add rows and rows of decorative trim, ribbon, lace, fringe, feathers, or just about any other sort of embellishment to clothing, and it all can be done by hand with a needle and thread. Yes, a sewing machine will allow you to go faster, but sitting on the couch and sewing trim on to an item of clothing while a silly vampire movie plays in the background is a time-honored Goth activity.

If you're absolutely fumble-fingered and have an irrational terror of sewing machines, then start saving your pennies and have things custom made for you. (An aside: Please do not be one of those people who complains about how expensive custom clothing is. Custom clothing is made by small businesses run by artisans, and they can't use cost-cutting tricks, such as mass production in faraway countries, that larger clothing companies can. Those artisans deserve every penny they earn, so please don't try to haggle with them or whine about the cost. The polite thing to do is thank them for their time, effort, and creativity, which are all devoted to making you look beautiful.)

Learn to develop an eye for quality construction and materials. There is no point in spending money on a shoddily constructed garment that will fade or snag after a few washing. No, not even if the garment is adorned with skulls or other enticing gothy iconog
raphy. Again, this is where thrift stores are far, far better for Goths than regular retail establishments. Yes, it takes time and patience to put together a wardrobe full of shadowy loveliness from thrift stores, but it's time well spent.

Another thing you must remember, if you become a devotee of more elaborate styles, is that you must pay attention to the details. It is not enough to throw on a frilly dress or shirt and blazer; make sure you've put the same thought into the rest of your look.
Do your socks (or stockings or tights) and footwear go with the rest of your outfit? Or, if not, do they communicate that you are deliberately going for a mixed-up look? The same ideas apply to hair, makeup, hats, gloves, jewelry, and any other bits and bobs. Paying attention to the details will help ensure that you don't look like you're wearing a Goth-themed costume.

While you're paying attention to those details, the Lady of the Manners will let you in on one of the most exasperating challenges for Goths. Make sure your blacks match! Oh, yes, Snarklings, there are different shades of black. It may seem silly, but this can be very noticeable, especially with cotton, rayon, or other natural fibers. Black fabric can have green, brownish, red, or blue undertones, and these differences are emphasized when two different fabrics are worn together. While you can get away with wearing brown-black and red-black garments together, or green-black and blue-black, if you put a red-black item next to a green-black one, you're suddenly looking at Christmastime in a black hole. It's quite vexing.

What can you do when faced with such a problem? First, look at yourself in a mirror under bright light, and then think about what light you'll be in when wearing the outfit. If you're going out to a darkened club, don't worry about it too much; club lighting hides all sorts of things, including slightly mismatched blacks. The Lady of the Manners knows of other Goths who run everything through a black dye bath, but she herself has gotten mixed results from such projects. If you're one of those amazingly organized types, you could group your garments by their various undertones so that you won't suffer any green vs. red issues. Or you could decide to try your best but know that if your blacks clash, it isn't the end of the world. Goodness knows that sometimes the Lady of the Manners has
to embrace this point of view; otherwise, she would never leave the house.

Why no one really has an “original” Goth look, so get over yourselves already

The Lady of the Manners has heard all sorts of grumbles like, “So and so stole my style!” or “So and so accused me of ripping off her look!” Which, after much thought, has led the Lady of the Manners to this conclusion:

No one in this scene has an original look, Snarklings. Get over yourselves.

Hmmm. That came out a bit snippier than the Lady of the Manners intended; forgive her. But nonetheless, the sentiment holds true. Everyone has influenced everyone else at this point. Even the “original Goth look” was lifted from early horror films, Victorian mourning clothes, punk, and new wave/new romantic. Way back when, one of the founding principals of this subculture was a certain style. You remember—black clothes (mostly velvet, lace, and fishnet), ruffles, pale face makeup, lots of eyeliner, black lipstick? Any of this ring a bell? Anyway, it used to be that if you saw someone dressed in that manner, you could probably assume he or she was a Goth. This also meant most gothy clothing tended to be a bit similar. Nowadays, you'd be hard-pressed to identify other Goths on the street solely by their clothes. Yes, some people still adhere to the “I'm a vampire from a Hammer horror film” look, but there are just as many cybergoths in reflective clothing or Jeans 'n' T-shirt Goths who blow the subculture fashion template to smithereens. Not to mention all the other style tribes that share
stylistic borders with Gothland! No, you no longer can just look at someone with pink and black hair and skull accessories and assume she's a Goth. She might be emo, a scenekid, a metalhead, or another fellow subcultural traveler, or she might just be someone who just does a lot of shopping at Claire's Accessories and Hot Topic.

Which is why the Lady of the Manners is so amused by this uproar. When the Lady of the Manners sees another young lady dressed in formal Victorian-esque funeral garb, the Lady of the Manners does not start grumbling that this new girl “stole her look” but instead goes over and strikes up a conversation with her. The other girl might share other interests with the Lady of the Manners, leading to more conversations and a new friendship. Or she might know of some exciting new stores or designers for the Lady of the Manners to investigate. The Lady of the Manners is also heartened to see that someone else will be on the dance floor wearing a bustle and a big hat—it makes people more careful with lit cigarettes, for one thing.

The funniest part of this whole thing (in the Lady of the Manners's opinion) is the fact that she's been hearing these comments from people who are wearing…oh, goodness, there's no delicate way to put this…off-the-rack gothwear. If you are wearing an item of clothing from a nationally distributed clothing label, you don't get to complain about others dressing like you. (Yes, that means you Miss/Mister “My whole wardrobe is by Lip Service/Tripp/Shrine.” While the clothes can be very nice, they are
not
original, one-of-a-kind fashions.)

Does this mean the Lady of the Manners snubs other gothy sorts who do wear clothes from those labels, and that you should too? Goodness, no. The Lady of the Manners quite likes and purchases some of the mass-produced gothwear available. She
thinks the fact that someone's making a profit by selling clothing for freaks and eccentrics shows how far the Goth subculture has come. However, this
does
mean the Lady of the Manners will gently laugh at someone wearing an ensemble bought at Hot Topic who complains that others are stealing his style. If you can buy it in a national chain store, you aren't allowed to consider it your very own idea.

Many
ElderGoths
have been known to cast aspersions on the mere existence of Hot Topic, but the Lady of the Manners doesn't really understand why. Yes, if anyplace would sell an “insta-Goth” kit, Hot Topic would, but that doesn't make it bad. It isn't even a bad thing that people who are just…flirting with the whole Goth thing can pop 'round to HT and buy a whole spooooooky wardrobe and unnatural hair dye with their parents' credit card. (Stop gritting your teeth. It
isn't
a bad thing.) When the Lady of the Manners was a suburban-dwelling teenager, she would have given anything to have had a Hot Topic in a mall near her. What you all have to remember is that because Hot Topic is a national chain, the Goth subculture is now more visible to the mainstream. This means more people are aware of it, which means that if everyone associated with the subculture takes up the Lady of the Manners's cause of politeness, maybe (just maybe) Goths will quit getting labeled as “baby-eating Satanic murderers” and merely be labeled as “those people who wear black and dye their hair funny colors.” Mass awareness can lead to more understanding and less stereotyping—we just have to work at it.

But to return to the notion that no Goth is quite the singularly unique dark snowflake he or she would like to think, the Lady of the Manners would like to add is that it
is
in terribly poor taste to copy someone exactly. Look at the pretty people around you and get ideas, by all means. Take a look at Goth-flavored photo
shoots and websites. Just don't try to look like someone's identical twin. The idea is that you find your own interpretation of the Goth style—not that you say, “I want to look just like so-and-so” and mimic his or her every accessory. While it's perfectly all right to be inspired by someone else's look, people find it uncomfortable to be confronted by their clone. Not to mention that if you decide to imitate someone's look down to the skull earrings and tiny top hat, you have crossed over that invisible border to costume town. People may assume that you assembled your outfit in an homage and make comments that reflect that line of thought. (“Nice costume! Does so-and-so know you dressed like him tonight?”) You have been warned, and don't say the Lady of the Manners didn't tell you so.

For many Goths, part of the allure of our darkly glamorous subculture is that (to borrow a line from a song by Ministry that always fills the Goth dance floor) everyday
is
Halloween. We Goths have stepped out of the binding confines of mainstream fashion into a comfortably shadowy realm that allows us to express ourselves in a more elaborate fashion. The Lady of the Manners fervently hopes that all of you realize expressing yourself should be fun. Don't worry that other people might give you strange looks or make comments. So what? In spite of what countless teens have believed through the years, people don't expire after someone looks at them oddly. Instead of worrying about what strangers might be thinking, the Lady of the Manners encourages you to use that energy to transform yourself into who you want to be, inside
and
out.