fashion n trends

The rise of "Haute Goth" fashion lately is both pleasing and disturbing. It's pleasing to realise the Goth culture has made an effect on designers, but annoying to see Gothic clothing mainstreamed into high fashion. It is simply hard to credit that couture design homes like Jean Paul Gaultier or Yves Saint Laurent truly have a grasp on what it suggests to be Goth.

On the other hand, many Goths don't quite understand either, and that's rather the point. Goths usually don't intellectualize themselves into the culture, they feel their way into it. The mixing of romance and death in Gothic clothing, art, design, literature and film expresses a form of world view, one that some of the people just appear to respond to automatically. Yes, life can be achingly, hauntingly romantic, Gothic culture appears to say, nevertheless it all ends in death.

The Goth culture accepts this truth with a dose of dry wit, a side of Goth culture that mainstream culture usually misses. High Fashion Gothic garments may pick up on the theatricality of Gothic garments, but they're inclined to take it much more seriously than do Goths themselves.

This is partly because Haute Goth has a tendency to target the romantic facet of Gothic garments, but gives only a transient nod to Death. Street Gothic garments recognize Death, and in doing therefore Death loses some "never all, but some "of his fear. Goths won't be chums with Death, but they don't seem to be strangers.

So , yes, Gothic clothing is more than black lace and fishnets, more than corsets and cummerbunds. The most useful Gothic attire is the type that express an aching for beauty and sexuaility blended with an approval of rot and death, and that do so within the bounds of personal style. Haute Gothic clothing can only parody the Goth style, and till they learn the best way to do so with a little less cunning and condescension, may continue to pale in comparison.