Talk:Gothic fashion

NPOV Violation

This article is infected with POV. It describes goth fashion as being rooted to some degree in "elitism"; it describes people as "dressed to the nines for no apparent reason." This article should be rewritten to eliminate this anti-goth POV. --Daniel C. Boyer 21:22, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Response to critique I wrote that, but it was meant to be tongue in cheek, and not anti-goth at all! I love that people get dressed up to go nowhere. It's what makes goth fun!

Fixed one NPOV Violation

Personally, I don't see the line about being dressed to the nines for no apparent reason as being anti-goth -- to me, it reads as slightly ironic. I don't think it's necessarily the most eloquent way of putting it. Perhaps we could say that for goths, going out to a club is a great reason to get ridiculously dressed up. It's one of our major pastimes! While I understand that sarcasm and irony are nearly impossible to communicate in an electronic medium, try as I may I can't find a way in which to put this that doesn't involve humor. Spending four hours on your appearance and three at a club is silly! And fun!

The line about elitism has galled me for a while, so I took a stab at fixing it. I believe it was originally part of a more extensive screed about body image prejudices and snobbery. I think it's appropriate to mention the fact that goths police the boundaries of their subculture, and that fashion is a major part of this; so I've tried to talk about the practice without attaching value judgements. It's quite true that this often leads to perceptions of snobbery or elitism, but I think that should only be mentioned in this article if it's particular to the goth scene. Otherwise, I'd put it under the new heading I've created for subcultural identity practices.

I think there are a lot of things that need to be fixed in this article, and at some point either I or my partner might propose a full re-write. Major things I'd add:

Context; where the styles derive from, how they are produced and communicated.
Major Styles; a clear list of major styles, including several (notably cybergoth and deathrock) that are not mentioned here.
History; when particular styles developed, and evolutions
Geographic perspective; for instance in America, the comments about metal fashion being similar are unwarranted, precisely because the scenes maintain a lot of distance, whereas in Latin America and much of Europe, metal culture is close with goth culture and there is cross-polination.

The biggest thing that bothers me right now is that there is no mention of how and where goth fashion is actually worn. There are some general notes made about how it looks, but in my experience the style consists of a continuum. It ranges from very extreme, cohesive presentations of one style; through less extreme copies which may pick elements from several styles; to the fairly flat presentations which may add a few flourishes onto an otherwise plain combination of black jeans/BDUs/skirts plus black tank/t-shirt. There is no mention of fishnet, hairspray, big black boots, winkle pickers or eyeliner. There is no mention of differences between dressing up for a club and dressing up to do the grocery shopping.

Finally, how does one dye ones hair a "flat, matte black"? In my experience, you get glossy black hair by putting greasy products onto your dyed black hair, while matte finishes are acchieved through the use of far, far too much hairspray.

--Latemodel 21:20, 3 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Article title

My problem is with the heading. "Gothic" refers to the historical people/tribes, and they did have clothes. They didn't have hairspray. :-) To call this "goth" might be ok, but "Gothic" is misleading.

I agree that it can be misleading; but I think the problem is insoluble because the names are -- and will likely remain -- the same. Note that even the main article requires a redirect to a page about the germanic tribe. There is a some argument for using "gothic fashion", since it has some currency within the scene (vid. alt.gothic.fashion); on the other hand, I can't think of a time when I've heard someone use that term instead of "goth fashion". People in the scene tend to use "goth" as the correct adjective, usenet hierarchy be damned. We might also look at changing the gothic rock article to "goth rock".

Anyway, what makes you think the Goths had any fashion sense? ;) Latemodel 15:33, 25 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Additionally, the reason for the confusion is what's missing: this fashion derives initially from a type of post-punk music. Without making it clear that the music existed, got called "gothic" (as in horror movies, which were called "gothic" after the horror novels, which were called "gothic" because they were a Romantic-era phenomenon that tended to center on ruins), and then that the clothes these bands wore inspired followers, the article is going to trip browsers. In particular, the band Bauhaus (with songs about people like Antonin Artaud and Bela Lagosi) dressed in this way. The spin-off of Bauhaus, Love and Rockets, was much more popular, and they, too, dressed this way. The Cure also had some hand in the development of the fashion. At any rate, this origin seems important to the article. Geogre 11:50, 14 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Again, I agree. Do you have some time on your hands? I've contemplated a rewrite (see above) but not had time for it. The historical perspective is essential; as are descriptions of the various styles and stylistic elements. Latemodel 15:33, 25 Jun 2004 (UTC)

References

This article is completely lacking in any references. Something! Anything! Only way to lessen the NPOV tag.

Also, it'll almost certainly need to be broken down by country.

The history of goth fashion would also be useful - David Gerard 13:12, 1 Jul 2004 (UTC)