#gotth

A thing I wrote about '80's Goth style in response to a comment from an obviously younger person commenting on the '80's make up video from the previous aggregate.

Early Goth basically grew out of Punk with a lot of metal and some new wave thrown in.  Goth had no sub-genres yet because those didn't develop until some point in the '90's.  It was all just Goth.  You can see the cross pollination in the music of the period.  Sisters of Mercy is as quintessentially as '80's Goth as it gets, and you can hear how heavy their sound is compared to the also very Goth Smiths at the other end of the sound spectrum.  Goths of my era listened to an eclectic mix of stuff.  It was totally reasonable to be a Goth and also like Metallica (Metal), and classic Punk and poppier new wave influenced things like Depeche Mode.

Glam hadn't really been a thing since we were kids.  Bowie wasn't Glam himself by the time Goth was happening, remember, though some of us DID look back stylistically to his Ziggy Stardust Era which you can see in the corsets and make up choices, but you can also see a lot of new wave in hair and make up mixed in with the original punk and some metal influence.  Clothing was often where punk and metal really mixed.  

My first Mohawk was black, but my second in early '89 was a dark purple.  Goths were allowed to have whatever hair.  Not everyone could afford hair dye in the era before the brighter cheaper colours came in.  Again, it's a matter of what you could afford and what you had access to.  I saved up to get mine done professionally, but we were in the era of bleach and Koolaid options as well as people repurposing DIY hair products.  If you had dark hair, you could get bright orange with Sun In for example.  Yes, black was most common and you actually could buy black Clairol or the like, which made it the most popular option, but most popular doesn't mean only option.

You can't really separate the 80's Goth Look from the '80's Goth Music because the two things were so intertwined and so much what early Goth was as a culture.

Something it is super hard to make people who didn't start dressing this way until after commodification really grasp is just how DIY early Goth was.  You couldn't just go to a store and buy Goth clothes and jewelry at first.  By the end of the decade you could buy an ankh necklace because of things like sandman, but most of the jewelry was handmade by the people wearing it or other Goths, selling it, often on blankets while they made more, or it was vintage stuff that had be repurposed, bought from second hand stores or raided from older relatives.  Building a goth wardrobe was exhausting and time consuming and often involved patience.

Finding clothes was an endless round of scavenger hunting and DIY and repurposing.  Most of us were very poor and again, nothing was made for us except a few things other impoverished Goths made at the end of the decade.  Basically, think etsy only without the internet, so consignment stores and craft fairs and little pop up carts next to those people selling their jewelry on blankets and really that's more an early '90's thing.

We would scouer second hand shops.  Luckily places like Good Will were not as picked over then.  We looked through old boxes of elder relative's clothes.  We learned to do it yourself dye things that were a good cut but the wrong color.  We used to make things or repurpose things or patch things together out of multiple pieces and maybe some netting.  We learned to add trims and frills if we were into that.  We bodged things together with safety pins like the punks we grew out of.  We made do.

Yes really, some people had things with glittery fabrics some times or beading or lace or sequins.  It depended entirely on your taste and what you could find or knew how to make.  Some of the nuance is lost in the photos because this was an era of Polaroids and film photography and some stuff aged better than others.

There was no uniform.  No one true style.  No mass production.  Everything was individual.  I can not describe '80's goth in terms of strict criteria because that criteria didn't exist.  It should NOT exist now.  We knew Goth when we saw or heard it.  That was enough.

I think this is why so many of us Elder Goths go ballistic when someone starts trying to police or gate keep Goth.  (Except for literal NAZIs who can fuck right off.  We don't want them, whatever they are calling themselves that decade.  It's the same thing as the Punk community self-policeing over that).  Anything else? It's like Gender: you are Goth if you say you are Goth.  Work out your own version of what that means.  

So yes, purple hair in the late '80's is historically accurate.  Yes, you could have things like a glittery or sequined or beaded shirt or sweater or dress for those who wore dresses or skirts.  (Some Goth clothing was gendered; some was super androgynous.  A lot of '80's and '90's goths were some brand of queer, gender-nonconforming, trans, and or what we'd now call non-binary, but back then we mostly called ourselves androgynous.  Some cis men wore skirts because they liked how they looked or found them comfortable.  A lot of them switched to kilts later on, but not always.  In the late '80's-early '90's Goth culture was full of people playing with gender expression for a host of reasons).  

There was a mainstream trend for fancy tights and pantyhose with designs or glitter or different colours in them.  Goths could actually find black pantyhose and tights and fishnets at a reasonable price in mainstream stores.  Some of the panty hose had cute little patterns on them, usually at the ankles or up the back, but also all over sometimes.  some were glittery or extra shiny.  It was fine!  It was the same with lace and fishnet and long satin elbow gloves mostly thanks to Madonna.  This is why you see old trad goths wearing these types of accessories.  You could afford them!  You didn't have to hand make them!  The bead and cross and rosary thing was because you could buy those cheap at stores because mainstream people also wore them.   Thanks to people like Cyndi Lauper and Madonna creating a mainstream market for accessories we could use too.

Our subculture hasn't been properly captured in media it's easy to access.  Most of Goths in movie or TV in the '80's and early '90's were stereotypes made or chosen by people who weren't goth either to demonize us as part of a moral panic or as a punchline or a freak show.  The fair representation is in the photographs taken of goths by goths at the time and in the memories of Elder Goths like me.