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It’s not a phase — it’s high fashion!
Gothic style is not just for spooky season, as gloomy but glam outfits have risen from the ashes and become chic on the runway, for everyday looks and even as office attire.
Dior unveiled its spring-summer 2024 collection at Paris fashion week on Tuesday morning with a haunting procession of witchy lips, moody makeup, slicked-back hair, chokers and layers of black — proving Goth may not be a passing fad.
To create a specifically eerie look, the stylists at Dior shaded the gap of the mouth with black eyeliner and smudged it out with Q-tips before burying it with red or rosewood lipstick to give the impression that the models were excreting some kind of dark or decayed element from the inside out.
“This look is a take on what she [creative director Maria Grazia Chiuri] wanted to say [with this collection] about women being seen as witches in a male-dominated world for many generations,” Dior Makeup Creative and Image Director Peter Philips told the Zoe Report backstage at Place de la Concorde.
“There’s a Gothic element to the story.”
Similar spooky touches were seen on runways in New York, London, Milan and Paris at both rounds of this year’s fashion weeks as the subculture style is sneaking out of the shadows and creeping back into the mainstream.
“[Gothicism] was the unexpected hero from the [autumn-winter 2023] shows and was prevalent across all four cities,” Holly Tenser, womenswear buying manager at Browns Fashion, told the Financial Times.
“Designers infused the Gothic spirit with a glamorous and moody twist, often incorporating lace, floor-skimming lengths and leather.”
Searches for “black” increased 95% in a year with searches for “Gothic” jumping 477% in the same time period, according to fashion search engine Tagwalk, the Financial Times reported.
On TikTok, hashtags relating to the subculture have also amassed billions of views — #goth boasts 20.8 billion views, #gothgirl has 6.5 billion views, #darkacademia raked in 5.1 billion views, #gothmakeup with 1.1 billion views and #gothfashion at 224 million views.
Some experts have attributed part of the rising popularity to the release of the record-breaking Netflix series “Wednesday,” which premiered in November 2022, when designers would have been working on their current collections.
As fans of all ages became entranced by the Gothic vibes, fashionistas sucked inspiration from the dark visuals and aura of the show.
“The show is the first real mainstream thing in Goth since the ’90s,” Liisa Ladouceur, author of “Encyclopedia Gothica,” told Cronkite News.
“What is interesting about Goth is it’s been around now for about 45 years,” Ladouceur said. “It hasn’t died, it has evolved.”
The style has made its way from nightlife to the mainstream, revived on red carpets at nearly every award show in the past two years. Even the queen of pink, Paris Hilton, transformed for the trend, slithering up the steps of this year’s Met Gala in an all-black sequined Marc Jacobs gown with a long leather skirt and dramatically chunky matching heels.
But the Gothic movement goes beyond just wearing an all-black outfit for one night to those who truly identify as Goth.
Trinity Hall, 33, of Evansville, Indiana, first began experimenting with the alternative style when she was 13 years old and fully gave into the subculture when she entered her 30s. The mortgage-servicing manager dresses in her dark wardrobe, accessories and makeup every day — even for work.
“I’ve been told I look like I’m attending a funeral,” Hall told The Post, but she doesn’t mind. “I respect dress codes and as long as they are followed, there should be leniency in allowing people to dress in what they feel most comfortable and confident in.”
“I really enjoy standing out from the mainstream crowd with my unique sense of style,” she shared.
Twenty-five-year-old Vita Kazlauskaitė of Lithuania agrees with Hall wholeheartedly and said that Gothic culture has had a chokehold on her since she was about 11 years old.
“Being Goth means that I can express what makes my little dark heart happy as well as feeding my ego a bit by being different than the majority of people,” Kazlauskaitė told The Post.
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