At the time of the architectural Gothic, black, which is attributed to this style today, was not even in sight - maximum gray. Aniline dyes gave the world black only at the end of the 19th century. Modern Gothic in fashion is a subcultural product, and those same Goths with long hair, smoky eyes, in shoes from Demonia or New Rock and raincoats from X-Tra-X brought it to the fashion world. This "dark", dark side associated with mysticism and unusual heavy music.

The roots of the culture do not go as deep as the roots of the Gothic architecture - just in the very Victorian era, when women loved to wear black clothes, ghost stories and all kinds of mysticism, and Mary Shelley wrote her "Frankenstein". Then came the stories of vampires.

Photo: still from the movie "Frankenstein", 1994

The classic gothic look in cinema is the gorgeous Morticia from the acclaimed Addams Family movie. The "Interview with the Vampire" can already be attributed to the Gothic. In a gothic style, but modern, Neverland is decorated (one of the exemplary films about vampires and werewolves in our time).

In the photo: Patricia Adams in the television series, model on

What to call Gothic today has already been determined by representatives of the subculture: black is primarily, sometimes in dramatic combinations with red, blue, purple and with a Scottish check. Long clothes, leather, corsets, hats, high platforms, many belts, accessories, pins, this is "noir" - aesthetics: skulls, ghosts and mummies, crosses and pentagrams, dragons and snakes. This hair is saturated colors: black, red, red, blue, purple.

If we talk about high gothic, then its sample is already there, the tone has already been set, and this is the EGL style, created by the Japanese musician Mana - first for himself and the Malice Miser group, and then became the basis of his own fashion brand - and the "key" to new style.

Photo: Moi-meme-Moitie dresses and jewelry

And absolute unisex, which for the last 15 years has been actively preached by Japanese rock musicians who could appear on stage in both men's and women's outfits. Mana himself, for example, often prefers dresses and is one of the style icons in Japan.

Shoes in this style - mostly on high platforms and solid high heels, a little "doll", but increased to human proportions. The difference with ordinary Gothic is in the aristocratic aesthetics.

In the photo: looks at the shows of Givenchy, Victor & Rolf, YSL

In the informal visual-kei subculture, the style is called EGL - Elegant Gothic Lolita, within which aristocrats are distinguished (first of all, this is a male trend, as well as the style of adult women, based on Victorian fashion) and lolita and oji (in Japanese "prince") dressing in the style of children and dolls.

It is in this style that "High Gothic" - we will call it that - has flashed on the catwalks this season. Check out Moi-meme-Moitie's cross jewelry - and compare to this season's collections, especially the baroque cross jewelry. Precious tiaras in princess hairstyles. Ear cuffs - clips for the whole ear.

Black color and floor-length dresses decorated with "raven" feathers; Victorian capes, medieval ruffles or Victorian long cuffs on the sleeves, lush jabots, corset lacing, shoes on tall, thick platforms with wide heels - everything that has been coming out of Mana's pen for the second decade is consonant with what was released on the catwalk designers.

In the photo: the image at the Gianfranco Ferre show, Patricia Adams, the image at the Vanesa Bruno show

Elements of the Gothic style and "noir" are familiar to us at a number of famous fashion houses, for example, Alexander McQueen and Philipp Plein. Gaultier uses the fetish side of Gothic, and John Galliano has been seen in the aristocratic side. And Karl Lagerfeld last year showed in the winter collection wonderful and absolutely "subcultural" collars and cuffs with ruffles, ideal for the image of a gothic aristocrat. However, he has been repeatedly seen borrowing interesting elements from Asian fashion - having a subtle sense of what will be fashionable and what will impress the public, Lagerfeld chooses all the most interesting. And in this he is right!

In addition, it includes not only sophisticated dresses, but also a large number of iconic accessories, which are much easier to fit into your everyday wardrobe.

The Goths, like many youth subcultures, emerged from music. The first was music, then style and ideology. The Goths came from the punks. By the end of the 1970s, the violent and open protest of young people against the foundations of society, expressed through punk culture, weakened and gave way to pessimistic sentiments.

Goths are no longer an open protest, but a withdrawal into oneself, into one's inner world, a withdrawal from society. And if punk was widespread among young people from the outskirts, then representatives of the middle class became goths.

The Goth subculture appears in the late 1970s in the UK. Among the Goths in the 1980s, such musical groups as, for example, Bauhaus, Southern Death Cult, Siouxsie and the Banshees enjoyed popularity.

The word goth was also most likely used to refer to a group of young people in terms of characterizing their musical preferences - the music is rough, clearly non-classical, that is, from English gothic in the meaning of barbaric, rough. Of course, by tradition, journalists came up with the name for the new youth movement.

Despite common beliefs, the Goths are by no means Satanists or a generally destructive youth subculture. As many years of practice have shown, after all, the subculture of the Goths, which emerged in the late 1970s, exists to this day, designers, programmers and journalists will grow from young people in the future. Such young people are actively interested in literature and art, among them there are a lot of humanitarians. The Goths are characterized by an interest in the occult, there is also a vampire theme in the Gothic, but most of the ready are either agnostics or atheists, there are also adherents of Christianity among them.

Today there are many varieties of the Goth subculture - antique, Renaissance, Victorian, cyber-goths, corporate goths, vampires. You can find among the adherents of the Gothic subculture today and not only young people - the average age is ready from 14 to 45 years.

Gothic style clothing and accessories

Initially, the Goths had much in common in their clothes and hairstyles with the punks who gave birth to them. So, just like the punks, they used safety pins, the goths also borrowed piercings from the punks. In the 1980s, the main hairstyles of the Goths were mohawks or hairstyles in the form of tall "thorns".

Today, clothes are ready - of course, black clothes using materials such as leather, lace, silk, velvet, brocade.

Goth girls can wear leather pants, mini or maxi skirts, black dresses, an important element is a corset, and the outerwear of a Gothic woman is long leather or textile raincoats. In general, the formation of the female style in the Goth subculture was greatly influenced by the image of the "femme fatale", which originated in the Victorian era, and later became popular thanks to films in the noir genre.

The male version of the Gothic wardrobe is black shirts and hoodies, leather pants, long raincoats.

Shoes are ready - heavy high boots like "grinders", shoes with a high platform, girls can wear high-heeled shoes and boots.

The classic hairstyle is ready - long, perfectly smooth and straight black hair, loose over the shoulders, without jewelry and accessories, both for girls and boys. In general, with regard to the image of a young man in the Gothic subculture, he must be quite feminine.

Make-up and accessories play an important role in the costume.

- this is a black eyeliner, dark shadows, dark shades of matte lipstick, the whiteness of the face is emphasized with the help of powder, the nails are covered with black varnish. Makeup is a must for both girls and boys.

As for accessories, these are most often jewelry made of silver - the metal of the moon, white gold and platinum can also be used. In general, accessories should be white, which looks good on a black background. Of the stones, the Goths prefer semi-precious stones - black opal, agate and jade, cold topaz, rock crystal. They can wear pearls.

Goth jewelry necessarily have their own specific symbolism. They can wear ankh (the ancient Egyptian symbol of immortality), various crosses, for example, Celtic, ornaments with images of bats, symbols of death, figures of dragons and cats. Also, the Goths often wear leather bracelets and collars with metal spikes as jewelry.

Himself gothic style in dress actually has nothing to do with medieval gothic costume. In the Middle Ages, townspeople and aristocrats, dressed in the Gothic style, wore costumes of bright colors and bizarre shapes - shoes with long noses, long caps in the shape of pyramids, bells could be sewn onto clothes as decoration.

Therefore, if the Goths borrowed something from - then this is only the symbolism of Gothic architecture. The costume of modern Goths itself is much more connected with the costume of Victorian England of the 19th century and, of course, with the literature of this period. In addition to punk, the formation of the Goth subculture was greatly influenced by 19th century English literature, as well as vampire themes, also from the 19th century.

The Gothic style in medieval clothing came from the French, during the rampant "Dark Age". Gothic is a "terrifying majesty" and fits well with the description of the dark style. So, the Gothic style represents a certain rigor and. Dresses are sewn to the figure, but it is still emphasized thanks to the lacing.

Clothing of medieval Europe

Clothing for both men and women emphasized such elements as jagged edges in outfits, high waist with lacing, as well as pointed hats, and shoes with the same wits. Long raincoats for men and trains for women are in fashion. It is worth noting that the longer a woman had a train, the higher position in society she occupied. Gothic clothing of the Middle Ages presupposed the use of such fabric as velvet, but bright colors and floral ornaments prevailed as a color. The black color, popular for modern Gothic, was not relevant in those days.

Medieval women's clothing consisted of a cat and kameeza. Kota is a narrow top, wide skirt and lacing. As mentioned earlier, the elongated waist was the main hallmark of the Gothic style. The skirt should have a train, and the skirt itself consisted of folds. It was very fashionable to have a draped fabric in the belly area. The sleeves of the dresses could be either narrow or wide. They were decorated with inserts from other fabrics, fur or a bell covering the thumb. Semicircular or round cloaks with a buckle fastener on the chest were used as outerwear. Also, one of the elements of the Gothic style of clothing in the Middle Ages was a headdress. Women wore a gorge, which looked like a pipe with a slit in the back and increased width downward. The gorge was created from fabric. Besides him, the ladies wore "two-horned" caps.

Gothic is the ability to find
beautiful in the dark and terrible. (c)

Gothic - there is Gothic architecture, Gothic sculpture and painting. There is also a Gothic style in clothing, but before talking about it, let's look into the very history of the Gothic style.

Gothic is incredibly beautiful, but beautiful with a kind of dark, austere and cold beauty. Gothic originated in medieval Europe, during the very dark Middle Ages, when witches were burned at the stake, the Catholic Church was strong, and the faithful knights devotedly served the ladies of their hearts.

However, the thinkers of the Renaissance, the era that followed him, around the 15th century, called the Dark Middle Ages. And the very word "Middle Ages" for the period that lasted from the 5th to the 15th centuries was also chosen by the thinkers of the Renaissance. After all, before this period there was antiquity so beloved by them, classical, correct, mathematically verified, the one that they were now reviving, and the Middle Ages is the middle between them and antiquity, the dark ages, centuries in which art refused to follow the laws of mathematics and proportion.

Gothic, the art of medieval Europe, was also called Gothic by the thinkers of the Renaissance. This word comes from the name of the Goth tribe - a barbarian tribe. Most of the tribes and peoples of modern Europe, excluding the Romans, were called barbarians during the time of Ancient Rome. So the thinkers of the Renaissance, Renaissance, christened all the art of medieval Europe barbaric, Gothic, disproportionate, incorrect, non-classical.

Today the art of Europe at the end of the 12th - 15th centuries is called Gothic. Gothic was in, and in England, over time it will spread to almost all of Europe, but Gothic was born in France. Gothic is a French style. Gothic was born in the XII century in the north of France, the Ile-de-France region.

Gothic is most clearly manifested in architecture. Cathedrals in Chartres, Reims, Amiens. Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris. Their main feature is the presence of pointed arches, which appear precisely in the Gothic era. Majestic, gloomy, cold, truly Gothic cathedrals. It was in the Gothic era that stained glass windows appeared. And for the Gothic, images of formidable and gloomy chimeras and gargoyles, monsters, whose sculptural images adorn many Gothic cathedrals, are characteristic.

But if Gothic was everywhere: architecture, sculpture, painting, if it was in the air itself, then, of course, it could not but manifest itself in clothes.

However, do not forget that in those times when the Gothic style appears, outside the window of the Middle Ages, society is divided into estates, and the clothes of feudal lords, townspeople and peasants will differ significantly. So, for example, the townspeople, unlike the feudal lords, were forbidden to wear clothes made of silk, as well as long trains of dresses. It should be borne in mind that it was during the Gothic period that Europeans finally "learned" how to sew clothes, the tailoring craft became more perfect.

Girl of the Gothic period. Illustration from the Bible of 1340. The girl is wearing a wide veil falling over her shoulders, a long gathered dress, and a vest over it.

The birthplace of Gothic clothing, of course, was France. And to the point of absurdity, to the most extreme forms, Gothic clothing will be brought to Burgundy.

Elongated Gothic proportions appear in clothing, as in architecture. And if in cathedrals lancet arches, then in clothes shoes with pointed noses and strongly elongated pointed hats. Bright colors are in fashion (the dark color will come to Gothic much later), the favorite fabric is velvet. There is a lot of ornament on the clothes, and the ornament is mostly floral.

At that time, two versions of the suit appeared in men's clothing - loose and long, as well as narrow and short. The second option is more often preferred by young people. Since the XIV century, purpuen, a short jacket with narrow sleeves, complemented by narrow stocking pants, has entered men's fashion. Purples could also have long, decorative sleeves hanging down to the floor. Men from noble families also wore cotardi - a narrow caftan with both wide and narrow sleeves, wing-shaped sleeves, and a blio - waist-length caftan with a narrow bodice and wide hem not sewn on the sides.

A cloak at that time served as a piece of fabric bent in half and not sewn on the sides with a hole for the head, they call it an amice. But if the amice was sewn on the sides and had slots for the arms or even sleeves, then it was called surcoat. The cloaks were both short and long.

Women's clothing consisted of kameeza and cotta. The cotta consisted of a narrow top, wide skirt and lacing at the back or side. The waist was elongated, a train was an obligatory element of the skirt (moreover, the longer the train, the more noble the lady), and folds were made on the skirt itself - it was considered fashionable to drape the fabric on the belly. Outerwear were round and semicircular cloaks with a cutout and a buckle fastener on the chest.

Both women's and men's shoes had pointed toes, the length of which sometimes reached 50 cm.

The most popular women's headdress at that time was the gorge - it resembled a pipe sewn from fabric with a slit in the back and expanding to the bottom. Ladies also wore high "two-horned" caps.

Thus, the main features of medieval Gothic clothing were pointed hats and toes of shoes, a thin and high-laced waist, long trains, edges of clothes made in the form of teeth, in men - stockings-pants that fit tightly to their feet.

Photos of modern dresses with elements of the Gothic style

Gothic clothing and goths.

And here, exactly here, in this place, and right now, an unexpected turn is outlined in our article. In the 15th century, Gothic faded away, and other styles came to replace it, both in art and in clothing. Gothic will revive for some time in the 18th - 19th centuries, during the time of eclecticism, historicism, it will revive like neo-Gothic, along with the neo-Renaissance, pseudo-Russian style, while in fashion there will be a return to the past, mixing of eras, mixing of directions. But this will be a short resurrection.

Much more interesting is the "resurrection" of the Gothic at the end of the 1970s. Gothic style in clothes today is called the style of the youth subculture of the ready. What do they have in common with the Gothic of the Middle Ages? A controversial issue. General as it is, so it is practically nonexistent. There is gloom, coldness, a certain severity, interest in the otherworldly. But at the same time, the clothing of modern Goths has more in common with the Gothic cathedrals and chimeras that guard them than with the clothing of that period.

Goths, a youth subculture of the ready, appears along with a certain direction in music - gothic rock. One of the first bands to be labeled "gothic" was Joy Division, as critics described them.

And the Goths, starting from the 1980s, have developed their own style, their own fashion. The main signs of the Gothic style in clothing today are black, metal jewelry with symbols of the Gothic subculture, often religious, mythological, and the Goths love silver, as well as unchanging, very characteristic makeup. This makeup is worn by both men and women, its two main components are white face powder and dark eyeliner.

Hairstyles - more often long hair, which the Goths paint black, less often red.

Ready-to-wear clothes can be stylized in the fashion of the 18th-19th centuries - lace, long dresses for women, long gloves, tailcoats and top hats for men, here both neo-Gothic elements in clothing and elements are possible. Clothes of the ready may have similarities with the style of metal workers - leather clothing, metal accessories, chains. In clothes, goths can be found as accessories and collars and bracelets with spikes. The vamp style is also popular among the Gotesses - lipstick and nail polish from bright red to black, black cosmetics, eyeliners.

One can also single out such a direction in the Gothic style as "corporate goth". Let's just say, this is an office option, an option that is used when it is impossible to dress in more extreme forms of the Gothic style. This trend is characterized by discreet jewelry, black business clothes.

All the differences and directions in the Gothic style are most clearly represented in the works of the Belgian photographer Viona Jelegems.

In the 1990s - early 2000s, Gothic appeared on the catwalk. So the collections "Birds", "Hunger" and "Shining", were not without references to Gothic themes and meanings. And Elle magazine wrote in 2009: “Neo-romanticists are celebrating the return of Victorian drama to the catwalks. Fluffy skirts, ruffled blouses and black lace will turn you into a real gothic heroine. "

In the shows of the spring-summer 2011 collections, the gothic style was presented by Jean-Paul Gaultier, who, however, mixed it with rock-punk, and Givenchy. Even today, in 2012, one can be sure that the Gothic, one way or another, will take its place on the catwalks, among other directions and trends.