Soft Goth, or a New Name for an Existing Thing

(Note: an abridged version of this post appeared on the Gothic Charm School Patreon in 2019)

As the Lady of the Manners has said previously, she’s interested in the proliferation of micro-trends/aesthetics that crop up, especially ones based on previous ideas. Seeing how the younger generations, because they’re the ones “inventing” various micro-aesthetics, interpret what came before is both fascinating and confusion- and/or annoyance -inducing. (While she won’t go into it here, the Lady of the Manners has Strong Opinions on what The Kids Today call grunge. It’s a holdover from living in Seattle during the original grunge scene. Please visualize the “I was there, Gandalf” gif for added amusement.)

ANYWAY, yes, the constant recycling and reinvention of previous aesthetics is nothing new, and happens across everything not just subcultures. But the one that the Lady of the Manners keeps seeing pop up in her Google alerts for “goth” (yes, she has one, of course she does) or scroll across her Tumblr dashboard that gives her a combination of nostalgia and confused “But we already have that!” feelings: “soft goth”.

What follows is a deconstruction of the highlights from the perspective of someone who WAS that sort of goth in the 90s. Let the Lady of the Manners be clear, this is not an annoyed or rantycakes rebuttal, this is a trip down memory lane fueled by rueful amusement. This is based off a specific Tumblr post, but all of it applies to any of the various fashion or music blogs who invoke “soft goth”. (The Tumblr username has been redacted, because the Lady of the Manners doesn’t want to even inadvertently cause hordes of “You obviously don’t know what you’re talking about” replies.)

~ you’ve heard of soft grunge, now get ready for soft goth:

That’s Romantigoth. No, really, it is. This list almost completely encapsulates what the Lady of the Manners and a lot of other goths (especially the girls, but also some of the guys) looked like. 

Back In The Day there weren’t specific names for the different types of goth style. We were just those weirdos in black. (The Lady of the Manners thinks the names of sub-styles really got started in alt.gothic and alt.gothic.fashion, the usenet groups of lore, blessed be their memories.)

~ Black makeup with a delicate shimmer as opposed to the normal flat matte shades that are popular with traditional goths. Think sparkling inky lip gloss like a night sky, or black nail polish with a lightly galactic twinkle.

Super matte lipstick is only a recent thing. (Well, recent-ish, it’s been going on since, what, the start of the ‘00s?) The few black lipsticks you could find in the 90s were drying, and if you wanted other weird colors, you had to color your lips with eyeliner pencils. Using lip gloss over other lip colors was what you did to keep your lipstick from drying and flaking. Wet n’ Wild always had a sheer gloss and a nail polish topcoat full of tiny flecks of iridescent glitter; when high-end cosmetic companies started bringing out their own versions, we were all faintly dubious yet amused. 

~ All the sad poetry of our goth forefathers and foremothers that we revere so much, but also a heavy focus on tragic romances and erudite and/or classical stories of forbidden love and murder. 

But … how does anyone think that none of us were reading these things in the earlier goth eras? Hell, there were an entire series of collections of classic haunted gothic short stories with cover illustrations by Edward Gorey! (The Lady of the Manners personally has Ladies of the Gothics: Tales of Romance and Terror by the Gentle Sex in her collection, and it is a delight.)

Almost everyone had their favorite gothic classic authors and poets, and we all haunted used book stores and thrift shops to find old copies of their works, the more antique and crumbling-looking the better.

~ Guillermo Del Toro. Just like, everything about him. Everything he is. 

Not many people knew of Guillermo Del Toro at the time, but it was when Tim Burton hadn’t yetbecome his own industry, so we could rely on him to give us our aesthetic fix. We obsessively rewatched the Bela Lugosi and 1978 versions of Dracula, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Ken Russell’s Gothic and The Lair of the White Worm, The Hunger, and both versions of Nosferatu. The Addams Family movies had just come out. We had crappy VHS collections of the API Poe movies with Vincent Price. Yes, Guillermo is a joy and a gift to romantigoths, but it’s not like we were parched of blood and wandering the moors. 

~ A clean mix of the black lace and sweeping skirts the Victorian goths have brought to the table, married to the patches and leather jackets of an 80s London goth. Lots of leather and lace mixes, actually. 

Do you mean: the Lady of the Manners; wardrobe for almost the entirety of the early-to-mid 90s?

The sweeping skirts and flowing dresses were from tiny import stores that also sold cheap silver jewelry (real silver, and oh how the Eldergoths miss that), sequined gauzy scarves and shawls, incense, and belled anklets, bracelets, and belts. The guys who embraced the romantigoth style also went after the gauzy scarves, shawls, and stacks of silver jewelry, and the braver of them also wore the same sweeping skirts as the girls, usually paired with battered and faded T-shirts of their favorite bands. (Do male-presenting goths still do this? The Lady of the Manners hasn’t seen any for decades.)

The leather jackets came from actual motorcycle stores. Sure, some people bought theirs from Wilson’s Leather at the local mall, but the rest of us knew you could get better quality for less money if you went to a slightly scary store where the salesman had a massive beard and was named “Butch” or “Big Al”. 

Once you had your leather jacket, you (or an artistic friend) painted the logo of a favorite band on the back. You used metallic ink pens to write song lyrics down the arm. And you covered the lapels with buttons with weird sayings.

~ Florals on black. All the florals on black. 

Back In The Day, all those floral skirts and dresses were made of rayon or cotton, not polyester, and were from companies like Nostalgia and Starina. The only reason the Lady of the Manners is telling you the brand names is because she has snapped up all of the vintage ones she needs from eBay and Etsy, so anyone looking for one can be fairly certain they won’t get into a bidding war with her. 

(Useful search terms if you’re trying to find them: “grunge floral”, “vintage 90s floral”, and “vintage festival”.)

~ Cemetery dates, but not so the world can quiver in awe over how dark you and your love are, just because they’re pretty and quiet and a good place to talk. You’ll spend hours there walking among the tombstones and trying to piece together the stories of those laid to rest there. 

We went on dates to cemeteries for precisely those reasons. The melancholy aesthetic of gravestones and wilting flowers! The quiet, away from picnicking families! Taking paper and crayons with you in order to make gravestone rubbings to adorn the walls of your apartment! 

(However, the Lady of the Manners hopes that the sneaking into cemeteries at night to drink and/or have sex amongst the graves is an activity that no longer happens, as it is disrespectful, but most goths didn’t think so at the time.)

~  The music of Jennifer Thomas. 

Dead Can Dance. Loreena McKennit. Deep Forest. The Cranes. Cocteau Twins. Kate Bush. Enigma. Gregorian chants. Most of us even had some Enya or Tori Amos CDs in our collection.

~ Privacy, solitude, quiet reflection and occasional random crying. It’s an aesthetique now. Congratulations all, we finally made it a look. 

And this is the point in reading when the Lady of the Manners burst into disbelieving laughter. If you think this wasn’t aesthetic before, you are sadly mistaken. We draped our lamps in black lace shawls, wiped away tears while listening to This Mortal Coil, and wrote lonely and self-reflective entries in velvet-covered journals, flowers we took from the cemeteries pressed between the pages. 

~ Tending to a family of crows somewhere until they begin to follow you everywhere, bringing you surprise treats of random shiny bits that they leave on your windowsill in thanks. 

All the Lady of the Manners will say is that she once was told off by a landlord because of the crows that would land on the deck of her apartment, cawing their demands for snacks. 

~ That’s right people, you heard it here first: we’re bringing back tortured, dramatic vampires and no one is stopping us. And this time, we’re doing it right. 

But … those vampires didn’t leave? Sure, we had to retreat to rereading the first three of the Vampire Chronicles because The Body Thief was the first sign that the series was kind of going off the rails (understatement!), but those vampires never went away. They just got overshadowed by other types of vampire media that became pop culture phenomena as the years fluttered by. 

~ Accentuating a predominantly black wardrobe with everything but the standard blood red – emerald greens, royal blues, blush pinks, shimmering golds. 

Not only did we do that, but we also let friends know when we found their preferred colors at places like Jay Jacobs and Le Chateau. Back In The Day fashion magazines didn’t even whisper the word “goth”, but every autumn and winter ,the mainstream stores were filled with jewel-toned velvet and ruffled poet’s blouses. (Made from decent quality fabrics, dammit, that have lasted to this day. The Lady of the Manners will save her rant about the decline of quality of stretch velvet for another time.)

~ Soft, fuzzy black sweaters over high-waisted black jeans and velvet flats until it’s literally too damn warm for them anymore. 

Some people wore them even when it was too damn warm for fuzzy black sweaters and jeans, just saying. (Not the Lady of the Manners. Not only did she not wear jeans, but her weather-inappropriate garment of choice was her leather jacket.) 

~ Delicate jewelry made of bones and teeth and tiny bottles. 

What do you think we had clattering around our necks? In addition to the thrift store rosaries, the silver ankhs on long ribbons, the strands of black glass mourning beads, and the velvet ribbons tied around our necks, that is. Those little import stores the Lady of the Manners mentioned earlier? You could find tiny glass perfume bottle pendants, decorated with silver filigree. The day she unearthed her collection in one of her old jewelry boxes was a happy day indeed.

~ The day can be so harsh, burning, unyieldingly bright and demanding. The cool, soft night is where we belong, lacing fingers into someone else’s on an insomniac’s walk through silent city streets until a coffee shop rises, glowing like the moon, on the horizon. Exhausted paramedics drink coffee inside, hoping it will distract them from all they’ve seen that night, and the pang of empathy in your chest for all of them.

Finally, this is not Soft Goth. This is the philosophy, the entire foundation of the goth subculture. The music, the fashion, what and how we chose to live. This is where we sprang from, this is where we will always be, forever and ever, until the moon and inky sky rule over all.

This is when the Lady of the Manners summons the other Eldergoths; what are the things from that era that you embraced? For the younger of you reading this, speak of the newer things you/ve heard or seen that fall under the parasol of romantigoth or “soft goth”. The comments are open!