Gothic: The Dark Side Of Fashion

"And chiefly of the veils that from her brow;
Hung pale, and curtain'd her in mysteries"
Keats, The Fall of Hyperion, 1818

I have always had a lot of love for Gothic culture. No, I don’t mean the typical 90s Goth subculture with the errr interesting shoes, piercings etc etc; I mean the fashion, literature and performance of the 18th to 19th Centuries. From Jekyll and Hyde to the Brontë sisters, Gothic, and later Romantic culture are responsible for a huge amount of social and psychological theories on fashion, the body and sexuality. Although I will only touch lightly on the dominant ideas within the Gothic in this post, I will write about specific theories at length in the future as my dissertation progresses.

The Gothic novel is historically linked to fashion through the emergence of early consumerism in the 18th Century and the Gothic has always relied upon a spectacular or set of styles for its identity. Within the Gothic genre there are several themes related to romance and attraction that are addressed, particularly through Gothic and Romantic literature.

Photo by Emma Bigg

Masks, Veils & Disguise

Ordinarily, masking and disguise indicates the existence of an authentic and true self underneath but Gothic literature of the 19th Century “seeks to problematise that authenticity”1. In the psychoanalytical surface and depth model, a mask or veil is a ‘doubleness’ which, when removed, reveals the ‘singleness’ of the monolithic subject.

The mask or veil in the Gothic is seen as important in creating a sense of mystery and fascination that comes with the idea of concealing identity, personality and status. However, Warwick and Cavallaro believe that disguises such as these “may turn out to conceal not a presence but an absence, not a depth but a vacuum”2.

Sedgwick proposes that the individual self breaks through and exposes itself through the disguising layer, “the superficial layers of convention and prohibition ‘the rational’ conceal and repress a deep well of primal material, ‘the irrational’”3. In Gothic culture, the disguise replaces the monolithic subject; this can be seen in Gothic novels such as The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson.


Two-faced? The Idea Of Multiple Selves

Commonplace in Gothic culture is the narrative that deals with the different sides to our personalities, from passion and sensuality to aggression and power. Fluctuating moods and feelings are explored to the extreme in the Gothic, where passion is the main driver for these states.

Both Gothic and Post-modern theories suggest that our identities are multiple, performative and dispersed across a variety of appearances. The Dandies of the early 19th Century are a perfect example of the theatricality and sensibility that dominated fashion at the time. Sontag emphasises the importance of passion in this theme, “without passion, camp becomes chic”4.

The Nightmare, 1782. Henry Fuseli

Skin: Boundaries, Violence & Vulnerability

While the idea of masking and disguise is a central theme, the Gothic is also a very sensual subculture and as such, the use of lace and sheer fabrics mirror the idea of revealing the body while also containing it. Skin is seen as another very important aspect of Gothic culture, particularly in literary circles where the idea of vampires was sexualised.

Spooner believes that “skin houses the body and is the material that divides the inside from the outside”5. Disruption of this absolute and ultimate boundary shows how vulnerable the human body is. Inevitably accompanied by violence, this use of power against a permeable and weak surface is one that has quite often been considered quite erotic. This idea can be transferred to clothing as in the Gothic; the second skin as it is known, is there to be disrupted.


Sex & Fetishism

The Freudian idea of ‘the uncanny’ is one that is inextricably linked to Gothic literature. Freud argued that the “uncertainty whether an object is alive or not” arouses a feeling of horror due to its uncomfortable and familiar setting. A good example of this and the inextricable link between sex and death in the Gothic is Henry Fuseli’s 1782 painting The Nightmare. The woman appears to be in a state between life and death; you are unsure as to whether she has died, fainted or is having an orgasm.

In terms of fetishism, the clothing worn by characters in Gothic and Romantic novels can sometimes be conflicting. While the Brontë sisters describe bodices and unstiffened skirts in their Romantic novels, the majority of Gothic clothing at the time followed the idea of free movement and exposure. It is, in fact, the idea that the body is contained and free, covered and exposed at the same time that is unique to Gothic fashion and culture.




1 Spooner C., Fashioning Gothic Bodies, Manchester University Press, 2004
2 Warwick A. and Cavallaro D., Fashioning the Frame: Boundaries, Dress and the Body, Berg, 1998
3 Sedgwick E. K., The Coherance of Gothic Conventions, Methuen & Co., 1986
4 Sontag S., Notes on Camp in Against Interpretation and Other Essays, Penguin, 2009
5 Spooner C., Fashioning Gothic Bodies, Manchester University Press, 2004