This summer, while others had tracks such as ‘espresso’ by Sabrina Carpenter or Tems’ ‘Love Me JeJe’ on repeat, I fell in love with something a little darker: ‘Lullaby’ by The Cure, released in 1989. The strings and bassline make the song epicand immersive – just the thing to block out spiralling to-do lists on a morning commute. The lyrics, meanwhile, are positively frightening: concerning a monster on the prowl. ‘It’s much too late to get away or turn on the light,’ croons singer Robert Smith. ‘The spiderman is having you for dinner tonight.’
‘Lullaby’ is hardly an appropriate soundtrack for beach days and Aperol dates, and it’s pretty out of character for me, someone with a relatively sunny disposition and an enthusiastic approach to colour. But it does chime with what fashion has in store for this winter, as all things gothic come back into the frame.
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A darkness bled like ink across autumn/winter 2024 as designers drew on a wide range of influences. Prada, Valentino and Khaite all presented a black-focused colour palette. Others had positively ghoulish inspirations: 16Arlington’s Marco Capaldo cited Charlie Fox’s 2017 book This Young Monster, while Simone Rocha’s show, titled ‘The Wake’, looked to Victorian funerals. At Preen, Thea Bregazzi and Justin Thornton referenced a classic of the gothic genre: Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel Frankenstein. Those looking for further tips would also be wise to consult Tish Weinstock's forthcoming Kate Moss-approved gothic guidebook How To Be A Goth.
To really understand the new mood, look to the resurgence of Tim Burton style. The director’s career now spans almost 40 years, with films including The Nightmare Before Christmas, Edward Scissorhands, Sleepy Hollow and Sweeney Todd all leaning towards the gothic. 1988’s Beetlejuice is the epitome of this aesthetic, thanks to 17-year-old Winona Ryder as archetypal goth girl Lydia Deetz, whose commitment to the look was such that she wore a blacklace veil to dinner. Fans will be thrilled that the long-awaited sequel Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, arrives this month, no doubt serving up further outfit inspiration.
If Gen X adopted Ryder as their goth icon, Gen Z have Jenna Ortega. In a win for cross-generational relations, both appear in Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. Ortega is, of course, the star of Burton’s 2022 Netflix show Wednesday, which reimagines the story of the melancholic girl from the classic 1960s TV series The Addams Family. Viewed by around 150 million households, Wednesday introduced younger audiences to the Burton look, as Ortega took it from the screen to the red carpet. Playing on the ebony colour palette of the show and adding a smoky eye, she was hailed as the poster girl for the ‘goth glam’ aesthetic. The black-tulle dress from the famous dance sequence, meanwhile, has become a DIY project for those far more qualified than me on TikTok.
These crafty creators won’t have to wait until the second season (out in 2025) for their Wednesday fix. Costumes from the show will go on display at the Design Museum this autumn as part of ‘The World of Tim Burton’, a new exhibition opening at the end of October. The dance-scene dress – a 2021 Alaïa piece purchased on Bond Street by costume designer Colleen Atwood – will be on show, along with the striped school uniform Wednesday wears for lessons at Nevermore Academy and photographs, sketchbooks and sets from across Burton’s filmography.
Curator Maria McLintock says gothic style is a key concept explored in the exhibition, but maintains that the gloomy associations are not necessarily something Burton is on board with. ‘Tim says he really doesn’t like the word “dark” being used in conjunction with his work,’ she says, comparing his thinking to storytellers from different eras. ‘Someone like Virginia Woolf, for example, who said there’s lightness in the dark.’
Burton is, of course, far from the first creative to explore the gothic aesthetic. It flourished in the 19th century, when writers such as Edgar Allen Poe, Wilkie Collins, Mary Shelley and Emily Brontë produced masterpieces of the genre. The goth music subculture, meanwhile, has been around in one form or another since the 1970s, when bands including my beloved The Cure were founded. McLintock emphasises that the idea of a dark aesthetic and goth itself is always open to interpretation; this might be a reason why it appears time and time again in popular culture. Bosse Myhr, the director of womenswear at Selfridges, supports this theory. ‘Many of our most popular avant-garde brands see the look as being core to their brand identity and spirit,’ he says, name-checking Rick Owens, Comme des Garçons and Melitta Baumeister as key proponents of a style that can appeal to both life-long and more recent fans. ‘For the many followers of these brands, a distinct wardrobe is built over multiple years,’ he says. ‘This autumn, goth is dramatic, not “quiet”.’
Perhaps the next stage of a Burton-approved look comes via Bella McFadden, aka Internet Girl. Starting on Depop, the 28-year-old became the first person to earn a million dollars on the app in 2020. Four years later, she launched iGirl, a physical store in New York specialising in the so-called ‘mall-goth aesthetic’. Think goth with a side of cute: coffin-shaped earrings and cropped T-shirts emblazoned with gory cartoons (these frequently sell out).
For McFadden, Burton was a formative influence. ‘I adore [his work],’ she says. ‘The Nightmare Before Christmas was a huge part of my goth awakening as a kid.’ This is mixed with other, more Y2K-specific references. ‘My goth icons are characters from movies that I was obsessed with as a child – Ginger Snaps, for example – and I love Bleeding Edge dolls,’ she adds.‘I named my lizard Ophelia Pain after one of them.’ Those of us without lizards are still moving towards this look, she says, thanks to celebrities such as Billie Eilish and TikTok star Tarayummy.
The continued evolution of gothic style makes sense to McLintock. In fact, she may have the answer to why I had ‘Lullaby’ on repeat during this hectic summer. ‘There’s curiosity in the gothic, a fluidity. You can see why artists, musicians, painters and fashion designers would find it such a rich palette to draw upon,’ she muses. ‘The gothic represents a way to make sense of the world, [of] trying to conjure the unknowable.’
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