Trends of Wave Gotik 2012

Goth is Goth...Does it change?  Of course it does.  The 2012 edition of Leipzig's Wave Gotik Treffen music festival was the big display of Gothic style that everyone anticipated it would be.  

For the most recent edition this past March, I definitely noticed new trends.  Techno punk looks were popular last year, but this year, this look was more polished and showed up more in coordinated ensembles in groups.  

Steampunk fashion always had an elegant atmosphere about it.  This year, the examples of Steampunk looks were incredibly ornate.  Highly accessorized with intricate jewelry or impeccably tailored clothing, the fans this year took this style to a higher artform.

Global inspiration styled some of the best outfits.  I saw looks drawn from Russian aristocracy to Japanese Geisha, but all given a darker, edgy update.

Romanticism in fashion was in full bloom here.  Marie Antoinette inspiration, gigantic hooped skirts, couples showing up in coordinated outfits wanted to make you saw "awwww" (if you weren't afraid of having your butt kicked).  Progressively, I saw a lot more families this year, with babies, young children also in garb to match Mommy and Daddy.  I wonder how many of these parents met a Wave Gothic of years past?  

Photos by ingrid eulenfan,Adam Berry,Manfred Drewa,Tino Eh,UWE-DZ,Mr. Dog, Ingolf Zibell ,Salamanek Kerstin ,bluedave,Konrad Diebler ,Raoul Brosch ,Edmund Klose, this-mortal-coil ,Isoldebaden,Erdt Manfred 

Bastille Day Goth - Post Revolutionary Style

Did you think macabre style only started in your lifetime?  Citizens of post-revolutionary France could teach us all a thing or two.  Following the executions of French Aristocracy and then the Reign of Terror, the bourgeois population worked out their issues in style, fashion and dining.

In an anti-powdered wig style, men and women cut their hair short and bared their necks to acknowledge the effects of the guillotine.  Red ribbons tied around the throat became a popular accessory as did mourning arm bands in every day fashion. Jewelry was made in guillotine shapes and other morbid motifs.

 Victim's Balls became the new nightlife, allegedly for those who were mourning headless friends and family.  Dark colored ensembles could also be scandalously brief, where looks may include only the ribbons themselves.  Gourmand Grimod de la Reynière (one of the first popular food critics) held mock funeral banquets serving multiple courses of black colored dishes on top of a coffin.  

Vive la France!

Image from Dreadful Dreary, other sources include Supersizer Go - French Revolution

Heidi Gardner Jewelry

Heidi Gardner jewelry has a macabre slant to its beauty.  Pieces are modeled after a pelvis, spinal cord, skulls which are then inset with jewels.  The native New Yorker may have found her inspiration with bones and anatomy from her background as a ballet dancer.  A dancer has such intense physicality that one would definitely be aware of every bone and muscle in her body.

Her fans include musicians like Madonna and Rihanna.  Her other influences include movies like The Exorcist, A Clockwork Orange and German anatomy drawings.

See more of her work at her website.