Christian Siriano's Vampire Fashion Video

If you are a fan of fashion competition show Project Runway, you are familiar with designer Christian Siriano's flair for the dramatic.  During NY Fashion Week in February, he showed a beautiful runway collection inspired by classic horror movie queens.

Now, for the public, his team has created an edgy fashion video that fleshes out the vampire bat theme even more...

What do you think?

Gothic Fashion at Olympics Closing Ceremony

I think it's safe to say that Danny Boyle brought some of the edgiest style to what many dubbed the Rock n' Roll Olympics.  However, creative director Kim Gavin and production designer  Es Devlin have earned the title of the "Fashion Olympics" in bringing out some surprising Goth fashion to the closing ceremonies...

First, my beloved Pet Shop Boys rolled out in bright orange origami-like carts dressed in dramatic Gareth Pugh.   Next, Britain's supermodels strutted out custom gold gowns made by British fashion designers like Sarah Burton for Alexander McQueen and Vivienne Westwood.  

Finally, Annie Lennox entered the stadium like a vampire queen.  She descended down from a massive black ship into a chorus of dramatically clad dancers.  The dancers were dressed in gorgeous voluminous gowns in period silhouettes.  The heavily shadowed eyes, black lace, corsets, skulls and bustles were distinctively Goth.

Ok Brasil, London has set the bar pretty high...What will you do to follow that?

Photos by Phil Noble (Reuters), Jeff J Mitchell (Getty)

Interview with Deathly Romantic Magazine

Happy Friday everyone!  I just wanted to share an interview I did with new Canadian magazine, Deathly Romantic.  They feature the best in artists, beauty and style with a darker aesthetic.

You know my persona as "The Courtesan Macabre".  In this interview, you'll learn a bit more about me when I am not writing about Gothic and Steampunk style...

Read the interview here...

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.  

Symphony of Shadows, A Morbid Fantasia

I had the supreme pleasure of attending the first performance of this sexy and macabre show.  The production is an extravaganza of ballet, aerialists, musicians, surreal costumes, acrobats, burlesque and dancers telling a dark, but beautiful story.

Nightmares plague the central heroine every night and her corporate day job is a bigger horror still.  The heroine is haunted by everything from a sequin tossing demon, trapeze black widow, menacing hunky rats, shimmering snake contortionist, flaming fan dancer, lingerie-clad ghosts to name a few.  The eerie violin concerto is a sensuous score to this seamless, elaborate production.

Creator Rachel Klein started with a concept of the horrors of sleep paralysis.  She worked with co-story writer Sean Gill on how to portray the different nightmares.  Visual inspirations included silent films and the paintings of Henry Fusili.  Performers from her own theater company, as well as dancers from Martha Graham, Alvin Ailey and circus performers from House of Yes, Circus Warehouse, Muse and Skybox collaborated with  her to create the character movements of the horrors.  Composer Sean Hagerty produced the eerie music that set the mood.

If you are in NYC the next few weeks, definitely make the time to enjoy this show!

Thursdays - Saturdays,

June 7 – 23 at 7:30pm

Dixon Place, 161A Chrystie Street, (between Rivington & Delancey)

Buy tickets: $15 in advance, $18 at the door, $12 (student/senior)

Photos by Mariana Leung & Michael Blase