lots of silly gooses

I suspect this may be the topic that draws me out of my torpor about updating the actual Gothic Charm School site, but some quick asides here:

The majority of goth fashion in the 80s, 90s, and early 2000s was DIY out of necessity. Even when there WERE pre-made goth clothes (Lip Service, Bogies, indie designers), most of us couldn't afford them. Even basic goth staples like fishnets and black lipstick or nail polish weren't available year-round. We waited until Halloween and cleared out the costume aisles of our local big-box retailers. A group of friends spent an evening pouring over the pages of the big fall fashion edition of Vogue that one of us bought so we could see what dark style clothing would be trickling down to the mall department stores so we could hit the clearance racks in January, or the thrift stores in March. We memorized the discount day schedule for thrift stores and bought wedding and prom dresses to hack apart and dye. We saved for shitty plastic-boned "corsets" from Frederick's of Hollywood to wear over those hacked-apart dresses.

Goth, especially in the previous decades, was about getting whatever you could afford and figuring out how to make it spooky. Plain black leggings + thrift store or clearance black slip + layers of thrift store or clearance belts were a standard "goth uniform" for femme goths. Did we look amazing? No, not even half the time. But we took whatever we could afford and made it work as well as we could.