Posts tagged: gothic fashion

Sometimes I feel like I am just on vampire time. Something will be on my to-do list and I’ll feel like darn-it-some-time-has-passed. Only it will be more time than seems possible in my gut response. Anyway, it has been on my to-do list to bring you all more fashion coverage on BlueBlood.net. So I’m going to start checking this off my gigantic to-do list with this exclusive never-before-seen interview with Tyler Ondine Whitman of Heavy Red Noir Couture. Tyler and I had a good interview and I’m sorry it took so long to get it live. In my defense, the file was called blueblood-interview, so it was not super obvious what was in it, while it was sitting on my hard drive. Without further ado, I bring you the feature interview on Heavy Red:

AG: How did you first get into being a designer?

TOW: I love clothing that looks like it is straight out of a beautifully demented dream. I wanted my clothing to look like it was from a dark cabaret ball in a haunted estate at the edge of time. Eventually that led to designing and making gothic clothing for myself. Once I got started, well, of course it became an addiction. I am still making clothes for myself, as well as the ladies, gentlemen and other creatures of the night who attend the dark balls and walk the night as elegant, tortured souls.

AG: What is your fashion/educational background?

TOW: Gothic clothing is a style all its own, so the best way to learn it is by doing it and wearing the results. I would go to Perversion, or some other club or event, wearing something I had just designed. If I felt fabulous and dark …

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In March of 2003 I wrote an opening editorial for the late lamented Swag magazine project. The editorial was about how a lot of freaks internalize the negativity the larger society has for them. It was about how punk was supposed to promise the allure of a classless society. It was about how we shouldn’t hammer ourselves down because we deserve the rewards of the larger society, at least as much as anyone. The mere existence of this editorial is ironic in so many ways. I have no idea how many people read this the first time around, though, so I’d like to share it online now.

You should also definitely read the piece on Swag, by my old school, zine explosion compatriot Scott Hefflon, which ran first in Lollipop in print, and is now reprinted on Lollipop online. Part of what Scott had to say about the content Forrest Black and I and our pals created was, “It’s really surprising how rarely you find something unique in these “alternative” times. So many things still tow the line, the line is just called something else . . . So yeah, on the surface, Swag could look like a Gothic fashion mag. Lots of scantily-clad vixens, most of them models for one of the sites under the Blue Blood umbrella, but seeing as Amelia G and Forrest Black are top-notch Goth/fetish photographers and have great taste in hotties as well as the few bits of clothing the models wear, that’s far from a bad thing . . . What makes Swag cool is what doesn’t become clear right at first. Style . . . It was fun, I learned a couple …

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