Amy Winehouse Gothic: Chanel’s Pre-Fall 2008 Collection
Posted by Catherine Spooner on August 07, 2008 in Dr Catherine Spooner, Guest Blog tagged withKarl Lagerfeld has stated that he took direct inspiration from Amy Winehouse (among others) for his Pre-Fall 2008 collection. The beehive and the crayoned-on eyeliner are certainly there, but in the publicity shots featuring supermodel Coco Rocha, they are as reminiscent of Goth style as they are of Winehouse’s 1960s-inspired look. The encrustation of crucifixes, the black silk and rubber, the fingerless gloves, the whiff of Victoriana: it seems Gothic is back yet again.
Much of my academic career thus far seems to have been spent observing Gothic’s perennial return on the catwalk: as a mode inherently bound up with the notion of revival, it’s the gift that just keeps on giving. Yet each new revival of Goth style offers a slightly different inflection from the last. There is a Gothic edge to the way that Winehouse’s numerous transgressions have been portrayed in the media: the drugs, the self-harm, the breakdowns, the criminal lover, the paparazzi persecution. Perhaps Lagerfeld’s genius resides in his recognition of this, and his recombination of Winehouse’s look with upmarket Gothic styling. It must be said, however, that what is Gothic about this collection is not what is Gothic about Winehouse: the playful recombination of period elements with Decadent styling is immaculately tailored and exquisitely crafted from sumptuous materials – the antithesis of Winehouse’s defiantly visible bra-straps, retro sailor tattoos and woman-on-the-verge-of-a-nervous-breakdown persona. But translation of hitherto unconnected concepts into unexpected new combinations is precisely what great fashion does best: in doing so frequently exposing the odd contiguity of apparently disparate ideas.
There are some fabulous details in these images: check out the fingerless rubber gloves, for ladies who definitely don’t do dishes. The chainmail halterneck constructed entirely from jewelled crucifixes manages to recall armour, lingerie, and rosary beads all at the same time – a combination of the sacred and the profane, the come-hither and the go-thither, in one fabulously beautiful and expensive package. I am reminded of Angela Carter’s comments in her essay ‘The Bridled Sweeties’ that modern lingerie fulfils ‘elaborate ritual functions’ in its symbolisation of ‘the pursuit of anti-nature’ – and of her description of Baudelaire making his mistress wear a necklace so that she would look all the more naked. What could be more Decadent than to conceal/enhance one’s nakedness – or to flaunt one’s wealth – with hundreds of jewelled crucifixes?
Gothic fashion is about to have yet another Moment with a major exhibition at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, curated by fashion historian Valerie Steele. This seems likely to attract a lot of press attention when it opens in September: Gothic creates a good story, in whatever medium it appears. And with several designers’ Autumn/Winter 2008 collections returning to Gothic yet again, including Prada’s focus on black lace; Gareth Pugh’s scary Samurai Valkyries; Alexander McQueen’s morbidly deranged ballerinas; and Luella’s reinvention of Gothic Lolita via Portobello Market; another resurgence of Gothic chic on the high street looks predictable. It seems that it’s not only Winehouse who’ll be going back to black this season.
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Thanks for the post – really great. What I would like to ask is a more general question emerging from this: what do you think is the connection between Goth and Gothic?
Wow, that’s a big question: where to start?! I by no means want to claim my answer as definitive, as I’m aware that many different understandings of Goth subculture exist and for some, it’s much less closely related to Gothic in a literary or cinematic sense than others. However, I would suggest that if we think of Gothic as a mode or set of discourses rather than a genre, we can see it as something that doesn’t have to be attached to narrative form, but could also be used to describe fashion or art, or even a subcultural lifestyle choice. Contemporary Goths may or may not individually take inspiration from Gothic novels and films. However in the thirty years or so the subculture has existed, it has collectively appropriated those images and ideas and used them to structure its set of interests and preoccupations, from music to style. That’s the straightforward answer! The more complex one, which is what my first book was about, is that Gothic narratives have always been peculiarly bound up with clothes – shrouds, veils, masks, disguises – although these have been differently inflected depending on the historical period – and therefore that a style of dress that deliberately takes on the Gothic aesthetic is in some ways the inevitable outcome. I found that when journalists and critics talk about Goth subculture, they tend to draw on images and concepts (and all too often, stereotypes) that derive from Gothic literature or critical discussions of it.
It’s probably worth noting that I come from a disciplinary background of literary and cultural studies – so I inevitably look to literature when thinking about the connection between Gothic and Goth! For sociologists like Paul Hodkinson, who work with interview-based research rather than with texts, the link is much more oblique.
I’d be interested to know what you think, Jennie – is there an inevitable link between Gothic and Goth? Or should we resist making that connection too simplistically?
I see what you mean about the link, thanks! Sounds right. Then does Gothic, if it’s appropriated like you say by Goths to structure their own interests and preoccupations, keep its original meanings or does it lose them. Don’t know quite how to explain it! but does it become say romanticized and lose its depth, or does it take on new political associations or lose its old ones?
I reckon it’s probably a bit of both – that it keeps some of its original meanings, but also acquires new ones. And I reckon this probably changes depending on historical and cultural context – a British Goth in, say, Leeds in 1982 would no doubt be making different meanings to an American Goth in New Orleans in 1999 or a Japanese Goth in Harajuku in 2008 and so on. It’s such a diverse and globalised subculture now – there is such fertile ground for research there!
I think I’d hesitate in saying it had lost its depth though – although I know what you mean – as this implies that it’s somehow a fall away from a previous time when it was deeper and more meaningful, therefore implicitly better. A lot of Goths like to construct the subculture like this, nostalgically implying that the scene today is not as good as it was when they were young/when The Sisters of Mercy were still together/before Marilyn Manson attracted teenagers who didn’t understand it properly/before Emo/etc etc. To suggest 18th or 19th C Gothic is somehow richer and more complex than Goth subculture is a version of this – and I think we need to examine the reasons why this kind of nostalgia for an earlier phase of unadulterated Goth(ic) is prevalent.
I also might want to question whether Gothic ever had any ‘depth’ as such – Eve Sedgwick famously argued that the most striking thing about Gothic texts is the way they privilege surface over depth. But romanticisation, with a small r, might certainly apply to the way that some Goths seem to read narratives like Dracula.
That wouldn’t necessarily preclude taking on new political associations though. The response to the murder of Sophie Lancaster is a case in point – that has caused an explicit politicisation of the global Goth community.
Again, I’d be interested to know what you think Jennie – and anyone else who’s reading too – what new kinds of meanings is contemporary Goth producing?
Thanks! I’d like to add things, but would like to wait to hear what others think first. (also need time to check out a couple of those points!)
Hi both,
I read this a while ago and was very interested by Catherine’s presentation / explanation of the possible links between Goth / Gothic / Contempory Gothic. It’s a topic that I’ve always found intriguing – particularly as someone who spent most of their teenage years proudly calling themselves a ‘Goth’, only to ‘grow out of it’ on a surface level and then become fascinated by an apparently different version of Gothic whilst studying for a BA in Literature. Having subsequently taken that interest into postgraduate realms I’ve become aware that the difference isn’t necessarily as concrete as all that and (whilst I tend to focus on C19 materials myself) it’s always intrigued me.
Sadly, when I tried to reply a week or so ago the blog seemed to be having difficulties and wouldn’t let me…
It so happens that, within my own research, I’ve since been struck by what seems to be an interesting link between Gothic and Contemporaneity in general – though perhaps not an especially groundbreaking one.
I’ve always regarded the Gothic as a mode (or whatever term is preferred) typically concerned with a kind of epistemological uncertainty: with problematising, not meaning in general, but the possibility of any specific and final meaning. The Gothic tends to be that which always goes a little beyond the acceptable limits of the structure it manifests within – as a literary genre, for example, it always seems to go one step beyond itself: you can generally mark a ‘new’ or subsequent Gothic manifestation or sub-genre by observing its extension / reformulation / subversion of an existing Gothic formula. It’s perhaps easy to see the Gothic, working in this way, as effectively denying meaning and operating in a more or less nihilistic way. I’m not really comfortable with this kind of conclusion and, if possible, would rather see the Gothic, not as denying meaning in general, but instead forever reminding us of its contingency / provisionality – something which can be as much a safeguard as a hindrance and which helps to explain why the Gothic has become such a perennial feature within our culture, yet also one that never seems quite identical with its previous selves or to coalesce into a closed form.
Contemporaneity, meanwhile, is the ‘space’ within which this kind of function is most at home: the contemporary, by its very nature (and perhaps in a different manner to ‘the present’) is that which is still in temporal motion and is not fixed. It’s a space within which we obviously exercise understanding (it is, in effect, the sole space of our understanding) but also one in which such an understanding has yet to become frozen into any finality. To exist or be active within the Contemporary is to be inherently divided from any ordered / finalised sense of temporality or its representation as historiography – to be always at the point before these have been reached.
Which (eventually) brings me to a (probably rather obvious) link between our Contemporary and its Gothic. It strikes me that a peculiar feature of Contemporary Gothic is the rapidity with which it undergoes the recyclings and reformulations peculiar to the form which, along with its observable fondness for combination and juxtaposition (even of seemingly incongruous / anachronistic elements) renders it remarkable for the speed with which it ‘moves’ in our culture. This itself might be appropriate to a contemporaneity that seems particularly aware of its contemporaneity and is remarkable for its own skepticism / rethinking of finality (hello postmodernism). The Gothic, as I’ve ‘theorised’ it is perhaps an unsurprisingly popular and useful mode of production and reflection within such a culture.
Or something like that. A lot less succinct than Catherine’s offering and probably goes without saying to a great extent but I’ll defend it with the excuse that I’ve read too much Derrida recently and don’t read as much contemporary literature as I should…
Mark
Oh, and the Sisters are as together as they ever were… it’s just that that isn’t very much
Mr Eldritch does periodically make noises about a new album and is quite (often hilariously) open about the ephemeral nature of the average sisters band member… I’m not sure if it’s still up, but their official website used to be rather funny in that respect.