Vogue USA - 09.2019

SEPTEMBER 2019 VOGUE.COM 363

Dark Age

As a goth beauty revival arrives for fall, novelist

Chloe Aridjis revisits her brooding teenage

years and ruminates on why black is back.

NOCTURNAL ANIMALS

FROM BLOOD-WINE LIPS TO A

GHOSTLY PALLOR, GOTH

BEAUTY’S APPEAL IS EQUAL

PARTS ROMANCE AND

MELANCHOLY. DITA VON

TEESE AND MARILYN MANSON,

PHOTOGRAPHED BY STEVEN

KLEIN, VOGUE, 2006.

PRESENTED BY

Heavy was the mood this past March in Paris when Comme
des Garçons convened “a gathering of shadows,” as its fall show
was called. What counted as beauty—wan complexions and
strands of black hair like the tendrils of an oil slick—offered
a haunting complement to a sea of rubber, lace, and fishnet
that brought to mind marine creatures caught in a trawl. It was

industrial and doom-laden, futuristic rather than nostalgic—

cybergoth, to give it a name. After the procession, models stood

in a circle holding hands as they gazed into the overhead lights.

“Many small shadows come together to make one powerful

thing,” Rei Kawakubo, Comme’s reclusive, jet-haired designer,

explained later, suggesting that an amalgamation of dark