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Adora’s Goth make-up Video Guide

Adora’s Goth make-up Video Guide

Dramatic Elf look Makeup Video Guide

Dramatic Elf look Makeup Video Guide

Emo makeup Video Guide

Emo makeup Video Guide

Gothic Vampiress Makeup Video Guide

Gothic Vampiress Makeup Video Guide

Heavy Cat eyeliner make up Video Guide

Heavy Cat eyeliner make up Video Guide

Gothic Makeup Video Guide

Gothic Makeup Video Guide

Vampire Chic is in

The mass hysteria over the new movie “Twilight” is just one hint that the combination of the erotic and the macabre is back – front and center – in pop culture.

Long-fanged, tight-trousered heroes with a compulsion for neck-nuzzling are the new pinup boys. And black-clad vampires are, well, the new black.

Emo music is more popular than ever – its angsty undertones are the perfect soundtrack to an afternoon spent curled up with one of the “Twilight” books or even the “True Blood” saga, which Alan Ball has turned into a series for HBO.

CBS tried a vamp show last season (cunningly called “Twilight”), while the gay network Here! has a raunchy, fang-y soap called “The Lair.” Even Sylar and Peter Petrelli on NBC’s “Heroes” have Dracula-like powers to suck the life force from hapless fellow superhumans.

And while the teen set has propelled the vamp vibe into the cultural stratosphere, even grownup New Yorkers are getting in on the chilling action. “I had a moment where I had to come out with my interest in geeky stuff – it’s a great escapism, but I’ve had to own it,” says Max Wixom, 30, a publicist from Manhattan.

Wixom and a group of friends have cobbled together a casual book club that would have Oprah’s blood boiling: reading different vampire novels each month from Laurell K. Hamilton to Sherilyn Kenyon.

“We’re not really in a Transylvania moment,” he says of the trend. “We’re moving Vlad away from his boogey monster to a romanticized figure that’s beautiful. We’re taking it to the next level of embracing the darkness.”

Vampire chic is so chic, it has invaded the world of beauty. This season, makeup is more Robert Smith than raunchy supermodel. “Everywhere you look, people are using black eyeliner for lip-liner and putting red lipstick over that to give you very deep blood-red lips,” says Dior Beauty’s Ricky Wilson.

The brand’s new dark gray, silver and blue palette called Twilight has just hit makeup counters, while Lancome’s dabbling in goth glamour for the first time, offering a limited-edition black lip shine, Color Fever Gloss in Piha Black, at Bloomingdale’s. It launched with a mile-long wait list.

“Normally, with everyday makeup, you go light on eyes and dark on lips or vice versa, but now you see a ton of pale skin with dark, black, smoky eyes and dark, rich blood-red lips,” says Wilson.

Creature of the night couture is surfacing in fashion, too. “There are special editions of magazines that emphasize fashion to die for, the dark side – like ID’s September issue: It was all vampy and gothic,” explains fashion historian Valerie Steele. She has just curated a new show at the Fashion Institute of Technology called “Gothic: Dark Glamour” and believes that this esthetic has been returning, slowly, since the millennium flipped.

“The vampy thing is immensely sexy, but it’s always going to be a minority taste – most people are more into the sunshine kind of feeling,” says Steele, chuckling. “But minority taste will emerge periodically in reaction to all that banal, let’s-be-cheery stuff.”

Take New York’s collections: hugely popular Rodarte, a standard-bearer of gothic glamour, showed dark, dripping, slashed knit dresses for – of all seasons – happy-go-lucky spring.

At a lower price point, H&M’s latest designer collaboration launched this week – with Japanese avant-garde label Comme des Garcons – was an inky black, Drac-drenched collection.

The vampire lifestyle, it turns out, is accessible to all.

Party promoter Sebastiaan Van Houten – whose vamp alter ego is called Sabretooth – throws the Endless Night balls in New York, New Orleans and Paris.

He’s an accredited Fangsmith, a member of a 30-strong global guild of artisans who make custom fangs for fancy dressers or serious hobbyists.

Van Houten fell into fang-making after a stint assisting a dentist in the early 1990s, where he learned denture crafting. Now, 15 years later, he charges $99 a pair ($125 for walk-ins) at his studio.

The current craze has reached such a fever pitch, he says, requests are coming from the most unlikely places.

“I’ve had housewives from Idaho e-mailing me, saying, ‘Can you turn me into a vampire?’”

Am I a Goth?

Am I goth? It is a question that many of us, from Baby Goths to Elder Goths ask. Goth is both a state of being and classification of personal style. Over the years, I’ve learned that fashion styles may come and go, but personal style, your “art of display” is everlasting, regardless of the shifting fads sweeping through. It’s your creative adaptation of the underlying sea of current trends that shows that you are both confident and caring about your gothic self.

Am I goth? It all starts with your imagination. The art of display is a creative expression that allows others to see the “real” you. And by expressing your uniqueness through your self-image, this enables you to attract like-minded people into your life. Individuality is the gothic subversion to the mainstream convention on how one must look. Therefore, I have found that most Goths are very accepting of the diversity of clothing styles and body types. Unlike mainstream culture, which emphasizes a youthfully thin figure for women or a muscular body type for men, Goth celebrates the beauty of the human form in all shapes, sizes and ages. This helps to debunk the disempowering belief that “my body is not sexy enough because…” which may come from the feelings of unworthiness perpetuated by mainstream media. Instead, gothic subculture enables you to express yourself attractively in its many variations.

Am I goth? As Gothic style rejects popular values, emphasis is on freedom of expression and challenging taboos. One of the most striking features of Goth is that both men and women may wear items that are typically relegated to women in modern culture such as fishnet, PVC, lace, velvet and even corsets and skirts. Menswear in mainstream culture and what is allowable to be worn in the workforce is limited to shirts, pants and suits, usually within conservative colors. Gothic attire enables men to accept of their feminine essence as all humans, whether male or female contain both the yin (feminine) and yang (masculine) energies within us.

Even though there are variations, there are definitive and unifying elements within Goth style – such as rejecting of popular values, emphasis is on freedom of expression, and challenging taboos such as black eye liner on men in Western culture, whereas lining the eyes with kohl was a practice in ancient Egypt and in oriental cultures for both men and women as the eyes are the windows of the soul.

Am I goth? Finally, this can only be answered ultimate by how you feel about being goth. I have found that goth is a state of mind that appreciates the darkness of life or the shadow self. This came about after realizing that I needed to know my inner darkness as much as my inner light to be goth. Goth is about facing our deepest fears since running away from them will only make them stronger. What you resist will persist. Light exists because darkness coexists. Eureka is the sudden clarity emerging from the depths of chaos and the midst of darkness.

What is Loli-Goth, GothLoli or Gothic Lolita?

Loli-Goth, GothLoli or Gothic Lolita is a style that stands out among subcultural styles as it is an elegant mixture of romance and innocence. GothLoli represents a kinder Goth look that appropriates an antiquated imagery of childhood as it emphasizes Victorian-style and Edwardian girl’s clothing imitating the look of Victorian porcelain dolls. The basic GothLoli look is usually all in black, or combines black with minimal accents of white. A petticoat or crinoline underskirt is a necessity to create the desired bell-shaped silhouette, under a basic circle skirt.

In addition, the Gothic Lolita wardrobe includes demure items such as high–collared, long–sleeved shirts and dresses, and skirt lengths that fall at or below the knee. Heavy white or black stockings or knee–high sox compliment large platform shoes such as child-like shoes or boots called Mary Janes to complete the look. Frilly, ruffled or lace-trimmed Victorian blouses are also popular with Gothic Lolitas and designs are usually modest, sometimes with long lace-capped sleeves and/or high-necked Peter Pan blouses. The final accessory of importance is a headdress, headband, or hair clips with bows, ribbons, and ruffles on them or a mini top hat. Other GothLoli accessories include handbags, small backpacks and purses, sometimes in the shape of bats, coffins, and crucifixes. Teddy bears and other stuffed animals are also common, as well as Super Dollfie or other ball-jointed dolls with matching outfits to the GothLoli wearer.

Mana of the band Malice Mizer often would wear GothLoli clothing in their performances, which helped spread the awareness of the fashion. And since 1999, Mana created his own lable called moi-même-moitié which further popularized the Gothic Lolita styles in Japan. The label’s name is a portmanteau of the French words “moi-même” (myself) and “moitié” (half), although the expression “moi-même-moitié” does not exist in French. Everything about moi-même-moitié is exquisite, yet timeless. Mana termed his designs as Elegant Gothic Lolita (EGL), a mature version of GothLoli and Elegant Gothic Aristocrat (EGA), an androgynous version of EGL.

Women of all ages can incorporate elements of GothLoli, EGL or EGA into their own wardrobes as the bell–shaped dress, skirt, or coat is flattering on almost every figure and is a youthful and feminine look.

For Western GothLolis and Goths, EGL is particularly attractive, as it combines details from French Regency, Baroque, Rococo, Victorian and Edwardian eras, while maintaining a dark edge. Also, the pendulum has swung towards a more elegant style for gothic fashions that cherishes longer lengths, vintage detailing and a softness not seen since the emergence of the gothic style in the 1980s.

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