Terror and Wonder: The Gothic Imagination an epic tour through the dark corners of desire
British Library, London
This perversely enlightening exhibition of gothic ephemera, from Sadean dresses to possessed ventriloquists, is not so much about art as it is an inquiry into the liberation of the mind
The strangest and most beautiful moment in this perversely enlightening exhibition at the British Library comes among photographs of people made up like death, driving hearses and posed like Mr and Mrs Dracula for the annual Whitby Goth Weekend. While these modern goths flaunt their macabre styles, a pale white dress floats nearby like a phantom. It is a gothic dress made in 1816.
This fantastic sartorial survivor from the era when Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein enabled its wearer to consciously dress up as a heroine in one of the gothic novels that were then all the rage. She would have attracted as many curious glances towards her tightly tapered, spire-like sleeves and Sadean waist as someone wearing the black lace Alexander McQueen Dante dress that is also in this exhibition. Goth fashions, past and present, express all that makes the gothic so fascinating and sexual.
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