Every Goth’s dream come true.

We keep seeing black every winter on the catwalks, the magazines, our wardrobes (despite the fact that we TRY to buy "other" colours but the misterious power of Black still bewitches us ALL! not only goths...........). Imagine if everything would turn black, including the toilet paper. It would be great, wouldn´t be? It would be every Goth´s dream come true: black furniture, black wallpaper, black clothes (including the tampax and panty-liners), black make-up, black toilet paper, black car, black phone, black lights?, black condoms?, black food (squid sauce)?....

No, no, wait a minute. I already have problems to find clothes in my wardrobe, every morning! Even with the lights switched on! There should be an alternative, like grey? Yes! A mix between black "I´m cool-trendy-enigmatic" and white "I´m the typical...white". The interesting thing it would be to create shades, different shades of black so I could still see something.... Imagine if you confuse the pillow for the cat. It wouldn´t be a nice experience for the cat, or your arm...
If you´re still intrigued by the Black trend, check-out this website. Don´t forget to read the comments (all very diverse). There´s one in particular that grabbed my attention: (about the black plane) "Looks more like a death plane external, but supra chic interior"


Now that IS the beauty of the Dark: extremely different then interesting.


http://pingmag.jp/2007/07/19/black/

First look, finished!

Hi everyone! I´ve already posted some pics of the look I´ve been working on. Well, it´s finished!! It´s one of my most loved ones. Despite looking a bit too victorian I´m still proud of how it looks, specially on a person, not on the mannequin. Have a close look at the textile details! As soon as I finished the rest of the collection, I will post more pics.

New logo!

I don´t know if people have realized the little image I´ve got on the left side of the blog (The small black and white wardrobe pic), so I´ve designed another one that I think it suits better this blog. As you can see, is grey and black. As soon as I figure it out, I will change the head-banner and replace it with this new image. From now on, this will be the THE BLACK WARDROBE logo. Hope you like it!

The Cure in Barcelona, amazing

This last Monday, I had the privilege of having been at The Cure´s concert in Barcelona. Absolutely amazing, incredibly long (it lasted from 9.30pm until 1.00am). His voice didn´t go dead in the dark at any minute. He sang very old songs (Primary, One Hundred Years, some songs from the Seventeen Seconds' album) that I wasn´t expecting, as well as the classics like Lullaby, Pictures of You, Boys Don´t Cry, Friday I´m In Love....etc.
I was planning to go down to London to see him, the tickets were in the beginning around 30pounds, (around the same price that I ended up paying for the Barcelona gig) but a couple of weeks later they sold out and some fuckers were re-selling them for over 200pounds. Cheeky bastards...

No Goths (I was stunned), well, apart from a couple of groups of no more than 10people in total. The Arena was absolutely full of people -young and middle-aged-, the sound was amazing but it was a shame that there wasn´t any screens (I was very curious to see if Robert´s make-up was still on place). For all that people who are still thinking of giving money to those fuckers for the London gig, I would just say that it would definetely be WORTH IT but it´s up to you if you want to pay those astronomical prices. Robert Smith is getting old, but his energy is amazing.
I will never forget that night and the next time he will do a concert I will make sure to be there...and buy my tickets on time.

The Black Widow collection, first sketch

I can´t remember if I said something about the collection I´m working on at the minute. I´ve started doing brooches with fimo (yes! the fimo spiders!) and now I´ve gone to the clothes. The progress is slower than expected because I rather make a sample twice or even three times until I get the perfect fit and explore all the textures and ideas that the fabrics give me, than doing it "easy" and quick way.

I don´t know if whoever reads this blog has an idea of how is the process of a fashion collection, but I will explain it anyway....There it goes:

The first picture is the sketch, a simple flat ilustration with the fabric samples and the techniques that would be used on them for that design. I usually draw a very simple sketch and as long as I investigate and work on the finishings and the patterns I updait the sheet by adding more and more specific details about its construction.

When the patterns are finished I cut them and place them on the fabric in order to cut off the pieces of fabric.

And now is when the most interesting part starts: the final construction of the sample. Every time I join a couple of pieces together I place them on the mannequin to see how it looks like. I think it gives a brief idea of how it would look like on a body. Once the garment would be completely finished I will post the picture on the blog. ;)

Sweeny Todd, a victorian version of a C.S.I. episode

First of all, as you might have already guessed by this blog's look, I AM a Tim Burton´s fan (well, I hate The Planet Of The Apes but that film is crap anyway, everyone would agree with me, I suppose) BUT I am not too sure about Sweeny Todd, I am afraid. The film follows the same lines as his other films: gorgeous decadent and gothic aesthetic, interesting storyline, excellent actors, dramatic and not-at-all cheesy music....but too much blood for me. I might be a missy sissy but while I was watching the film, I suddenly had a memory crisis, I didn´t know if I was watching a Burton´s film or an episode of C.S.I....

but Grissom wasn´t there......
and if he was, he would had been one of the corpses swimming in the disgusting mincemeat machine maker next to that "auswitch-like" oven....

I´ve done a bit of research and I have noticed I am not the only one to have had not a very very good impression from the film. As an illustrative example, this is what I've read on http://www.product-reviews.net/:

"It seems like Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street isn’t the only one doing a bit of butchery! Warner Bros have asked director Tim Burton to ‘butcher’ his own film, cutting it from an R-rated Movie to a PG-13 MPAA. According to reports, the early footage from the film was so violently bloody that the studio executives have become squeamish and have requested the film to be re-cut.
A report in the Daily Mail has said,
“Tim’s not happy that the studio is asking for so many cuts to the cutting, as it were. The thing is, the studio really likes the film and they want to make it accessible to as big an audience as possible - which means stemming the blood flow. But that’s a bit difficult for a story involving a guy who gets high slitting throats.”
In the Film, unsuspecting victims sit in the mechanical chairs of Todd’s barber shop expecting a short back and sides. Sweeney then slices their throats before opening a trap door and allowing the bodies to travel into the lair of his wife, Mrs Lovett (Helena Bonham Carter). Once his wife has the bodies, she uses them to make her meat pies".

Vampira vs Elvira (two drama queens)

I´ve found out recently about Maila Nurmi´s death (the finnish woman who created and then played the character Vampira in the 50´s). So long it´s been since back then when she was a star that I almost thought she was immortal....:)

You can see her character being played by Lisa Marie (Elvis' daughter) in Tim Burton´s film, Ed Wood (1994).

Vampira, despite being a bit kitsch (we´re talking about the 1950's, remember) still had that glamourous femme fatale allure of the Hollywood divas. She was a mix of vampire and a witch. Sadly ignored by lots of gothic websites (I don´t usually see any references to her when I read something about Gothic clothing history) Nurmi herself claimed that Vampira's image was in part based on the Charles Addams "New Yorker" cartoon character "Morticia Addams", though she told BOXOFFICE Magazine in 1994 that she had intentionally deviated from Addams' mute and flat-chested creation, making her own TV character "campier and sexier" to avoid plagiarizing Addams' idea. Her image has been such a big influence on the female gothic look that in no more than 4 decades later another "vampira" was born: Elvira. So similiar and often were the comparisons that Nurmi sued Cassandra Peterson (who plays Elvira) for plagiarism. She didn´t win, why?

Much kitscher and less glamourous than the original one, Elvira was a mix between a 80´s goth who´s been caught in the post-punk transition and a Playboy girl who´s decided to dress up like a witch for a Halloween night in her hometown. Obviously, the look was still goth but the the idea was focused in a completely different way. Whereas Nurmi focused on giving her character a quite serious dramatic look, Elvira´s character is just a charicature on itself: big boobs that -I don´t know how- stay half of the way inside that dress (black witchcraft, perhaps? superglue, maybe?), made of the nastiest piece of polyester or lycra. Her hair -that wig that even Robert Smith wouldn´t have dreamed of back in the 80´s- doesn´t help either to give any kind of sophistication....In conclusion, Vampira wasted her time sueing Elvira. Vampira wasn´t immortal, she´s dead now. Elvira is tacky, she looks like a dark hooker.

If you want to know more about Maila Nurmi, check out this link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maila_Nurmi

Some sketches from my first year at fashion college

Here are some sketches I did for my very first gothic proyect....

The drawing is not fantastic but I´m still proud of them...

I haven´t made them yet but I thought it would be interesting to post them on my blog. They are the original seed that inspired me the idea of doing "practical gothic" clothing.

I´m becoming a vampire......help! help!

I am currently doing my final year´s proyect. (My very last chapter of my horrific fashion degree). I could describe it as tiring and stressful, but those adjectives wouldn´t be the exact words to describe the real situation. If you work in Fashion OR still studying, you would have an idea of what I´m talking about...
THE VAMPIRIZING EFFECT OF FINISHING YOUR PROJECT...ON TIME!!

You start to hide from the daylight and the clocks as a very desperate attempt to stop the time or get away from it....Your nights, those precious relaxing moments long time ago, become your working shifts until the daylight appears again. After hours and hours of euphoric work that never seems to end, you start to think you´re immortal but it´s not because your strength but the illegal amount of caffeine that is swimming within your blood veins.
You don´t need to wait long until you start to see the effects on your face: deep purple bags under your eyes, your face (once white, or "yellowy-I´m sick of typhus like" in my case) turns into a pale-translucent shade, and your teeth....yes! they start to get suspiciously more prominent and sharp than usual due to grinding your teeth (an unmistakeable very first sign of a future hysterical crisis, weeping included).
Now, this is what REALLY fashion is about. (Non-gothic fashion too)

Fimo Spiders!!!!!!

I´ve always dreamed of brooched spiders! I´ve tried to made some with fimo, it´s easier to use than what it seams (it´s like working with plasticine......) Here are the results of my first attempt. More will come soon..........with shiny black beads on!

What is Goth about? (part one)

I´ve been doing a bit of research through the net and it didn´t come as a surprise to find lots of forums where the typical "gobshit" tells you WHAT is goth, What is not, WHAT you must or must not listen, read, wear, think in order to be CONSIDERED goth. It makes me laugh BUT in a sad way, keeping in mind that this subculture -as any other urban tribe- emphasize its rupture from the mainstream through an individidualistic and extreme attitude with their clothes, music and other physical/artistic manifestations.
There are as many different types of Goths or youths "into goth" as gravestones in a cemetery, but that doesn´t mean some are more goths than other ones. The problem is that people tend to classify everyone else who is different from them as "the others" without taking a minute to think who might be into what.
Music and specially Fashion, the field this blog is mainly aimed to; have always been the display of someone´s or a specific social group´s ideas. Since de 1950s, when the phenomena of urban tribes started, a part of the society -the young one- has always expressed their feeling of rebellion and alienation through very specific and extreme attitutes and looks.
But the question is, what is really Goth? Why are that people dressed in black? In order to understand Goth, it´s necessary to understand what PUNK was really about, because Goth is a derivation of this ephemeral urban movement. Punk was born in the 1970´s of a miserable United Kingdom as a reaction to the stemmed political-economical situation (despite all the economical and social progress of the earlier decade, the country was suffering an alarming increase in unemployment, the lifestyle was getting more expensive and also, there was the crisis of the petrol) and the doomed and more and more commercialized Rock, whose artificial and over the top looks and empty messages, the youngsters didn´t feel identified with. The Punk, rather than being based on making music, it was based on the social denuntiation.

GLAMOUR turns contemporary

I have fallen in love with this pic from the last Gucci collection. There´s no other image to show how the modern woman should look.....elegant, SUPER feminine, polished, mysterious....a woman that makes you admire her and also fear her...... Her look fluctuates between the sublime and terror.....I can´t wait to start to make my samples!

By the way, Jessica Stam is just gorgeous......