Truthfully, Goth needs more than one general overview, but one should do it for most folks. I would say in rock visuals today you have three basic kinds of Goth-the traditional "romantic" goths who wear the capes and corsets, minimalist goths who wear plain black clothes and then the newest edition, the gothic Lolitas who look like the illegitimate offspring of Marilyn Manson and Gwen Stefani. Many goths wandering the streets of large cities or high school hallways today are often a hybrid between the safety-pin wearing punks and black wearing goths. They just haven't come up with a name for the look yet, although the men of Green Day seem to be the current best example of it.

In talking about goth, the funny part with most rock subcultures is how much overlap there is in different rock subcategories. The devil is really in the details. Goth is a fun example of how a few conspicuous details distinguish one group of people from another. For example wearing black is part of musical subculture dating back to beatniks, stretching through punk, into the New Romantics/Goths eras, and now into the B-boy and Two-tone movements. Indeed, black seems to be the official color of non-conformists and religious clergy everywhere. The only way I can explain the logic of that thinking is because most societies associate black with an advanced sense of spiritual awareness, dedication to learning a discipline or craft (literally, if you are Wiccan), and mourning or sadness. Somewhere along the line black also developed erotic connotations as well, so wearing black became a mark of being either sexy, intelligent, spiritual-or all three-depending on the viewer.

The best way to explain goth is to break it down into a pattern of evolution. Goth as we know it is an offshoot of the New Romantics movement, which was an offshoot of Punk. What happened was that there was a group of punks in London in the very late 1970's who wanted to wear more elaborate, historical or just less tacky-looking clothes than the street punks. So those people became part of what we now call the New Romantics movement, which took off around 1979-1981. New Romantics had less of an impact in the United States but was pretty hot in the UK. Within the New Romantics movement, there started to be people who took the idea literally, and began pairing the frilly shirts with the boots and makeup, and lots of black. As theatrical and fanciful as the New Romantics might look to us, it wasn't ornate or dressy enough for them. Thus, the Goth look was born.

The kind of Goth look that emerged from the New Romantics movement is the one that tends to feature the silver crosses, bats and spiders, capes and corsets that have entered the popular imagination as "Goth". It was designed to be over the top, uncomfortable and as a result, reactionary to the punk movement. The white skin, make-up and preference for black and red haircolors are remnants from its punk origin. Most of these Goths will wear black clothes, with red or less commonly, purple accents. You do sometimes see tartans in red and black, which is also a leftover punk trait. Romantic goths tend to be more artistic in general, so they are more likely to have the more detailed goth clothes and jewelry. The silver crosses and skull motifs are really a bad popular stereotype of goth, although you will see them in a more intricate shape or form on some early romantic goths. Romantic goth has lots of room for personalization, and some wear jewelry with Celtic, Art Nouveau or Egyptian themes. Our romantic goth friends are also the most likely to be into that other goth stereotype, vampirism. So you will see coffin motifs, finger armor, strange contact lenses, pointed fingernails and sometimes even prosthetic fangs on these folks. Lady goths like to add that they felt punk was too unisex and they liked the femininity of the goth look with the big hair, makeup, velvet, lace, and jewelry. Romantic goth is just not a macho look-unless you happen to be Johnny Depp in a certain pirate movie.

As far rock stars go, you don't see a lot of bands currently with the romantic goth image, quite possibly because of the non-macho image it embraces. The romantic goth elements of long hair, velvet and silver jewelry are just not what is seen as sexy on most men at the moment. What was seen as desirable in the 80's changed with the advent of grunge and rap, and will of course continue to evolve for future generations. Since we seem to be smack dab in the middle of an 80's revival, I predict we will see a revival of romantic goth sooner than later. In the meantime, the best bands you can see for something that resembles an "authentic" romantic goth look are the Damned and The Cult videos from the eighties. You don't want to go back too far visually for the Damned, because they did start out as a punk band, and you won't see the goth influence in "Smash it Up", for instance. The Cult also have a bit of romantic goth undertones in their 80's videos as well, with a strong hint of Jim Morrison thrown in. Of course, being incredibly handsome didn't exactly ding their appeal, either!

The minimalist goth look is even harder to come by in rock. Rock is often about extremes and oftentimes, showcasing one's wealth and accumulation of expensive clothes and jewelry, or lack thereof for some subgroups. Minimalist goth has quite the interesting background itself. While the romantic goth image has ties to the legends of Dracula and vampirism, it's been theorized that the wellspring for techno/minimalist goth was the computer revolution of the late 1970's and the concept of the android. The film Blade Runner was an enormous influence on minimalist goth, although it is fair to say that the look was around before the movie came out in 1982. Probably the earliest techno goth was Gary Numan, who was not much darker than a ghost and wore black suits, shirts, and skinny ties, with a healthy helping of eyeliner to boot. Numan even suggested the link to Mr. Roboto himself with a record called Replicas, a nod to the machines in the book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? that became the basis for Blade Runner a few years later. The whole look was very streamlined and neat-which makes carrying it off for the more adiposity-blessed goth difficult. Minimalist to these folks means exactly that-they don't have skulls, bats, chains, lace, anythingthat can detract from the clean line of the black clothes.

The real kings of the minimalist goth look are Peter Murphy and his Bauhaus/Love and Rockets bandmates, who can not only sing while hanging backwards, but can look sexy as hell past 40 while doing it. Peter's a little unusual in that he is able to get away with being a blond goth, but we let him slide just because he's so adorable and looks really good in black. Their outfits are always a delight to watch, because they tend to be not only minimalist but unusually constructed, which is somewhat unusual for men's clothing in general. You can see some other classic general "goth" elements in Bauhaus videos-the all white outfit, pointy boots, and black gloves (goths like black gloves. I guess they show less dirt than white ones?). Platform boots were not a goth element until the mid-late 1990's, and you almost never see them before then on a goth. Another group-Sisters of Mercy-have a blend of both romantic and minimalist goth in their image and videos, and it puts the differences between the two in a good context for comparison.

The female minimalist goth look on a woman is almost unheard of in rock music. The connotations of an all-black outfit with no jewelry or ornamentation would be seen as Amish, and good god, most women don't want to be sporting "Amish chic". Especially in rock! So I can't cite Tracy Chapman as an example because she isn't a goth, she's a folk singer. You can't quite stick Sinéad into the minimalist goth category either, although between the black turtlenecks and Docs, she's a smidge closer to it than Tracy, I suppose. Patti Smith was on to the idea way before any of them with her skinny black jeans and shirts, and she also is an example of an almost-but-not-quite lady minimalist goth. I know she'd probably smack me upside the head for saying this, but I happen to think Annie Lennox has been as close to a female minimalist goth as we're ever gonna get within a rock music context. I don't say that because her wardrobe has a masculine overtone, but because it falls within what would be defined as minimalist and goth, particularly up until she released Diva in 1992. If you look at her clothes before then, she wore a lot of black or white, not a lot of jewelry and the clothes themselves tended not to be overly-ornamental. She may toy with more colorful vintage clothes on occasion, but her image overall comes closest to what the picture of minimalist goth would be on a woman.

In between Annie's black suits and Gwen's granny pantalettes, you had Marilyn Manson, who was neither fully goth nor fully punk. He was too effeminate-looking to be totally punk, yet he was too punkish-looking to be fully goth. His love of 70's glam gods like Bowie and Alice Cooper infused the element of glitter and platforms into the mainstream goth look, now commercially available at stores likeHot Topic and Torrid. It was his music and persona that became the basis for many goth stereotypes, good, bad, and funny. The link between his music and the shooters at Columbine High School in 1999 tainted the goth movement as being one of depressed, maladjusted persons who wore long black coats and hated society in general. It was a double-edged sword that drew people in out of wanting to announce their "not belonging", but also drew anger from other goths because of his links with the Church of Satan and his promotion of funky sexual ideas. It's not that goths weren't a little different in the latter arena, it was just that sexual proclivities were (and often are) something private between other goths.

Not that Mr. Manson was the first goth personality to be a little off in sex department. The very man who penned Alice in Wonderland also had some tastes that were not the norm in the 19th century. It was his heroine Alice whose outfit in the book would become the basis for the next chapter in goth evolution-the Loligoth, or Gothic Lolita. This look is somewhat less stringent in terms of color than the romantic goth or minimalist goth. Loligoth will probably never fully quite catch on in many countries where the notion of sexualizing the dress of young girls makes people squirm. Loligoth fashion takes most of it's cues from the traditional dress of upper-class Victorian girls, and followers even have tea parties with dainty cakes they scour the internet to find tips on creating. Clothing-wise, look normally involves a short dress worn over visible, dainty petticoats or frilly pantalettes, often with pinafore and large bows in the hair. Shoes are often a version of the classic girl's mary jane, and stockings are sometimes thigh high or are tights with garters worn over them. While some feminists see the look as infantilizing women, other feminists argue that by virtue of it being "female only", it's actually empowering them. In the wake of underaged female acts dressing in an overly sexual manner, the Loligoth look is probably a bit reactionary in of itself. I do think the trend is exactly that-a trend that will not be as long-lasting as the Romantic goth look. It tries to be little girly and sexy and the same time, very much like the idealized mini-skirted girl with long straight hair and body of the mid-1960's.

Of course, I also thought Madonna was a flash in the pan, and we all know how right I was about that.