Tish Weinstock is a goth. Dark and daring with her porcelain skin, jet black hair and alluring attire, the vampy matriarch has taken the fashion and beauty worlds by the throat, becoming the beauty director at System and contributing beauty editor at British Vogue. So who better to propose a tome detailing the spookier side of those things than the queen of darkness herself. Weinstock’s debut book, How To Be A Goth: Notes On Undead Style, is the morbid style bible tracing the goth aesthetic across literature, art and fashion from Edgar Allan Poe’s Fall of The House of Usher to director Barry Sonnenfeld’s Morticia Addams. “It’s basically a love letter to all things morbid and macabre, it traces the history of goth, something that precedes the subculture in the ‘80s, and is a celebration of all things dark,” Weinstock says during an interview at her hauntingly magnificent, Victorian gothic home in West London. “It’s also a celebration of women, those who might not identify as goths but women who have been touched in some way by these gothic codes… so quite a broad spectrum of people.”
A decadently dark opus, How To Be A Goth: Notes On Undead Style reads in a way that feels similar to Susan Sontag’s Notes On “Camp”. But it does this in deeper detail, unfurling across three sections that map a woman’s life, “with style and beauty advice from your teen tearaway years to your mid-life crises to those final witchy winters,” says the Oxford University graduate. Starting out with notes on black, the hardback evolves into an investigation of goth heroines and ageing, shopping like a goth, living like a goth, hot goths, the future of goth, and finishes with a chapter on provoking society. Weinstock has even invited of-the-moment goths like Dilara Findikoğlu, Susie Cave, Michèle Lamy and more to sum up what it means to be a goth in their own words.
The kind of thing gothic fever dreams are made of, from start to finish Weinstock foregoes traditional imagery, opting for these adorably creepy illustrations by Aurel Schmidt instead. Think cats with tutus and bat wings, spiders in Loubis, Balenciaga dogs, toads in T-shirts and rats in Rick Owens. “It was important to me to not have any human woman because the whole point is that you can look so many different ways as a goth and these little funny animals embody this quite punk, irreverent spirit of goth.”
So what, according to Weinstock, does it mean to be a goth? “Being a goth is sort of a myriad of things, so many different facets apply to all areas of one’s life but essentially a goth is someone who identifies outside of the mainstream and who airs aesthetically, emotionally, spiritually, physically towards dark matter, towards the shadows of things,” she says.
Weinstock has always been drawn to the darker things. “Since I was little really, I wasn’t into princesses and pink, I was more into witches, I think because I thought I looked like one. I’m very pale with dark hair… I always thought I looked like the evil character, like Ursula and Maleficent, or the queen from Snow White… it was always those women, even the wicked witch – not when she’s an old hag though… It was always this specific look that was characterised as being the evil one that I was drawn to and it went from there really, and my interest grew into obsession.”
Aesthetically speaking, Morticia Addams is Weinstock’s muse, and not just because they share a nickname (Tish). “The first time I saw her on screen I was like oh my God who is this woman, the sort of bias-cut black dress with its eerie tendrils, the long raven hair, the red lips, and obviously Anjelica Huston is an icon, she very kindly gave me a quote for the book. [Morticia] taught me how to be a woman in a way that wasn’t very stereotypical and she shoos normative standards of beauty and does things on her own terms.”
In a final remark, Weinstock offers some beauty advice for anyone who wants to look a little more goth. “If you want to dip your toes in the gothic aesthetic, obviously [wear] black, those shadowy hues, the colours of the night, are a very easy way to dip your toe in. But I think the beautiful thing about the gothic aesthetic is that it’s about being unapologetically yourself. In the summer, I’ll even wear some pastel hued slip dresses from the ‘30s, which are quite romantic, so you can go vintage and be a pastoral goth with different colours [too]. It is just an attitude. I can’t give you specifics, but if you buy the book you can learn some more!” she says. “In terms of beauty, I used to wear layers and layers of kohl around my eyes growing up and I didn’t actually take my makeup off, I’d never wash my hair, it was matted so I really looked quite dirty. But for me it worked because I didn’t want people looking at me… well they looked at me and thought ‘you’re scary’ but that was then. Now I prefer less makeup with a dark red lip, rouge noir… I think it’s about making things work for you and finding out what it is that looks good and that you feel comfortable in.”
How To Be A Goth: Notes On Undead Style is out now. Sink your teeth into a copy here.
Tish Weinstock photographed by Mert & Marcus
