To cleanse your palate of the awful goth fashion I inflicted on you yesterday, here are pictures of some hawt men wearing fashions from centuries past, mainly Victorian.

You can see the rest of the images here, courtesy of my friend Kat. Not sure which fashion magazine these came from, but YEAH!

Gloves + cane + covered neck = I’d hit it like the angry fist of god.

I love this photo by Hyperion for its milky, opalescent quality. Most “scene portraits” try to be loud and in-your-face, so it’s interesting to see portraits that are so muted that still manage to resonate a great deal of strength. Hyperion shoots mostly on film and uses sculptural hairpieces to fill up the square compositions. I sometimes disagree with the makeup choices in his images, but when it all comes together, it’s pure magic.

Today we are going to play a game! It’s called “Gothic Outfit or Halloween Costume?” There are eight gothic ensembles in this post; some of them are actual outfits designed by alternative clothing labels to be worn out and about in the scene, others are Halloween costumes intended for adults who want to play-pretend to be goths one day out of the year. Can you guess which is which? Test yourself after the jump!

Dee is an unknown superstar, casting songs like blessings… She is one of the most remarkable and unclassifiable artists I have ever encountered. Muse, manic, maniac, possessed by such beauty and pain, so intensely real and yet so mythical. Songster, trickster, breaker of hearts, with songs so cruel and kind that it leaves me spinning.
–David Tibet of Current 93

A gusty spring evening in Manhattan in the late 90s. It’s sort of dead in the East Village, not a lot of people out. I’m sitting at some sidewalk cafe nursing a hangover when I hear the distant wheeze of an accordion and this implacable, warbling voice. At first I figure it’s music on the cafe stereo so I don’t look up, but I’m thinking… who on earth does that vocalist remind me of? Mel Torme? Biff Rose? My great auntie? Such an oddly comforting sound. Gradually it dawns on me that the music is actually coming from up the street and getting louder. I finally look up from my cappuccino to see this wild-haired, cat-faced lady gliding up to the curb, perched 12 feet in the air on a custom-built tricycle with an enormous gilded harp lashed to the back.

She parks her trike next to a Harley Davidson, carefully dismounts with her accordion and croons a sad, sweetly funny song about a sailor… or a girl… a small crowd gathers, beaming her beatific smile back at her. At the end of her ditty she graciously curtsies, accepting coins and small bills from all of us, then gets back on her tricycle and pedals away, cackling insanely. She is an irresistible creature. The cheers and applause continue long after her waving form has disappeared around the corner.

Fast forward a couple of years. A band called Antony and the Johnsons is taking the city by storm, and I recognize the harpist by her contagious cackle. Her name is Baby Dee, and apparently she’s made it her life’s calling to charm the pantaloons off everyone she meets, including Will Oldham, Michael Gira, Marc Almond and David Tibet, the last of whom started releasing Dee’s solo albums on his record label Durtro a few years ago.

Pierrot was my first crush, and I mean the very first one, the one before real life boys, girls, etc. It all began with a life size doll [the size of a 6 year old anyhow] of a crying jester. More of a fusion of Pierrot and Harlequin, he had long noodly limbs, painted fingernails and a white made up moon-face with permanent blue teardrops slightly raised on the plastic surface. I assigned him a variety of appropriately tragic personalities in accordance with whatever game I was playing that day.

The name “Pierrot” didn’t hold any meaning until I read Buratino – Tolstoy’s version of Pinnochio. He was Buratino’s dismal friend, eternally pining for Malvina the blue-haired doll. I was smitten by his dapper costume in the 1975 film version of the book. The magnificent ruff and floor-length sleeves on the squeaky pallid boy left a permanent impression.

Guten Morgen. Or should I say, unhealthy Hallogallo…

No visual conveys the wide-eyed, wondering delight of NEU! quite as joyfully as this video.

The music of this seminal Krautrock duo lives up to the name. How these songs have retained their aura of newness over the years is a mystery. For the briefest window in time, elements of glimmering psychedelic prog, robotic disco and thumping space rock coalesced and one of the most understated yet influential sounds in 20th century music was born.

NEU! formed in Düsseldorf, Germany, in 1971 after wunderkinds Michael Rother and Klaus Dinger split from a more well-known outfit called Kraftwerk. Their self-titled debut was recorded in four days (with Can producer Conrad Plank). An eye-blink later, NEU! had disbanded. Yet their influence on music spans multiple decades and genres. Everyone from Julian Cope to David Bowie to Sonic Youth to Negativland to Stereolab has cited the duo as an inspiration. As the above video attests, the love fest will undoubtedly continue well into this century.

Korean scientists reached a new milestone by cloning several Turkish Angora cats that glow under UV light. Intended for genetic research, these felines had fluorescent genes added to their donor’s cells during the cloning process. Provided this doesn’t somehow result in a black market for glowcat fur stoles, it’s pretty great for both research and glow-stuff enthusiasts worldwide.

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/upQ_a-ch-pU" width="400" height="330" wmode="transparent" /]

You may also remember the green glow-pigs of recent science history.

That was the Tank Girl of the 90s, the one I fell in love with. We didn’t hear from her for over a decade, but this year she re-emerged in The Gifting, a new series by Alan Martin (the original creator) and illustrator Ashley Wood. What does the Tank Girl of 2007 look like? Alan Martin had the following to say:

Here’s the emerging new look for Tank Girl. We were concerned that she didn’t make her re-appearance in the same, tired old clothes that she bowed out in some twelve years ago. What was alternative, upsetting, anarchic, and just plain odd-ball back then has since become common place. Mainstream media smothers us daily with punky chic, and modern day babies can be seen sporting spikey hairdos and Travis Bickle T-shirts. The uniform of the cultural revolutionary has been sold to The Man. So how to rebel? How give the finger to the fashion fascists? Normal is the only way ahead. Dress like a high school teacher from the mid-eighties, or pick clothes from your boring aunty’s wardrobe. The only way left to rebel is to dress like you’re not rebelling. We hope to bring a whole different flavour to Tank Girl, as she borrows ideas from past cultural reference points (Fay Dunaway in Bonnie & Clyde, anyone?).

I completely feel what Alan Martin is saying. I like the look of the new Tank Girl drawings. However, the old-school, combat-boot-wearing, band-aid-covered, baseball-bat-wielding, kinda-dykey Tank Girl of yore will always hold a very dear place in my heart.

I’ll come out and say it: I love Ashley Wood’s amazing drawing style, but the new Tank Girl look doesn’t really do it for me. Maybe I’m being way too nostalgic, but it’s also possible that what I’m reacting to is the idea that so many people have decided to rebel by not-trying-to-look-rebellious that it’s starting to look like an easy way out of any real effort. I’m not saying that to undermine Martin’s very important message (see our Hot Topic Rebranding post), but it may be possible that so many people have caught onto the “rebel by looking normal” notion, and so many are using it to lazily avoid any attempts at interesting self-expression through clothing, that I’m just hoping that the pendulum swings back to the other side. You know, the side with the band-aids and corrugated tubing and knee pads.

But I guess I should get over it and enjoy the story. Comic book characters change, if it’s a good comic. When Maggie from Love and Rockets gained weight and creator Jaime Hernandez insisted that this was the way that Maggie was meant to be, I thought that was incredibly touching and honest. It’s impossible to keep up a certain look forever, and the story can be just as interesting once that look is gone.

A little fashion for our male readers – designer Keanan Duffy’s Bowie line for Target provides affordable stylish basics. Inspired by David Bowie, this collection offers skinny ties, vests and tight pants in muted colors, which can all be found in one place at reasonable cost.

If you haven’t stepped foot into a Target in months, this might be a good reason to do so. Or you can throw caution to the wind and shop online, instead – the web store presents the outfits in flash video format, so you can actually see how they look in motion on live humans, which is helpful. I really like some of these looks but menswear never fits me properly without significant alteration. The Bowie collection is at Target for a limited time only so if you dig it, hurry!

We must never forget where we come from, peeps. Never! When I went to Russia last summer and saw this shawl, I knew it was destiny.

Now, a little language lesson for all. What you see me wearing below is a shawl. A shawl is called “shahl” in Russian. It is not called a “babushka”. A babushka, in fact, is a little old lady or grandmother. While these are often spotted wearing shawls on their heads they are not shawls themselves. Next time you see a shawl, you will KNOW.

And of course, even shadow-ninjas need familiars, particularly portable ones.