Gothic Chic Revival

Burton’s misunderstood misfits built an empire of aesthetic darkness that fashion can’t quit.

Model backstage at the Autumn/Winter 2024 Dilara Findikoglu show. Photo credits go to Acielle / Style Du Monde. Available at Vogue Scandinavia © All rights belong to their respective owners. No copyright infringement intended.

Every fall, fashion reaches for its shadows. Last year, Prada leaned into black-focused palettes, Simone Rocha staged a Victorian Wake, and Preen by Thornton Bregazzi resurrected Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein . This year, it’s increasingly about what lingers in the dark, and beneath the veils, tulle, and theatrics, one particular figure haunts the moodboards: Tim Burton.

No director has made gothic sensibility so cinematic, so wearable, and so strangely chic. Since Beetlejuice (1988) turned Winona Ryder’s Lydia Deetz into a goth teen saint, razor-sharp fringe, black lace veil at dinner, pale skin set against her mother’s brash 1980s power suits, Burton has provided fashion with a wardrobe of outsiders. Edward Scissorhands, strapped in buckled leather and crowned with untamable hair, could have walked straight from Shelley’s Frankenstein into a Siouxsie Sioux gig. 

Through Burton’s eye, goth is not a monster but a romantic lead, the misunderstood figure standing proudly against fluorescent suburbia. Goth is never victimized, but presented as special and unique.

It really all started in Europe’s cathedrals, where architecture took to the Gothic including arches and gargoyles in their structures, adding grandeur and dramatism to the Romanesque cityscape. 

Not long after, the arts followed, with Romantic and Pre-Raphaelite art breathing emotion into the previously rigid, literal depictions of faith and form, evolving from Jacques-Louis David’s Oath of the Horatii to Füssli’s The Nightmare and Millais’ Ophelia. 

Writers like Mary Shelley and Edgar Allan Poe gave it narrative form, and by the 1970s, bands like The Cure and Bauhaus had turned centuries of dark imagery into a living subculture of black lace, eyeliner, and defiance.

This is the world Burton inherited, and the one he stitched together for film.

His genius is hybridization. He can take medieval arches, punk leather, Victorian lace, and B-movie horror, and crochet them into one theatrical silhouette. “Burton has both informed goth fashion and been inspired by it,” as the BBC noted. “He embraces hybridity, in keeping with the gothic journey throughout the centuries.”

However, the Burton aesthetic is not held back by the big screen, as much of his artform spills over into fashion, decor, and everyday iconography. Through his animations, Corpse Bride (2005) brought back corsets and lace into the runway, and, later, the mainstream, while Jack Skellington turned black and white stripes into a Halloween staple. 

The heart of his universe begins in pencil lines: bony figures, stitched hearts, and eyes too large for their faces. His sketches, like the one of Edward Scissorhands, show how darkness in Burton’s world can actually be tender, human, and strangely beautiful. Even though he has knives for hands, don’t you just wanna give him a hug?

One of the initial sketches for the character of Edward Scissorhands, drawn by Tim Burton in his classic style, in 1990, the same year the movie premiered. Image credits to Tim Burton. Available at Wordpress.  All rights belong to their respective owners. No copyright infringement intended.

This must be why Burton resists the label of “dark.” As Elle reported, “Tim says he really doesn’t like the word ‘dark’ being used in conjunction with his work… there’s lightness in the dark.” His goth is whimsical, absurd, romantic, as likely to break into dance as to brood in the shadows.

His influence has clearly stood the test of time, as demonstrated in the recent so-called “Burtoncore” aesthetic, a new wave of goth style reimagined for Gen Z. Jenna Ortega’s Wednesday (2022) and the sequel Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024) passed his icons to a new generation, while the look thrives online through TikTok recreations of Ortega’s Alaïa dance dress. As Catherine Spooner writes, the gothic has always been about emotion and atmosphere, and Burtoncore’s viral appeal shows just how deeply his mix of darkness and whimsy still resonates.

Every goth revival sparks the same debate: authenticity versus appropriation. Luxus-Plus reports purists calling Burtoncore shallow costume, while others welcome its visibility. Paul Hodkinson, author of Goth: Identity, Style and Subculture, argues it’s naïve to see subcultures as isolated: “Goth style has been endlessly borrowed from, in cycle upon cycle of art, fashion, film, popular music and more.”

Each revival leaves goth changed but still alive. Lydia’s veil, now a Pinterest aesthetic, once signified outsider defiance. Ortega’s Wednesday, streamed into 150 million households, still represents resistance to clichés of girlhood. Goth endures because it keeps moving, forever shifting shape but never losing its pulse.

Lourdes Igounet

Lourdes Igounet is an Argentinean journalist and editor, based in Buenos Aires. With a background in communication and a focus on cultural criticism, her work explores fashion, art, and media as reflections of identity and history. She believes style is never just surface, and neither is writing.

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