Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.

Underground > Art, Fashion & Design >

Johnny Cash is dead: who else can wear all black and not look foolish?

Tuna Ghost: Pratt knot hero

20:16 / 29.07.04

Unless you are a clergy member, a ninja, or the pirate ghost of Johnny Cash, can you wear all black all the time? Who else besides these persons do it?

00:10 / 30.07.04

New Yorkers

03:04 / 30.07.04

To quote the singer from Primal Scream;

" Americans can't dress for shit. "

08:38 / 30.07.04

Sydneysiders. You know they shot all the Matrix movies here, right? I took a walk down Darling Harbour the other month, and I realised everybody was dressed either like Neo, Trinity, Morpheus, or a Smith. I slinked away, muttering something about spoons and orgasm cake...

Skeleton Camera

17:02 / 01.08.04

A group of friends and I were watching a local band pile themselves into a restaurant last night. If everyone dressed like they were rock stars, we'd be one step closer to a better world.

07:15 / 02.08.04

Nick Cave? Probably not quite what you're looking for, because he looks pretty sharp by wearing nothing but black and carrying a huge church Bible around with him, but it's who I thought of when I read your question.

11:17 / 02.08.04

Dressing entirely in black is one of those things that seems to work better in theory than in practice. I've never really seen it done that well outside of films and television.

Tryphena Absent

20:13 / 02.08.04

Anyone who's not too fat or too thin can successfully dress in black. Funeral dress is sharp.

No star here laces

00:34 / 03.08.04

I wore all black on saturday night. I went to a party where I got three glasses of red wine poured over my head by a beautiful french girl from Mauritius. Then we kissed. She told me everyone wanted to have sex with her and it was boring. Then we went to the Mitre hotel and sat and talked about chinese ghost stories with some drifters before going back to her flat. She had only just moved in the day before and there were boxes everywhere. We kissed some more and then passed out.

The next morning we had bloody maries and champagne for breakfast.

I tell this story because it was quite a rock evening. And because I never usually wear all-black. It has no moral.

I think the looking sharp in all-black rules are: only wear real black, not faded black. Trousers should not be too baggy. The more formal the better - ideally if you're going to wear all-black, you should wear a suit.

And also resist the temptation to accessorise with lots of silver. That's just tacky.

09:00 / 03.08.04

Damn, boy, you should wear all black more often, if that's what happens.

Ex

13:17 / 05.08.04

Nick Cave? Probably not quite what you're looking for

..in part because on his days off from bible-toting and pose-striking, he relaxes in a lemon yellow nylon V-neck jumper.
No, really. Lives down the road from me. Yellow sweater.

Probably I have been too long among goths, but all-black has become my default, and people who wear colours have started to look odd to me. As thought they're trying to communicate something important, but I can't understand.

Skeleton Camera

20:56 / 06.08.04

I'm still floating in goth-land, possibly even headed for major re-entry (No! No! That's a GOOD thing!), and thus concur:

Only real black, deep black. Preferably all blacks match. No fades.

Tight w/o being super-tight. Unless you're into the super-tight look, which by all means go for. But for standard wear keep it "fitted."

Silver can work well. Just don't overdo it or else ye looketh like an early-teens D&D player. (Been there...)

And, lessfaceit, it does seem more of a 'pose' or 'costume' piece than daily wear. Especially if Nick Cave is wandering around in a yellow sweater. This is also the trick to keeping that black DEEP BLACK - less wear, the better. (Though my stretch jeans faded within two washes, which angers me.)

Jack The Bodiless

11:11 / 20.08.04

And also resist the temptation to accessorise with lots of silver. That's just tacky.

Hey! Fuck you, fuckball!

Lilly Nowhere Late

09:05 / 25.08.04

I always wear all black. I may look foolish. All my clothes are black other than the odd white tee shirt, one greenypaisley-ish top and one red top. O and my "mood lingerie" are sometimes other colours.
I feel like a flower if I even try to wear colours and most people who are too colourful look like clowns to me.

Right now everything I'm wearing is black: shirt, skirt, knickers, shoes, hair clip...

All this can be explained by the fact that for the last million years, I've been a hairdresser.

Hairdressers used to nearly always wear black.

I've never seen one toting a bible.

21:22 / 02.09.04

Neil Gaiman does it, rather spiffily.

Regrettable Juvenilia

10:39 / 03.09.04

Sadly he has the exact same name as a past-it comics writer who looks like a prat.

Skeleton Camera

19:38 / 03.09.04

Naaah...just a slightly androgynous being somewhere between 15 and 48...but who can tell?

02:48 / 15.09.04

Wait- you can get clothes that aren't black?

at the scarwash

16:06 / 16.09.04

gaiman wears sunglasses indoors. That disqualifies him as far as I'm concerned.

flufeemunk effluvia

01:18 / 19.09.04

gaiman wears sunglasses indoors. That disqualifies him as far as I'm concerned.

Heretic!

19:32 / 21.09.04

Sadly he has the exact same name as a past-it comics writer who looks like a prat.

i can't decide whether or not i'm willing to totally give up on Neil Gaiman's comic-writing ability, but i agree with Flyboy's assessment of his (lack of) fashion sense. he's got exactly the look you MUST avoid if you're going to pull off the all-black thing.

18:24 / 21.11.04

almost everyone i know wears all-black, all the time, to the point where people take note if you wear something that isn't black.

the two acceptable accent colors seem to be red and shiny.

then again, i hang out with a lot of punks

Brigade du jour

22:28 / 02.12.04

I wore all black when I was about 21 but it was just a phase. Now I only do it when I'm feeling quite unattractive.

I don't think it's a general no-no, but yeah it looks better on some than on others.

Jesus that was a non-committal answer!

12:02 / 03.12.04

I started the day thinking that my cute all-black combo (with black and white ribbon accessory) was a Tim Burton-esque take on secretary chic.
Having read this thread, I can't help but worry that I look like a goth hairdresser.

02:29 / 04.12.04

I've been wearing a lot of black lately, but then I've been looking a lot like Neil Gaiman lately too.
Lordy do I need a haircut.

09:12 / 06.12.04

If you're going to wear all black (and if it works for you why not), then the lack of definition that might normally be provided by colour can be provided by other things. Eg structure or tailoring or texture. Thinking about your average goth, they nearly always have fishnet tights in their wardrobe, even the boys. Many I know have an obsession with shiny things and velvety things. F-ts are a good example of how you could break up an outfit using texture (and shading) so that even if you are *technically* wearing all black you don't disappear into an amorphous blob.

Similarly many women wear black top / skirt / shoes and then tights which are nominally black but are a low dernier, so that they come out as leg + shading. Technically all black but not. It can help if the top and the skirt aren't the same texture too. Thinking about LBDs (the most traditional all-in-black-outfit apart from the suit) they are generally on the shorter side (lots of leg) and very rarely do you see people going out in a short dress go "I know! where are my most opaque tights?" (apologies if you're reading this and you really like thick opaque tights).

Really I think anyone wearing fairly worn out faded clothes can look a bit manky, it's just much easier to pigeon hole if it's all black.

21:41 / 01.01.05

I shave my head and usually wear all black (though most of my black clothes have faded into some kind of almost-black color, so I'm not as much of a minimalist as I may seem at first glance...) It's not a statement of any kind, I'm simply a lazy pig when it comes to dressing myself, and black is definitely the most sensible choice for such a person - that, and the fact that I was quite into Chinese ink for some time; it's easier to dye your clothes completely black than to get the ink stains out of them...

Most of my wardrobe is a bit too worn-out for me to look "sharp", but being an old punk in a creative profession, I can get away with that. And the look certainly has its advantages, as long as you don't take yourself overly seriously.

Perhaps the only real drawback is that my less critical fellow citizens regularly mistake me for everything from a one-man Black Bloc to a hardcore neo-nazi, or any possible combination of the two.