“…it was [Claudia’s] pleading that forced me to give up my rusty black for dandy jackets and silk ties and soft gray coats and gloves and black capes. Lestat thought the best color at all times for vampires was black, possibly the only aesthetic principle he steadfastly maintained, but he wasn’t opposed to anything which smacked of style and excess.”

– Louis de Pointe du Lac, Interview with the Vampire

Thinking that “someone who wears all black = goth” was an older sorta view of goth. Now there’s pastel goth, and steampunk goth, and all these crazy variations.

See, when people try to label me, I know what’s really happening, they’re trying to categorize, trying to assign words to something to better understand it… Maybe in the way that when people ask “Where are you from?” And you say, “New Jersey,” or “Portland,” or wherever, they are adding to their knowledge base of “People from New Jersey are ______“ or "People from Portland are ______”.  When in fact you really can’t compare one New Jersian or a Portlandian so simply. If I meet a nice person from Portland, are they ALL nice people there? Pfffft. Nope. 

When an older person says, “Wearing all black makes you look goth,” sometimes I feel like that’s a veiled kind of criticism, what they’re really saying is: “Other people who do not know you like I do might think that you are goth and make assumptions about you because you are dressed like one.”

Maybe they’re trying to help, like, if I had smtg on my face I would want someone to say, “Hey, are you okay, there’s alot of blood dripping down your chin there…”

Just proper etiquette!