Dark Down Under: Sydney, Australia Goth Industrial parties & events, Gothic Steampunk shops & fashion.
Wednesday, September 29th, 2010 by La Carmina
Hello, I’m La Carmina, your travel guide to the darkest and most fashionable spots on the globe! This month, we dip down under into Sydney, Australia. I interview Leanne (The Fashionate Traveller) about the best Gothic/Industrial shops and nightlife that her home has to offer. (That’s her in the dreaded wigs, above, with Amelia of Angelspit. The first three images are courtesy of her.)
La Carmina: Tell me a bit about yourself.
Leanne: I’m an Aussie girl who’s into alternative/Gothic fashion and blogs about it, as well as her travel adventures round the world. I used to be the Fashion Editor for Australian Gothic magazine “Fiend”, but I left last year to concentrate more on my blog and have more time to travel. I travel to Japan twice a year to keep up with the Gothic/alternative fashion, people, music and clubs there, and I also go to three or so other places each year, often in Asia.
La Carmina: How did you first become interested and involved in Goth /underground subcultures in Sydney?
Leanne: I was always into alternative music, and first went to a Gothic club “Ritual” probably 1998. I loved the clothing: how gorgeous the girls looked in the corsets and long pvc skirts, and how gorgeous the guys were too! I was surprised that I knew so much of the music: not only Sisters of Mercy, Siouxsie, The Cure, and the Cult, but also Tea Party, Bauhaus, Joy Division, Severed Heads, The Church, Prodigy, Marilyn Manson, Rob Zombie, Filter & the Crystal Method…
When I started going out with my now husband, I dragged him back to the Goth club, as well as other ones such as Hellrazor and later, Wake the Dead and Vortex. We loved being able to hear “our” sort of music and meet new lovely people as well. Soon we became fixtures on the scene and now go to Goth/industrial/alternative clubs nearly every weekend. In Australia, the clubs are reasonably open, so you don’t have to be fully Gothed up to get in.
La Carmina: How would you describe Gothic fashion in Sydney/Australia?
Leanne: There continues to always be the Victorian/Edwardian element, so there will always be girls in corsets, with long skirts or gowns. The cyber look was really popular from when I became a regular in 2003/4, where the look was PVC everything: shiny buckled platform boots, hair falls in rubber/tubing/bright color dreadlocks , short PVC skirts, lots of chrome D-rings, reflective materials, lights that blinked on and off, LEDs.
I myself used to dress this way, although Amelia – aka DestroyX (who also used to live in Newtown) was probably the poster girl for the look. Amelia put in my first dreads; she was the reigning fake hair queen, and used to sell fantastic dreadlocks for braiding in or as falls. This was before she & Karl started Angelspit. (Wildilocks is another fake hair queen from Perth, and she now has salons in Melbourne, Perth & in NZ.)
There were also more guys in pirate shirts and the whole new romantic Goth look back in the early 2000′s. Now many wear industrial type gear – black pants with bondage straps and buckles, and the military look is popular too.
Cyber is a little less prominent now – although the younger kids still love it to death. A lot of the older goths have moved more into Steampunk. The style is gaining prominence here in Australia, but is not as big as in the US & UK.
We’ve had semi-regular Steampunk events for the past few years (esp in Melbourne), but this year was the first time Sydney had a Steampunk Symposium as part of the Fringe festival and the Gothic/ alternative arm of the festival, Under the Blue Moon (which had Fashion Parade Lunarmorph later in the night after the Steampunk Symposium). I wrote posts on these here and here.
We’ve also seen a lot of Goths get into the burlesque and vintage/rockabilly scenes, so there is quite a bit of crossover, esp at clubs like Black Cherry. Some have completely left the Goth scene and totally embraced the vintage subculture, while others combine semi-Goth attire like corsets with hair in victory rolls.
La Carmina: Can you recommend some Sydney /Australia clothing brands, designers and shops? (Photos above from a Fiend Magazine steampunk shoot.)
Leanne: There are so many! Enmore Road in Enmore/Newtown is the Gothic Mile and has quite a few goth, punk, fetish & alternative businesses – clothing, hairdressers, piercing places, art galleries. My blog post here sums it up.
Gallery Serpentine is a fantastic corsetmaker and sells a lot of really high quality alt fashion. Reactor Rubber is absolutely ace for latex and other fetish gear. In Visible light is great for costumes, steampunk gear, novelty items, dolls, contact lenses etc (see my blog post for more on all these) The Wild One is quite cyber with lots of PVC. There’s also House of Fetish on Oxford St in Darlinghurst, which sells Goth and fetish wear.
As for labels: Purpur is a new military one from Russia (now in Melbourne) that’s very popular. Beserk is an online store based in QLD. Matt Bylett is an amazing costumier who does fantastic things in latex. He did the costumes and some prosthetics/creatures for sci-fi series Farscape. DollyQ is from Melbourne Victoria – great fashion, corsets, crinolines, fashion forward stuff. Sydney Tentacle Threads is new and very Tim Burton. Geomythik is a label and she also runs the alternative fashion shwo Worn Wild in Sydney and Melbourne.
The big Sydney alt fashion parade is Lunarmorph. The other big Goth/alt fashion show is Circa Nocturna http://www.circanocturna.com/ but in Melbourne only.
La Carmina: If I came to Sydney/Australia and you were my tour guide, where would you take me to party? (Photos above and below from Cobweb Club.)
Leanne: Here’s a LiveJournal community for Sydney Goths, and a big Aussie Goth resource. There’s a really active scene in the major cities of Australia, with Sydney & Melbourne offering the most variety (though Queensland and Perth also have good clubs). My favorites are Die Maschine (Goth), Berserk (Industrial) and Cobweb Club (Goth/deathrock/post-punk) in Sydney. At Cobweb, the DJs and patrons alike sport huge deathrock hairdos and sometimes white /skeleton face make-up, and wear old school clothes – ripped, holed, layered fishnets etc.
Also check out Shallow Nation (Harsh EBM, Industrial), Black Cherry (alt generally, some old Goth stuff, also punk, cockrock, glam, rockabilly, psychobilly), and also the non-Goth but Goth friendly Take It or Leave It: a ska and punk club (with a tiny bit of old school like Siouxsie).
There is also the new and semi-occasional Pandimensional Halloween Syndicate that last time had a band called the Barons of Tang who were billed as Gypsy Deathcore (!) and a performance from Burtonesque characters (as well as burlesque, which has soared in popularity recently). Also the Steampunk club that occurs every few months called Steam Engine ix. Many clubs are on once a month, some are every few months. Sometimes there are several on at the same time, so it’s hard to choose, esp if you have broad musical tastes!
Bonus interview! I asked Gerry, the editor of Fiend Magazine, for his input on Melbourne’s Goth fashion and scene. He runs Melbourne goth club Cabaret Nocturne, created Goth City Maps, and brings out bands through Rivetting Promotions.
Gerry: I’ve been involved with clubs in Melbourne since I moved here from Ireland about 8 years ago. It all started via a chance encounter at a very quiet alternative club when the promoter started chatting to me, the following week I was DJing there, which later led me to meet my friend and business partner Thomas with whom I run Cabaret Nocturne to this day.
Melbourne has quite a fractious scene in terms of style. We have very strong and passionate contingents from the Deathrock/Oldschool Gothic, through to Cyber and Rivethead right up to Steampunk enthusiasts. Cabaret Nocturne seems to draw a fairly even spread of the above due to our eclectic music policy and multi-room format.
Club culture seems to drive our fashion a fair bit, for example there is a very driven Deathrock/Trad Goth group of promoters and DJs who have really brought about a resurgence of that style in Melbourne in recent years, similarly I think bands like Angelspit have kept the more Cybergoth look alive over the whole country. Steampunk and vintage looks have certainly grown significantly in recent years.
For shopping I might suggest checking out the Melbourne entry on rudimentary but useful Goth City Maps site I’ve created. As for clubs, Melbourne has an extremely diverse and ever evolving club scene with a strong mix of weekly and monthly events, long standing stalwarts like Cab Noc and Golgotha are always to be relied on but there is usually a number of new and interesting niche events coming and going too. Obviously I’d bring you along to Cabaret Nocturne for a party you’d likely never forget… if it were a public holiday weekend, Golgotha would be a must. If your tastes are more specialized somewhere like Z-1 or The Shock of the New would satisfy your desires for dark beats, or the ever popular DV8 for any goth, rock and metal impulses.
Thanks to Rachel Black for the bonus photos above, which show outfits from Australia Goth events in the 1990s. And thank you to Gerry and Leanne for the in-depth interviews.
I hope this edition encourages you to fly down under and experience Australia’s Gothic shops and culture! Check back next month, for the next Global Gothic column. Til then, you can see my Tokyo / Japan Gothic & Lolita shopping maps, photos and club guides on my blog: www.lacarmina.com/blog
† Dark Wishes †
LA CARMINA
