Black is cool. Black-varnished fingernails, dramatically accentuated eyes, sombre clothes - Gothic is more in than ever. Even international fashion designers are getting in on the fear factor. But authentic Goth scenesters don't get their stuff from Givenchy, Dolce & Gabbana or Alexander McQueen. They buy it in Duisburg.
Any colour so long as it's black.
The company with the chilling name of "Aderlass" delivers a range of genuine Goth fashion lines to 19 countries, from Britain to Austria. "We get our input straight from the scene, often through collaborations with bands like Oomph! and Unheilig," explains Gordon Wienkötter, who has been in the zombie fashion business with his partner Henning Volk since the early nineties. The season's must-haves? For women, either floor-length dresses or extremely short skirts and the black tutus as worn by the band Lola Angst; for men, elegant coats, suits and frock coats - all in the blackest of black, naturally. And why does it all emanate from the Ruhr, of all places? "We children from the Ruhr are a little more cheeky and maybe a bit bolder, just because that's what it's like here," says Henning Volk.
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Read the whole article by Anne Urbauer in the "Ruhr Metropolis" issue of MINIInternational.