November of 2013 was a big one for games, with two major consoles launching opposite one another after years of discourse about the surely imminent demise of the console market.
Why I dressed like a Castlevania vampire for an entire year
09.11.2023 - 17:05 / polygon.com
Goth fashion isn’t new, but fashion associated with the vampire scene has seen a resurgence as the vampire has once again grown in popularity through the success of the 2022 adaptation of Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire, as well as the Castlevania franchise seeing a resurgence with its Netflix series. Once again, the vampire has permeated the mainstream, sinking its fangs into an entirely new generation, coupled with an interest in historical fashion and what this timeless creature has come to represent. In the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, sometime in 2021, while cleaning out my wardrobe, I decided to dress like I could fit into one of Koji Igarashi’s Castlevania games.
The look of the vampire is ageless but hard to define. It exists somewhere between Victorian fashion and goth subculture, and has morphed into different subsets and microtrends over the past few decades. It can be black frocks or Tom Cruise’s frilled shirts and brocade vests in 1994’s Interview with the Vampire. It could be one of Ayami Kojima’s gorgeous oil painting illustrations of Alucard and various Belmont family members from the Castlevania series.
It was my interest in period fashion and various subcultures that brought me to dress like a Castlevania vampire for a year. (That and having disposable income as an adult.) Would I have dressed this way as a teenager? Probably. The modern vampire has often been associated with androgyny, and it’s something I’ve always personally gravitated toward. Naturally, there are also some subsets to this. There is the more industrial goth that is sometimes blended with mid-’80s aesthetics, extremely heavy makeup and all, or the “romantic” goth associated with ruffled shirts, corsets, and modified pieces of Victorian clothing.
The vampire is associated with so many various interpretations that it’s hard to pin down just what exactly defines it — outside of fangs, odd-colored eyes, and a penchant for the night. (I didn’t end up ordering a pair of fangs — I’m a little too self-conscious about my teeth — but someone else I know wears their pair almost religiously.)
I scoured the internet for sellers that would provide exactly what I was looking for: linen shirts with ruffles, tightly-laced corsets, leather trousers, knee-high boots, everything I associated with the gorgeous Gothic designs Kojima incorporated in art of characters like Alucard and Mathias Cronqvist, and in one-off illustrations she’s done that feature these ephemeral creatures. I packed my closet with velvet capelets from Dark in Love, scoured secondhand shops for antique Victorian brooches and silk ribbons I would tie my then-shoulder-length hair with. To cement the vampire image, I ordered matte black lipstick to use
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