New Romanticism

n.b. this is ooooold but left now so i can laugh at it in years to come

'New Romanticism' is used to refer to both the youth group of the same name that started in the late 1970, and the ethos that that group was based on. The New Romantic subculture was also known as "The Cult With No Name", or "The Blitz Kids" (although the latter usually refers to a specific section of NewRomanticism, naimly those who were regulars at Steve Strange's 'The Blitz' night club in London). The New Romantic ethos is not linked to any culture, counter culture or sub-culture. It is anti-culture, and pro-individualism. It is a realisation that 'main-stream fashion' is no better than 'alternative fashion' because they're both still fashions, fashions that got to where they are through circumstance.

One cannot simply go out and buy a set load of clothing off the shelf or wear their make-up a certain way to become a New Romantic. But New Romanticism is not about abstinence from style; its about making a statement, its about reflecting the person you are through the way you dress, taking aesthetic existentialism to its logical conclusion. New Romantics came in all shapes and forms; dressed in avant-garde clothing, wearing immaculately applied avant-garde make-up, dressed up as historical or fantastical characters, dressed as concepts of their own personal preference, such as pierrots, robots, victorians, cowboys, Scotsmen, highway men, etc, etc, but each with their own twist to that concept, as they saw fit.

Many did not get the point of New Romanticism though; they saw its creations as just trends to follow, which meant that the more popular threads of New Romanticism span off to become seperate sub-cultures; groups of people who desired to look a certain way, instead of finding their own look. As the initiating ideology of New Romanticism did not spread as easily as the actual styles that people saw, in the end New Romanticism was mainly seen as just another fashion trend to be left to the winds of time. "I am not a goth" was not said ironically.

See also: NewRomanticGoth?, Futurism