His name was Adam. He stalked our high-school hallways wearing a leather trench coat, chipped dark polish and a moody expression. His hair was silky black, and mascara flecks dusted his pale skin. He was Edward Cullen before Robert Pattinson had adult teeth, and I loved him from afar with a fervour that only shy teenagers can muster.
That was in the ’90s, when darkness cast a stylish shadow over music, film and fashion: Nine Inch Nails ruled the airwaves, Marilyn Manson starred in David Lynch’s Lost Highway and Rei Kawakubo designed “seven shades of black” for Comme des Garçons.
Now, more than a decade later, pop culture is in the throes of another gothic crush. Vampires and their ghoulish relations dominate TV hits like The Vampire Diaries and Game of Thrones, as Edgar Allan Poe, played by John Cusack, prepares for his Hollywood close-up in The Raven. On the fashion front, jewellery designer Delfina Delettrez’s skeleton bracelets and spider-web rings add a sexy twist to horror chic, while shoppers snap up Daphne Guinness’ goth-tinged collection for M.A.C. The style icon’s beauty inspiration? Pigeon blood.
Want to become an international fashion model and appear in a music video with Lady Gaga?
A young Canadian named Rick Genest has done just that. All he had to do was spend 7 years getting himself tattooed from head to toe to look like a Walking Dead extra. The Quebec-born Genest, 26, hung out in the Montreal punk-rock scene at age 17 and started appearing in freak shows. At age 19, he began working with tattoo artist Frank Lewis to transform his entire body into a decaying corpse.
It's no secret that the StyleCaster crew is an eclectic bunch of hipsters, neurotics, downtown kids, fashion darlings and cynically humorous denizens that spend each day together gossiping and gabbing about everything and anything under the sun -- crushes being no exception.
Sure, they run the norm from Ryan Gosling to Jared Leto, but then there's a brave soul or two (like myself) who never let a little thing like societal norms stop us from enjoying the strange, beautiful and definitely unusual.
