Romantic Goth: My first love in Goth style

Aesthetically, Romantic Goth is my first and most constant love. Yes, my hair is a fantastical set of neon colours, but they owe more to the myth of mermaids drowning sailors than to the CyberGoth hybrid subculture - although I like that sort of more danceable industrial too! 

This top from :Punk Rave: has inner mesh sleeves.
The outer sleeves are velvet and split all the way to the elbow

The first time I saw a Goth was probably 1993; my family had gone to Reading - a town in Berkshire - for some shopping, but this happened to coincide with the Reading Festival, one of the UK's largest rock festivals. I think The Cure were playing that year, and a lot of Goths turned up. The one I remember most clearly, was a woman in a deep red crushed velvet fantasy dress with bleached platinum hair back-combed; a more colourful variant on the usually black version of this look. I thought this was beautiful, the prettiest lady I had seen, and unfortunately, being a small child with no appreciation for - or understanding of -what was taboo in my household, I think I said something excited about this, and got sharply chastised by my mother who dragged me away and gave me a lecture on how these were bad and dangerous people I shouldn't associate with... but I think the seed was sown, and that aesthetic imprint stayed with me. 

Me in my study: my aesthetics aren't limited to my clothes.
The velvet top I am wearing the Saphira top from :Punk Rave:

I've been a fan of the Romantic Gothic aesthetic ever since - that wonderful mix of the macabre, fantastical and historical, and this post is something of a paean to that.  

The Romantic Gothic aesthetic is certainly one that is enjoyed outside of the Goth musical subculture, and one that pre-dates it; it's that Hammer Horror, Elvira, and 'vampire' aesthetic of villains and supernatural creatures that has existed for centuries. It's not surprising that is has been adopted by fans of the Gothic in general as well as Goth, and being visually striking, it's also not surprising that a lot of people come to the aesthetic before the music (same with all Goth and Gothic styles).  I was one of those people, and although I came to the Goth subculture eventually, it was a path that went via lots of Symphonic Metal and bands like Evanesence, Nightwish, and Within Temptation where that aesthetic was prominent. There were plenty of films with gorgeous costumes, too, especially older horror films and a good few fantasy films with more 'Gothic' looking villains and villainesses. I saw all that and I wanted to look like them. It was magical, romantic, otherworldly, and while I knew it was a costume, but every now and again I would see someone, maybe online, maybe walking through the Queensgate shopping mall in Peterborough or past some Oxford colleges, or maybe in Shrinking Violets in Bristol, who dressed that way, in ordinary life, and I knew it was possible.

The first Goth shop I went into was actually a Hippie shop called Rod & Maureen's in Peterborough, that had a Gothic section in its upstairs. I was more into fantasy-inspired hippie clothes at the time, but I saw some gorgeous purple velvet dresses in there... The second was probably Mystic Rose in the Harris Arcade in Reading, where I wanted everything Raven and Alchemy Gothic made, but could barely afford a pair of earrings, then I went to the indoor market - St. Nick's - in Bristol - while I was in my Steampunk phase, and I bought my first ever made-for-Goth item, a black frock-coat, to wear with a white frilly shirt from a mainstream store, and green velvet trousers, and whatever brocade waistcoat I could find, a monocle and a cheap costume-shop 'top-hat', or with a high-necked blouse, and a floor-length purple velvet skirt from a hippie shop... I still have that coat, although I'm a now a bit too busty to fit it.

I wasn't allowed on eBay as a teen, and I didn't have PayPal, so I mostly relied on charity shops; mail-order catalogs and Goth shops were generally more than I could afford, and while my Dad didn't openly disapprove, he was hardly going to let me spend money on that sort of fashion.  I rapidly learned that I wasn't going to find exactly what I wanted in Oxfam, and that I would have to learn to modify things, and rapidly learned to apply lace and better buttons to things, and how to do other simple modifications. With a limited budget, basic sewing skills, and a general lack of time and resources, I was a long way from looking like an evil sorceress-queen or a vampire lord, or really looking like anything that was vaguely put-together, but with patience, improving my sewing skills, and finally getting access to the great secondhand resources of eBay and the like, well as becoming an adult and having a full-time job, I could finally start to build a wardrobe that I really like. 

New hair-do required matching make-up

A decade and a half later and it literally is enough clothes for two wardrobes  and several boxes, because I'm something of a clothes collector now. I'm slowly scouring the internet for all the beautiful dresses I pined over as a teen but which were then far out of my price-range, and finding them secondhand on the internet for about £15 -£20, and then customising them with lace and trims. There's a meme on the internet 'be the Goth queen your 12 year old self dreamed of' and while 'queen' isn't always the aesthetic I'm going for ('prince', 'pirate', and 'terrifying bog-witch' sometimes), it's something I feel strongly about; it might have taken many years to get there, but I've actually achieved a (fairly minor) goal; I look like the kind of person my younger self admired. 

I went through a lot of style switches and hopped subcultures as a teen, but even when I was dabbling in Steampunk or a more 'Hippie' aesthetic, things with lace-up details, big bell sleeves, lots of lace, full skirts, brocade waistcoats, velvet trousers, etc. always ended up in my wardrobe. It appealed to my love of history and also to my love of fantasy - whether that was the graceful elves of Lord of the Rings or the decadent vampires of 'Interview with a Vampire' - it also always felt luxurious to be wearing this rich fabrics and fancy lace, and growing up very poor, I'd had very little luxury. At some point I would like to do an article on class dynamics and the 'fantasy aristocrat' aesthetic, but this isn't going to be it. 

I think there's an element of escapism, in that Romantic Goth clothes let you dress like something apart from the regular world, but I don't think it's necessarily a pretense; there's a little of that when it starts getting into painting yourself an undead grey/white, wearing contact lenses and fangs, latex ear prosthetics etc. deliberately looking like a fantasy creature, but that tends to be reserved for the sorts of festivals where taking on a persona is part of the fun, or for photoshoots - one step down from LARPing, but for most people involved, we don't think we're literally vampires, demons, sorceresses and fae, nor are we LARPing - what we're doing is expressing our fandom, our enjoyment of literature, film, comics and art depicting fantastical themes. I can't speak for others, but I'm not trying to take on a persona (sometimes I do as a bit of a joke, but it's several layers deep in irony and campiness), I'm expressing what I love in those things.It's not about being the villain, it's about having their  wardrobe; it's not about being someone else, it's about being enthusiastically and outrageously myself.

My decor is stereotypically Goth in black and silver

To me, Romantic Goth embracing all the decadence, drama and fanciful things that many people only allow to be expressed in the realms of fantasy; there is no reason other than social acceptability to NOT to dress like that. Building my identity positionally to 'the mainstream' is something I think is pretty pointless, and I don't dress differently as some act of defiance, but it's not like I'm oblivious to the fact I stand out, that even many other Goths dress a lot more casually than I do, especially with the popularity of the more minimalist Nu-Goth aesthetic at the moment. I turn heads, and not always in a good way; I don't like attention even if it's positive, and while I disregard the negative opinions of strangers as irrelevant, it's a lot harder (and stupider) to ignore when that escalates to outright aggression. However, as I've written about before, I will never trade expressing myself for blending in.

While a lot of Romantic Goth takes historical inspiration, primarily Medieval Europe, Baroque and Victorian, and more recently there's an increasing interest in the Norse cultures of the 8thC to 11thC, there's a wide variation from those who are interested in getting the historical attire correct for the period, with the right shoes, undergarments, and maybe some actual elements of antique dress, to those who are less interested in recreating history and more interested in being creative with the inspiration - I am certainly the latter; I love history (hence my second degree studies being in history & archaeology), and I also know how much time, effort and research it takes to do historical garb justice, and I don't have that time, sewing skill, or money to pay someone who does. I also love the creativity and aesthetics of the more fantasy orientated designs. I do like to borrow elements from historical dress, especially Edwardian and Victorian, sometimes a little 18thC stuff, but I don't want to recreate history, just use it for inspiration. 

I've noticed a slight decline in the Romantic Goth aesthetic - I think it was pretty popular in the '90s, and then with the explosion of Goth-specific manufacturers, became a lot more accessible in the '00s, but in recent years the Pastel Goth and Nu-Goth aesthetics have dominated, although the 'witchy' aesthetic that was previously characterised by white-on-black occult prints seems to be shifting to something involving more black dresses, with the same big black hats popularised by American Horror Story: Coven. There's also a lot of people into a Norse aesthetic at the moment - 'Vikings' 'Norsemen' 'Vinland Saga' and 'The Last Kingdom' probably contributing strongly to that! I think there's something perennial about Romantic Goth, and while which particular fantasy/supernatural icon or historical period dominate, it will continue. A lot of the older Romantic Goth brands seem to have dwindled, although some like Sinister and Dark*Star are still going strong, but new ones - like the sponsor of this post, ::Punk Rave:: are filling that niche. 

I accepted the ::Punk Rave:: sponsorship because I've bought quite a few clothes from them in the past, and I've always been impressed by both the attention to detail and the quality. They're at the pricier end of the scale, so I tend to buy new clothes from them once in a while, but even secondhand they are well worth checking out because the clothes are durable enough that they'll still be in good repair. These are definitely clothes worth the money. I really love their take on the Romantic Goth aesthetic, as there's a lot of influence from Gothic Lolita and Visual Kei aesthetics, which is refreshing compared the usual Western fare. Unlike many Goth brands, Punk Rave actually show their factory on their website and have their clothes made within the company rather than outsourced to a supplier; this allows for a lot more oversight in quality, and my guess is that the better fabric choices came when they opened their own factory, as their very early garments had lace that really wasn't as nice as it is now. Punk Rave's lace is often FAR nicer than I see on many other brands - no scratch raschel lace! A $50 coupon is wonderful, and I will be putting it towards ::a lovely cloak:: from them, but my opinion isn't bought - I will only ever recommend brands I genuinely trust. 

What is that expression I've got??

As a bonus for reading this far, have a 'blooper reel' picture of me in an awkwardly imperious pose - it's an out of context image from me trying to film a room decor tour, but at least you get to see the whole outfit with faux-leather cincher and mesh insert skirt. I will try again at filming a tour of my study decor, which is just as Romantic Goth as my clothes are - my love for the aesthetic goes far beyond just fashion. Check out my Instagram account of @domesticatedgoth for more decor pictures. I'm wearing a corset in the photo; those elasticated cinchers don't give an hourglass figure. 

Cawdor Castle - 2017 Visit

Last year, Raven took me to Cawdor Castle for my birthday. I wanted to post about it nearer the time, but I lost my SD card with the photos I'd taken. I've been there ::before::, and the first time I was there, it was with the HTC smartphone that didn't have a good camera at all, no proper camera, and in dreary weather. This time, it was May, the weather was bright and sunny, and I made sure to bring a camera with me. Raven also took a lot of photographs while we were there, so there's plenty of photographs from him in this blog! If I find my SD card, I'll do a second post about this trip with my photos on it. I'm really grateful to Raven for letting me use his photographs; I'm really sad about having lost my SD card, especially as it had more than just Cawdor Castle on it. I took a LOT of photographs of the castle building itself, and I really wish they weren't lost.

Photos in this blog-post are in a carousel gallery - if you click on a photo, it will enlarge, and you can navigate between photos with the arrow keys. I've had a couple of messages about 'tiny pictures' so I thought I would clarify. 

Photo by Raven of me walking up to the castle

Cawdor Castle was initially built as a defensive castle in the 14thC by the Thanes of Cawdor. It's since become more of country mansion house with later, less defensible extensions, but it has a rich and interesting history. This time, we went inside the castle as well as seeing the grounds, paying the extra entrance fee, so I got to see more the castle and learn about the castle history - which is my favourite reason to visit castles! You can visit the official Cawdor Castle website ::here::. 

When I temporarily had blue hair!
Selfies by me. 

I went on the trip during the time I had ::temporarily blue hair::. I keep ending up with unintentional blue hair - I've currently got unintentional blue highlights in my black hair because the black dye is not quite as opaque as I imagined, and also doesn't adhere so well to where my hair was previously green. However, in this instance, my hair turned blue after I washed it, and had originally been green and purple. My current theory is that it's because I'd been using dandruff shampoo, and some ingredient in that caused it to wash out certain pigments from the dye, leaving the blue. 

The first thing I did at the castle was go and get a hot chocolate, and I think either a pain-au-chocolat or a savoury muffin - it's been over a year, I can't remember what I ate. I do remember that whatever it was, it was tasty! The hot chocolate was rather yummy, with frothy cream and marshmallows - a more luxurious hot drink than my usual tea as a birthday treat. 

My hair nearly matched the cup. Photo by Raven 

Photo by Raven, edits by me.

Once thoroughly refreshed, we went for a wander around the castle. Near the entrance to the cafe, I spotted this alcove. As well as looking out of the window at the castle grounds, and being impressed by the immense thickness of the walls, I persuaded Raven to take some aesthetic pictures of me.

The gatehouse has had to repel those who would attack the castle, so its sturdiness is not just for show. One of the daughters of the clan at Cawdor - 9th Thaness Muriel - was at the centre of a lot of clan dispute when as a teenager she was married off to Sir Campbell. It got very 'Game of Thrones' with battles, kidnaps, plots and Thaness Muriel surviving her husband, living 30 years longer than he did. (You can read about that ::here::, just scroll down to Muriel Calder). If you think the fiction of Macbeth is dramatic, then just look what was actually happening in Cawdor a few before Shakespeare.

I actually don't remember this part of the castle, but it's pretty
Photograph by Raven 

We went around the castle interior first. The castle is still lived in - by the current Lady Cawdor, so not all the rooms can be visited. There's a route through some of the castle that is opened up, with guides at various points who can be asked questions about the castle. I remember we bumped into some American tourists who were just as excited about the castle as I was (and who liked my outfit; I think I got called' Lady Macbeth' in a complimentary way.) and both they and I asked the guides plenty of questions. There was an older chap as a guide and he was incredibly knowledgeable about the castle. I perhaps asked too many questions, but I'm a glutton for knowledge.

Palantir-esque orb
Photo by Raven.

There are a lot of spherical ornaments in Cawdor Castle - I think this is an aesthetic choice of the current lady Cawdor, as she commissioned several of the spherical statues in the castle grounds, and it is by her desk that one of the larger stone/crystal orbs resides. Raven took a photograph of it (to the right, click to enlarge thumbnail image). There's also one in one of the visitable bedrooms that is in a stand that makes it look like Palantir from Middle Earth. There's also an ORIGINAL Charles Addams drawing which I got completely over excited about. I don't have a photograph of that. (Lady Cawdor's art collection is intriguing, and I have so many questions in my head from it!)

There's a really fabulous room, with a tree growing in it, and an adjoining 'secret' other room that had been walled up for a long time. I don't have a photograph of it - it's something I tried hard to photograph, and there might be pictures of it on my SD card, but in the meanwhile there's a picture of it on the ::Cawdor Castle website::, second one along, click to enlarge. The tree is part of a legend about the founding of the castle. The Thane of Cawdor, whose earlier medieval castle was not too far away, wanted to build a bigger and better, stronger fortification. He had a dream in which he was instructed to put a chest of gold upon a donkey's back, and then to follow it to where it lay, and build his castle there. He did this, and the donkey went to lie down under a hawthorne tree, which the castle was built around - the tree is still there, growing through the castle basement, protected as the family's prosperity is thought to be linked to the tree. I keep saying British history is very much like Game of Thrones, but in this case it's more like the Shannara Chronicles.

Historic Kitchen at Cawdor Castle, photo by Raven

Photo by Raven. 

Looking at the historic kitchen was interesting. All those copper pots and pans! It's intriguing to see what utensils they had then compared to now - some things I have no idea what their purpose is, some things that haven't changed much, and some things that seem obvious by their absence. What was even more interesting is that one of the last things you go through in the castle, once you've been through the historic kitchen, is the modern kitchen - presumably for when there are private functions (I'm going to guess Lady Cawdor doesn't let hundreds of visitors walk through the same kitchen her dinner is cooked in each night!).

I really like the recessed windows from an aesthetic perspective - I'm guessing they are small and in such deep alcoves because the kitchen is in the basement, and the castle needs really thick, sturdy walls at that level to hold up everything that is above it, especially as it was defensive. Small windows means less of a void in the wall, and less of a space someone could climb in through - however, wide alcoves means more light as light can enter the room from a variety of angles in relation to the window.  

Modern Kitchen at Cawdor Castle, photo by Raven

Photo by Raven.  Click to expand
In front of historic kitchen window

The comparison between the two definitely makes you think about how much the functional aspects of the castle have changed, and the expected requirements for a kitchen. As an architectural technologist, and one that would like to work on residential properties, things like the types of room that have been used for kitchens over the centuries is something that interests me - for example, the historic kitchen is long and linear, almost in a basement, and with the well in the room, (Not visible in the photograph, Raven would have had his back to it when he took this picture) whereas the modern kitchen is in a much squarer room, and a storey up from this kitchen (I think? It's hard to judge when the various phases of the building aren't all on the same set of levels) - both rooms are relatively bright, with lots of white, but the modern kitchen seems much airier, even though it has dark wooden panelling - perhaps because the ceilings are much higher (high enough to be out of shot!). It's also interesting to note the HUGE copper canopy for the extract fans in the modern kitchen - no such thing centuries back, so it would have been much steamier to work in! 

Raven's really into cooking, so I think he also found the two kitchens quite interesting.

Maze with minotaur (left) and castle (right). Photograph by Raven.

There's a hedge maze (or labyrinth?) at Cawdor, but when we were there, it was closed to visitors because the roots of the shrubbery needed to recover from repetitive trampling. However, it was visible from outside, as was the mythologically suitable minotaur in the centre!

Formal gardens, before their peak, in a cloudy moment. Photo by Raven.

Walking with parasol

Photograph by Dave

After we looked around the castle as much as we could, we then went out to the grounds. Last time I went to Cawdor Castle gardens, we walked mostly through the woodland walk area and didn't go through all of the gardens, but this time we went to the gardens. In the Highlands, early May is more springtime than summer, so the gardens aren't as green and luscious as they probably are in later months. I should probably actually go there around this time of year to best appreciate the gardens! That's not to say that there wasn't greenery - as there was, it's just that the trees, hedges and shrubbery weren't at their maximum foliage. 

The weather was quite bright - not hot, but warm enough that a lacy shrug was enough to keep away the chill. However, it was definitely bright enough for sunglasses and parasol (well, to me at least, but I think I have a low tolerance for bright light.) for most of the day. There were cloudier moments, too, but when the sun came out again it was really quite bright.

Spherical fountain, photograph by Raven. 

As mentioned before, there were several spherical garden statues/fountains at the ground. A really interesting one was made of shards of stacked glass, but I lost the photographs I took of that. The stone sphere fountain in the photograph was made by a Japanese sculptor, and there was a matching crescent moon shaped statue - I think the fountain represents the sun. It's an interesting mixture of modern art and a historical castle and grounds. I think the natural stones helps keep the fountain fitting to the site. 

Pond opposite ticket booth/entrance. Photograph by Raven

Cawdor Castle has two main areas of laid out gardens, and then plenty of grounds, wooded and more pastoral, beyond that. There is a lovely pond near the drive and ticket booth, which Raven photographed. It looked most picturesque, a wonderful capture of springtime, especially with all the white tree blossoms. There are more ponds in the woodland area, but I didn't go there that time - they are also very pretty, especially when viewed from the wooden bridges. 

Photograph by Raven, edits/filters by me.

The last photo from the Castle is me sitting at a small picnic table near the ticket booth, I think having just finished a carton of apple juice or something, and discussing with Raven what the rest of our plans would be. For some reason, sitting there was probably the thing that stuck most clearly in my head. I think it was because I looked up at the new leaves on the tree above me, and the sun, which was quite bright, was glowing through them, so they seemed so incredibly vibrant, almost glass-like. It was later in the afternoon by that point, as we had spent a good few hours at Cawdor Castle, and I tweaked the colours in the photograph just a little to try and best capture what the light felt like when I was there. Sometimes you have to bend reality a little to capture what something feels like.
 

Raven and I together, phone pic by me. 

As far as birthdays go, I think last year's was one of the best. Sometimes a trip out is better than a party (especially if you're more introverted like me. I end up poking my phone at my own parties because I get 'peopled out'!). Going to Cawdor castle was Raven's treat, so I'm very thankful to him for taking me (even over a year on!). He took me out to dinner, too (which, just before, is when I took the selfie of us together - hence the different makeup and outfit). Raven is very much the romantic, and I'm eternally grateful to him for all these years together - as well as Birthday trips out!

Also, this blog would be much less aesthetically pleasing without his photographic talent! Not just this specific entry (which would just be a big wall of text about how much I like Cawdor Castle otherwise), but in general - he's taken so many of the photographs of me for this blog over the years, and they're always really flattering. I don't look half as good in my own selfies - let alone real life - as I do in Raven's pictures of me. He's got a knack for composition and posing that does well to minimise my many physical flaws and highlight my better features (so, less turkey neck, more cheekbones) and even manages to take pretty pictures of me when I'm not trying to pose (those probably turn out better; I pose awkwardly when I know I'm being photographed) 

Expectations for Unnatural Hair

I didn't originally plan to write this, but after having recently changed my hair again (I will post about that tomorrow!) a few things have come up in regards to people's expectations of bright hair. As anyone who has been following me on my blog, or on Instagram knows, I have very bright hair. I have got a lot of compliments on my hair, both in person and online, which has included a few people who have said they'd like to get their hair done similar to mine... I also know that a lot of people don't actually know how much work is involved, or that not all hair styles are really suitable for all hair types. As such, I want to write about what actually goes into having hair like mine, and what expectations for bright and creative/artistic hair styles are reasonable.

First of all, my new hair! I now have a multi-green-turquoise transition for the bulk of my hair, with a purple and fuchsia pointed fringe. 

Purple fringe was originally cut in by my friend Melody, and I was hoping to get her to trim it back as it had grown long, but I had an issue with my ID card, and needed a new photograph that was up-to-date and was going to reflect what I looked like all term, and I had let my colours fade out and my fringe grow, my roots grow in (sometimes I let my hair rest), etc. so I needed to get my hair done quickly before the start of term. I was going to just re-colour it, and wait until my friend was back at her hair-dressing course to cut my fringe back in, but as I've been basically tying my hair up and wearing bandanas for about 3 weeks I hadn't realised just how in my eyes and scraggly it had got, so made the terrible mistake of cutting it back myself quite harshly, not just merely trimming 5mm of the ends or whatnot, and so it's choppy/uneven and asymmetric. I have managed to fix it quite a bit since this photo, but now my fringe is shorter than I'd like... I will wait for it to grow a couple of centimetres and get Melody to trim it properly (and hope she doesn't crucify me for ruining her work!).

Damaging My Hair

First of all, while my hair looks nice at first glance, it is actually quite fried and unhealthy. I've had the worst of the over-bleached, badly damaged hair trimmed out back in May, and my stylist had to cut out a good 4½ inches more than I'd have liked because of how much was just chemically and heat ruined nastiness. I have done my own hair for years, and to begin with I did a lot of things that really weren't good for my hair - leaving bleach on too long (once FAR too long because an emergency involving my sister occurred in the middle of me bleaching it - that resulted in hair that snapped off and chemical burns!), trying to bleach it too many shades lighter in one go, using too much heat styling on my hair, and things like trying to make a sudden switch from a dark colour to a bright, etc. I have naturally very dark hair, and while (allergies aside) dyeing it black myself for years did it no real harm, wanting bright colours out of my hair probably isn't a long-term sustainable thing, because of the amount of bleaching required to get my hair to a light blonde, and the continued bleaching of my roots - which, when done on my own inevitably gets on already bleached hair, however hard I try to only bleach the roots -involved in the upkeep. In order to get it looking good day-to-day, I do a lot of conditioning treatments, use oils, etc, but once hair is damaged it doesn't repair itself along the existing length, as it is technically dead material, and repairing treatments only really temporarily put smoothing coatings on the hair strands.

If you have naturally light blonde hair, getting bright hair is much easier, and much less damaging for your hair. If it's light enough, it won't need bleaching - especially if you're putting a colour over it that is sympathetic to the undertones (eg. bright green hair dye over pale blonde hair will probably pick up some of the yellows and pale browns to end up leaf green) and if it does need bleaching, it won't need as much bleaching to get it pale. If, like me, you have very dark brown hair, it takes a lot of bleaching to get it pale enough, and honestly I don't think it's a good idea to do that to your hair, having done it myself repeatedly and damaged my hair. I don't bleach my hair to blonde in one session - I do it in two sessions spaced out, which means it doesn't get prolonged exposure to one long cumulative reaction, and I also don't bleach all my hair out at once - that means no sudden colour changes! - I try to only bleach the roots. Getting my hair bleached professionally is out of my budget, but would probably mean greater damage limitation again, but with bleaching all you can really achieve is damage limitation because the colour stripping process is inherently a damaging one. Bleach does not cover your hair a colour the way dye does, it strips colour, natural or otherwise, from hair. It has two main components - an alkali that makes your hair more porous, and a peroxide that chemically reacts with the melanin in hair, and it is a harsh chemical.

Edit: 
I personally think it's much better to get hair bleached professionally if you can. Even using bleach to the letter with the instruction, you can have different results and problems, especially in relation to how naturally porous your hair is, oils, and very importantly, whether or not you've used home colouring on it before, especially permanent box-dyes as they can react badly with the bleach, or be very resilient to bleaching. I had a lot of trouble getting light hair after I had dyed my hair black for years with cheap(ish) dyes and had to grow the ends out.  I have utterly fried bits of my hair, got very uneven bleach development leading to weird patchy hair, and even had chemical burns (as mentioned above).

Two-Person Job
Secondly, I used to try and do all of my hair on my own. That was a terrible idea - first of all, I am not a hair-stylist, I'm an amateur with unusual tastes, and secondly hair dye is really works best with a second person doing it, to get it nice without patches. If I am bleaching my hair at home, I get Raven to help me by doing the back parts that I can't see clearly even with two mirrors and when it comes to colouring, I get one of a few friends who are experienced with brightly coloured hair to help me. This means I get an even colour, most of the time. Sometimes even after all that, my hair ends up patchy and I have to go back and fix it. Ombre (or really, 'gradient' because I have transitions between colours over all my hair being lightened, not dark roots and bleached lighter coloured tips) hair usually takes me more than one session of dyeing to get the transitions smooth and even! It is very easy to make mistakes with doing your own hair, even if you research your plans first.

Edit: With bleach it is important to work fast as it starts to react immediately, and you can still be putting bleach on one part of your hair while a different part is done! With the application, trying to rush it doing it on yourself is a good way to get uneven application and patchy hair, and possibly even bleach-burning bits of your hair, or getting it on your scalp or ears and getting chemical burns on your skin. I really think that even if you're bleaching your hair at home, you should get a second person to apply it.

When I first started doing interesting things to my hair, there wasn't the explosion in popularity of bright colours, and brights were generally mostly available as DIY options - I'm sure most professionals could, and probably did, do vibrant colours before then, but your average hair salon didn't advertise that sort of thing as an option  and it seemed like the hair salons that did were a bit specialist, and only available in big cities with large alternative communities. Now, as brights have become fashionable, even a small city like Inverness has places that will professionally do bright colours, so I really recommend going to a professional to get your hair coloured if you can afford it. They also tend to use different dyes, including better quality, more permanent ones (although there isn't a great range of permanent brights yet).

Being very visibly alternative and walking into a spaces that were mainstream-fashion centred, and in areas that are in general less accepting of eccentric styles, was somewhat daunting, especially for someone like me who is actually quite shy and socially anxious in person. While I have the confidence to ignore mean comments, and disregard other's opinions on my appearance in general, trying to persuade a hair professional that doesn't like alternative designs that yes, I really do want bright green hair, a pointed fringe, whatever else, is not something I really wanted to have to do. This isn't about ignoring professional advice on what my hair can and can't take (which, to be honest, I wish I had been given a long time ago, when I first started dying my hair vibrant colours!), but specifically about those who just think that the sort of things I want are weird, unfashionable, ugly, etc. Trying to find someone willing to do a pointed fringe was interesting, to say the least - the lassie that currently cuts my hair is an Goth studying hair at the same college building as I study architectural technology, and she put my pointy fringe in (and I couldn't make an appointment with her to get it tidied up before the start of university, so I did it myself this time... I regret it!). However, times have changed, and the availability of people willing to do more creative things has increased - especially if you find someone who likes having the opportunity to do something artistic and different once in a while!

Also, if you do things yourself, remember that there's actually a lot of skills and techniques in styling hair - for many it's the difference between able to do DIY home improvements and being a qualified tradesperson, but for hair. Just as you might be able to fix a ding in a wall with some filler and sandpaper, but maybe not plaster a whole wall in a way that is smooth and even, sometimes more complicated tasks are better left to someone who is trained and practiced, and if you do end up doing yourself, do realise that it might not work out right the first time. I've been regularly dyeing my own hair -with help!- for years (I started as a teenager, and I'm now nearly 30...) and I still can't get it as perfect and amazing as some of the salon-done examples I've seen. I've learned to trim my fringe, but on my fifth time keeping my fringe out of my eyes, I've still got a HUGE skill difference between how much better it looked the first time Melody (my friend who is a hair-dressing student) ever did a pointy fringe, just because Melody had a lot of experience and tutoring in cutting hair and fringes prior to the pointy one.

Internet Vs. Reality
Thirdly, there are definitely people who are only exposed to what my hair looks like on Instagram, here, Facebook, etc. and only see it in photographs. Even before the photograph is taken, I'll have probably spent a substantial amount of time getting my hair just right, brushing and combing it, styling my fringe, etc. etc. I also tend to take selfies within a week of my hair having been recoloured, so it is at its most vibrant. When I'm actually taking the photographs for my selfies, I make sure I'm well lit, against a white cloth background (actually a lined curtain turned inside out, so the pretty side is hidden and the shiny white lining cloth is visible behind me!) and in a mixture of natural light, reflected natural light (an array of mirrors out of shot!) and sometimes some artificial light. Usually selfies are a document of my latest make-up, so everything is carefully posed to flatter my face, too! After all that, I then make digital edits to photos to adjust saturation, contrast, colour balance, etc. Sometimes I do more substantial colour corrections - especially if I've not had the opportunity to take a selfie in optimal lighting conditions. What people see in a photograph is my hair at an ideal moment. It does not look like that two weeks after being coloured, when humidity is making it fluffy and weird, when the wind has blown my fringe all out of shape, in some terrible lighting that makes it look blue when it's not, etc. etc. This isn't just me, this is what goes on behind the scenes of a LOT of people who put their hair on Tumblr, Instagram, whatever. It was only recently that Ursula Goth went viral for posting their lovely pink, purple and blue ombre hair before styling for a selfie, and then after styling and ::writing about:: the need for honesty and knowing that there's a difference between social media highlights and real life.

Upkeep
Fourthly, unnatural hair colours take a lot of work to maintain. Solid colour permanent dark dye over unbleached hair is the easiest to maintain. When I dyed my hair black, all I had to do was re-dye my roots when they grew long enough to be obvious (that will depend on how your natural hair colour contrasts with what colour you have dyed it) and every now and again re-tone the whole thing as it started to fade back to brown - which took a very long time compared to bright hair, and with cumulative layers of black it became more and more permanent. Solid colour bright/light colours over bleached hair take more work, as first of all the roots need dyeing before re-colouring, and secondly, depending on the colour and brand of hair-dye, and whether it is permanent or semi-permanent (most bright dyes are semi-permanent), and other factors like sun exposure, how often you wash it, and with what shampoos, etc. it can fade in anything from a mere week and a half to much longer, but they usually fade in a few weeks, and to the point where it is very obvious in about a month. Gradient brights are even more work because of recolouring the length with several, but because it's a smooth gradient, it can be redone in a distribution that isn't an exact match to where the colours where before and still look good. Layered, sectioned, or any other hair colouring that involves lots of different sections of solid colour hair is really difficult to maintain the way it was done. 

Sectional multicolour hair, with ombre.

I gave up on multi-colour hair done in layered sections because the upkeep was just too time-consuming. The amount of time I spent trying to section my hair in all the same places as when I first did my multicolour hair, because getting green over purple or whatever would result in muddy colours and browning, was inordinate - I would go through my hair with a rat-tail comb and lots of hair ties and very patiently over about 2 hours, try and part my hair exactly into all the individual locks I had initially put it into, made even more complicated when I re-bleached the roots, because then the first inch-and-a-half to two inches of my hair were blonde, so tracking back to my roots where the sections previously were became much, much harder! It also faded very unevenly, and when I tried to re-colour it it became harder and harder to get it looking good like it had before, especially as some colours fade to quite strong tones - hence why I ended up eventually with mostly turquoise hair with neon green bits that didn't look the best. 

Weird green top to blue after fading and ineffective touchups

Some styles are also a lot of upkeep, too, regardless of what colour. A fringe needs to be regularly styled to maintain its shape, especially my pointy one that is easily re-arranged to be oddly asymmetric by the wind! Both V or 'vamp fringes and 'Vintage Pin-Up' fringes, and other fringes that require a crisp style and curving under usually involve fringe straighteners, a hair-dryer, a comb, and hair-spray or product to keep them in place (I am allergic to hair-spray!). Back-combing can go from deliberately ratted to plain ratty and matted if not taken out and re-done at the right frequency - too often and you snap and damage the hair, too infrequently and the build up of product, natural oils, and anything that gets trapped in that sort of style can become a bit gross. Under-cuts need to be re-shorn otherwise they grow out oddly, and anything with styled ringlets or waves also requires work (although I haven't got personal experience with the last two, but I have friends that do). I like my long hair loose, but often put braids in my hair just either side of my face to keep those bits from getting in my way, and those get re-done each morning. If you want to have 'mermaid hair', that usually requires both curling/waves and far more complex braids to get the full effect, etc. and some styles if not re-styled in full just turn into a fluffy explosion or stick up at weird angles, or flop down oddly, etc. so to look nice, you're bound into doing something with it each day that's more than just brushing it and/or tying it back, even if it's not putting it back into the full style. 

Edit: Dyeing your hair at home is also likely to stain your shower/bath, as well as anything you spill it on, and many home semi-permanent hair-dyes are not colour-fast in rain/dampness! I live somewhere pretty rainy, and the collars of so many of my clothes have ended up green because I've been rained on and colour has transferred. Your towels will get stained too.

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I am not saying this to dissuade people from brightly coloured hair or from having interesting styles, or to try and show off how hard I've worked on my hair, but to give people realistic expectations of what having some of the more colourful and complex styles entail. Also, if you do go to a stylist, and want something done, please be aware that if they're trying to dissuade you on the grounds that it might damage your hair, or inform you it could be quite expensive and take several sessions, they aren't necessarily judging your style, or trying to scam you for unnecessary extra work - as I mentioned above, bleaching dark hair can take several sessions, and dyeing is usually a separate session, not to mention any cuts/styles to be done, and hair-dressing is a skilled trade that requires decent compensation. 

Hair Adventures 2: Feeling Blue

As I mentioned at the end of my previous post, my new hair was meant to be a purple a pointed fringe, but the rest pine-green. The hair-cut, done by my friend Melody, turned out well (even if I am still learning to manage it), and initially it seemed that the dye - which I did myself - had worked out, too. I was really happy with my hair for a short while...

Violet fringe, pine-green hair... all seems well

I liked this colour combination - I had gone for a bluer, more violet purple and a green with cool tones so that together they would look better than a yellow-green and a pinkish purple, and I used a different dye for my hair than I normally did - the green was Directions Alpine Green with streaks of Crazy Colour Pine Green. I liked this, and I liked the Crazy Colour Violette. I didn't like how it washed out, though! After a couple of washes my hair was two-tone blue! 

My hair turned blue!

I don't actually know why this happened, either. Before I re-dyed my hair I had bleached my extensive roots, and had spent a while washing (not bleaching) the faded green from my hair until it was very pale mint. My fringe had been bleached to nearly white, and most of the top of my head bleached to pale blonde, so it wasn't from there being a lot of blue underneath. I did, however, dye it in two stages, as the first time was a bit patchy, and I did notice that after the second coat the colours seemed bluer. With the second coat I had also mixed conditioner in with the dye to try and deep condition my hair as I dyed it - something one of my friends recommended to me, and she has had no problem with it, but she uses Arctic Fox rather than Directions dyes.

Freshly done

I have had green dyes fade to bluish before - when I had my multicolour hair, which included actual blue, it definitely faded more towards the blue tones, and the greens became bluer. The picture on the left is how my multicolour hair started out - note that I used actual blues in the middle sections, and only green at the top  - and then it faded to mostly blue. 

After a few washes

However, this took a few washes, and didn't dramatically change colour the first time I washed it. It was also clearly a case of the green at the top fading to turquoise, still with hints of green, as well as blue from the middle section leaching into the purples. The blues remained pretty constant, and just faded a little - not dramatically.  

I don't actually know what has gone wrong with my hair, or how best to fix it. I don't want to bleach my hair again, as it's already brittle and a bit fried - and it needed quite a bit chopped off the bottom to deal with how much I had already damaged it. I'm trying to wash out as much of the blue as possible, and I've bought both some of my usual Directions Apple Green, and some Stargazer UV Green to re-coat the bulk section of my hair. I've also bought some Stargazer UV Pink to put over my royal blue fringe, hoping to make it look purple.

I don't know how well this is all going to turn out - the dye is ordered, but I have an exam on Tuesday, so I probably won't get any dyeing done until Wednesday - after which I will post a 'Hair Adventures 3' instalment to show you all how it turns out. 

Shiny blue lipstick.

I don't think the blue is an objectively bad colour - it's just not right for me. I don't even think I look necessarily bad with it - it suits me a lot better than my natural brown, and a lot better than that time I tried to have lilac hair, and I think it's better than the mint colour my green fades to, but it just doesn't seem right on me - I've had green hair, or at least mostly green hair, for so long that I just can't get used to my hair being a different colour. I look at my reflection and it just looks off - like I'm wearing a wig when I'm not. Plus I just like the colour green more than the colour blue. I think if it had been on purpose, that might also have given me a different outlook on it, but it being unwanted, some mistake I made in the process, really doesn't help. I've tried to make the most of it, and used it as an excuse to play around with blue make-up, but I definitely want it green again. 

Hair Adventures 1: A Paean To Green Hair

My hair was green for over 3 years, and now it's blue. I wish it was green again.

I tried to give myself pine green hair with a violet fringe and it went wrong... Well, it went fairly well until I washed it and now I have aqua blue hair with a royal blue fringe... I've had blue hair before, and I didn't mind it then, but this time around I just don't like it. I want my green hair back, and I've tried washing out the blue, but it just fades to lighter blue, and I'm scared to try stripping out in case I fry my hair. I'm just going to let it fade to a really light blue, then try and cover it over with a rather yellow green, and hope that the two together make the sort of mid-green that I love. In the meanwhile, I'm making this retrospective of pictures from when my hair was bright green and I loved it.

Here is my hair dyed with Directions Alpine Green - the colour my hair is currently meant to be! The last time I used it, it stayed very much like this, and I wonder what caused it to be so unstable this time - perhaps it's because I mixed in Crazy Colour Pine Green, perhaps its because I mixed in conditioner to try and repair my bleach-frazzled, hair... I don't really know. My last employers let me have green hair as long as it wasn't too vivid, so I dyed it this colour.

Spiky collar and short pine-green hair.  Selfies.

Below is another picture from early 2014, when my hair was short and green - although in this blueish lighted picture and with some fading, it looks a little more turquoise. This was around the start of me dyeing my hair green, and it's a colour I feel really suited me, hence why I have stuck with it for so long. 

Short dark emerald green hair, and a party outfit. Selfies.

As my hair started to grow longer, I started experimenting with more greens. For work I needed to keep it in darker greens and one colour, but for Hallowe'en 2014 I dyed it in this gradient effect. After the celebrations were over I dyed it all the darkest green of the very tips. 

Green ombre hair. Selfies.

Here is one from 2015, taken in my old apartment (I miss the pale purple walls in the hall-way). This particular shade of green ended up being "my colour" and I have gone back to it time and time again, even including it when I've had multicolour hair. I think this was summer time, hence the bright colour. I used to work at a school, so during summer I wasn't at work and could have my hair bright colours.

The start of the emerald green hair. Selfies. 

Even when I have dyed my hair in multicolour, 'mermaid' effects, I've always retained green as one of the main colours - on the top layer so it is the one that people can see most vividly. I don't mind having blues and purples in my hair - and I definitely liked it when all my hair was purple - but green has really become my favourite colour for my hair.

My first attempt at multicolour 'mermaid' style hair. Selfies.

This next one was from last summer. The weather was warm enough to warrant me wearing a white shirt instead of my usual all-black-everything, and my hair still had blue tips from when it was multi-colour. Blue is a fun accent colour, but I just don't really like my whole hair being blue. 

Summertime Gothic. Selfies.

Last autumn I pretty much settled into dyeing it the green that I want to stick with in the long run. I'd got into a routine with the Directions Apple Green, and it was looking very bright. I had fun doing matching makeup for it, including this angular look with iridescent green lip gloss over black lipstick. 

Bright green hair and matching makeup. Selfies

The photos below aren't selfies, they're a selection from the set that Raven took for me in January. The colour had faded out a little from washing, but was still quite bright. I wore a purple and black jacket with my green hair... as you can probably tell, my fondness for this colour pairing was building. 

Green hair in January. Photos by Raven. 

These pictures are from the same day - but are ones I took to focus on the make-up I did - green and purple like my outfit and hair. I rather liked this dramatic effect, and it is something I would like to repeat in future. 

Make-up for January photoshoot. Selfies.

This make-up made me feel like a fae-creature of some sort, and the green hair really does help with that kind of aesthetic. I filled my eyebrows in green and painted my lips to match. This is actually pretty recent - I think I did this make-up in March or April. There are a lot of good green make-up products available, so it's quite easy to find ways of co-ordinating green make-up for green hair. 

Green hair and green make-up.

I have had a lot of fun doing interesting make-up for my long green hair. I let it grow quite long - not as long as it was in my teens (I had it nearly waist-length once). The ends were getting a bit frazzled after repeated bleaching over the years, which means that I have since had it trimmed by about 5 or 6 inches. This purple make-up wasn't my neatest (the eyebrows came out a little uneven), but it was another pairing of purple and green. 

Green and purple once again in combination. Selfies.

This next make-up look was inspired by the idea of an 'evil dryad'. The great thing about unnatural green hair - not even leafy, or grassy green hair, but bright, vivid, artificial, green - is that it's good for looks that are based off distorted nature, because they're a nature colour, green, but not in a natural variation - well, unless it's in mineral form; malachite and emerald.  

Green hair and dark make-up. Selfies.

And this windswept picture (in which my new pointed fringe looks rather fluffy!) illustrates the colours my hair was meant to be - a violet fringe and an emerald-to-pine green for the rest of it... if only it had stayed these colours! Green and purple are my favourite colour combination, and this was the hair that my recently lace-on bat-wings were supposed to match.  

Green hair and purple fringe. Selfies.

I'm a little annoyed that the above colour combination was so shortly lived. I will try and somehow remedy the situation, but I am not sure how successful I will be. It really didn't work out as intended - even if the immediate results seemed successful. I think that perhaps at some point in the next two years, as it will be likely that I will need to have a more natural colour after I graduate in order to appease the professional job market, but now my green hair is (hopefully, only temporarily...) gone, I know that when that time comes, I will really miss it.

One thing I can say is that the pointy fringe turned out pretty well. It has faded blue, but it has a good shape. The picture above doesn't do it justice because I was literally holding it down against the wind. It was a rather bright but rather windy day when I took those, and you can see the trim on my sleeves! I have some more selfies of the new hair with the fringe better visible, but they're all decidedly blue!

The next instalment of my hair adventures is about my new hair... Don't get me wrong, it's not terrible hair, and my friend Melody who cut it did an excellent job, it's just that it's blue (which I dyed myself) and I just don't feel right with blue hair this time around, plus it is not what I had intended. However, I am trying to make the most of my blue hair.