I’m Goth on the Inside

Call them commitment issues, but I’ve always been one of those girls to shy away from entire looks, from scenes, from cliques. Keeping up with all of that just seems like far too much work and upkeep, and, frankly, I love way too many things to try to incorporate them all into a single look that I stick with from day to day.

For example, ever since I was a child, I’ve been enamored with the dark side. Beyond a child’s foray into Bloody Marys in the bathroom mirror and Ouja boards at sleepovers, I was mesmerized with undead and took bike trips to the library only to return with a book bag full of horror books that I’d stash under my trundle bed. At the age of 12 and after a rash of jolting nightmares, I clearly remember my father and mother sitting me down to tell me that I needed to stop reading the books. I remember them telling me that they would adversely affect my future—that in a few years, I might be hiding bodies under the bed rather than books. As any pre-teen would have, I blew them off.

Years later, I still find myself drawn to the diabolical; to the weird, scary, sensational and otherworldly. If you looked at me, you’d probably never guess that I am so Goth on the inside. I really didn’t think I needed to give a sartorial nod to this particular interest, however, I couldn’t resist the call of the dark when I saw the infamous vampire rings from Bittersweets NY. Upon perusing the rest of the website, I realized that not only had I found a kindred spirit, I found a physical object that perfectly embodied my ongoing love affair with vampires.

Among the silver and gold fang necklaces, belt buckles and rings, are a treasure trove of maggot charms, Amityville fly earrings, unicorn horns and daggers and—get this—a silver monkey head charm filled with solid perfume that comes with a little 14k gold perfume spoon. Need I say more? Bittersweets NY’s creator Robin Adams answers a few of my questions:

Why did you pick the symbols you did for your jewelry?

I guess I like to pick things that are unconventionally pretty. Worms are a great shape and they’re a perfect size. I was definitely the kind of kid who was digging around in the dirt, and inspecting every little thing in the grass, so it doesn’t seem too unusual for me to whip up some worm jewelry. The Monkey Skull was a nod to the perfume jewelry that I remember having when I was little, but I didn’t want it to be cutesy. I thought for a while about what would make a good perfume container—cracking open a monkey skull sounded both fun and gross to me (and of course, I was thinking about that scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark).

As for the fangs, I feel they have become this universal symbol of bloodsucking, lust, corruption—all sorts of things that people can really relate to. I don’t feel as though people see fangs and just think, Dracula. The whole idea of vampirism has extended into our cultural psyche, and I think it works conceptually on a lot of levels—and they are very pretty to look at.

Do these symbols changes once they are made into jewelry?
Hmmm. I don’t know if anything really changes once they are made into jewelry. Maybe I’m just highlighting ideas that are already out there. I don’t know. I really try to make things that I think are timeless both visually and conceptually.

What books / movies do you draw for inspiration for your pieces?
I was looking at a comic book called Promethea recently and saw some cool symbols in there. I really love Clash of the Titans and a lot of Sci-Fi for really cool visual stuff. Sometimes I’ll make something and then name it after a movie like the Amityville Fly Necklace, which is kind of backwards, but I definitely don’t have a strict formula for how I do things.