After the death of her husband, Prince Albert, in 1861, Queen Victoria was so elaborate in her sartorial choices that she inspired the goth style that persists today. Not only did she enter a period of sustained seclusion, rarely appearing in public for decades, but she also wore only black until her own death, forty years later. It was a lavish darkness, taking the form of sheer veils and extravagantly layered dresses of velvet, silk, and satin, which billowed around her like a cloud. A waist-length jacket, which she often wrapped around herself and buttoned all the way to her chin, signalled that her heart was closed for business. She haunted the halls of Buckingham Palace like a spectre of grief. Death became her—as it did for many in the Victorian era.
Following the queen’s example, black mourning dress became popular and were worn anywhere from three months to two and a half years after a loved one’s death. Magazines and manuals provided detailed instructions on how to style oneself in grief, and some shops exclusively sold mourning attire. It didn’t end with fashion: while grieving, Victorians would drape their homes in darkness, keeping their curtains drawn at all hours the day and night. Upper-class funerals were elaborate affairs, with enormous monuments flanking gravestones and processions of hearses, horses, and coaches. Women were known to throw themselves over coffins, howling the name of the deceased. This penchant for darkness, or memento mori (Latin for “remember you must die”), pervaded Victorian culture, from literature, where stories of the undead reigned supreme, to architecture, where the cavernous and imposing prevailed.
