It’s a little daunting to acknowledge how long I have been running Gloomth. This label went from just me in a spare room in our house to having a manufacturing contract and running photography workshops over the last decade plus. So much has changed with Gloomth (and myself) during that time and some things have kind of stayed the same. I thought it would be interesting to look at some 2009 vs 2019 things!

2009 We began shooting with CheshireCat! Cheshire’ is the proto Gloomth Girl and has been in countless photoshoots with us since this early White Rabbit inspired series. My idea of styling for a shoot wasn’t very sophisticated then (and probably isn’t much moreso now).

2019 CheshireCat is even cooler than when we first met her and still one of everyone’s favorite Gloomth Girls! This red tinged photo was taken in January 2019! I am hoping to redo some of these early Gloomth shoots with the same models this year, so stay tuned for a new take on the White Rabbit with CheshireCat. 🙂

In 2009 our website was something I’d cobbled together with rudimentary html knowledge and some neat drawings I did of the fish in my aquarium then. The blue damask background is a chunk of fabric I scanned, it’s still one of my favorite fabrics and I still have a piece pinned on the wall in my home office today.

Our 2019 website (well, it went up in 2018 and I haven’t changed the front page much apart from adding more photos) is slick and I’m super proud of it.

Our dress designs in 2009 looked a bit like this, we were just growing into our lolita-influenced aesthetic at the time. There’s CheshireCat and Kuroihitomi in the bottom two photos. This was snagged from the Wayback machine so it’s missing some files.

Our current collection is a fair bit smaller than it was in 2009 as we’re now working with larger scale manufacturing. We still have medical themed dresses and frilly full skirts!

Me in 2009, I was mostly wearing cream/black and still very deep in my Gothic Miss Havisham era. My hair was a very dark and vibrant red with black streaks throughout. I wore a *lot* of black eyeshadow everywhere and no lipstick. I am 25 in this photo. Big tiddy goth girlfriend before it was a thing, lollllll.

And pretty much the only actual-2019 selfie I’ve taken so far. I dove head first into color after 2012 and haven’t looked back. Lots of pastels. Still addicted to lace and tattered and vintage things, and re-purposing weird objects for accessories. No black in my red hair anymore. I am 35 currently. Pastel nightmare doll girlfriend? 😛

I hope you enjoyed some of these throwbacks!

-Taeden