You may have noticed a white rabbit doll that appears in every Gloomth photoshoot, whether tucked in the background or held by the model. There’s a long history with that bunny!

For our first narrative photoshoot (where I was styling actual models and not just dressing and undressing a mannequin in my living room in front of a curtain for two straight hours) I raided a thrift store for dishes and toys to have the models smash and destroy. Under a pile of dusty Christmas decorations was a creepy looking white rabbit doll in a filthy plastic bag. Clearly forgotten, and definitely not new- he was perfect! Our original intent was to have him ruined along with a white teddy bear during the shoot, but I fell in love with the weird little bunny so he remained intact.

You can spot him in my blood splattered Tea Party set design above! Please don’t “@” me about the photo processing, it was like 2008 photoshop filters seemed really new and exciting at the time (eyeroll).

You can see the rest of this photo series on our flickr!

We shot this first series out on our first hire’s lawn behind her home, it feels like a century ago. It was the beginning of my planning over the top themed shoots for Gloomth, and making our photography almost as big a part of the label as the clothing itself. Since then the bunny doll has appeared in nearly every single shoot we have done, as our mascot and a consistent touch of eerie Gloomth magic.

In 2011 we held a contest to name the bunny mascot! We chose the name Vinegar from all the many suggestions and entries we received.

When Ashton Drake hired me to design a Gloomth outfit for their Delilah Noir doll line we made sure they made a tiny doll version of Vinegar for Delilah! (You can still sometimes find the limited edition doll and outfit on auction, mostly in Asia)

As we’ve grown I have hired a couple of stunt doubles for the original Vinegar, since his head is coming off and he’s got a lot of wear and tear from being in over 200 photoshoots. The doubles don’t have names but we might host a contest to name them soon! 😉

You can see how filthy and damaged the original Vinegar is in the photo above, he’s in the middle there. Poor guy could really use an early retirement.

So the secret is out! The bunny mascot, Vinegar, is actually three almost identical bunnies who exclusively model for Gloomth. We don’t pay him much but he is an integral part of the Gloomth family and we wouldn’t be the same without him!

-Taeden