r/goth • u/CapitalAltruistic363 • 1h ago
Goth Subculture History Dazed article: Batcave x revived 80s goth brand
Dazed just wrote about the Batcave t-shirt (which Jon Klein from Specimen / Siouxsie and the Banshees designed with BOY London in 1983) being on sale again for the first time in decades, as part of a collaboration with a revived postpunk/fetish brand called Pure Sex England.
Instagram post: https://www.instagram.com/p/DbGlNVqipHE/?img_index=1


Excerpt:
At the Batcave in the 80s, no one knew what a goth was. “Boys just wore makeup because girls liked boys with makeup,” says Jon Klein, former Siouxsie and the Banshees guitarist and founder of the Batcave club night, Soho’s cobwebbed birthplace of the London goth. Four decades later, and the goth aesthetic still permeates culture: ‘whimsigoth’ has become a popular Vinted search word, Matières Fécales has climbed to the top of Paris Fashion Week, while a flourishing electroclash scene is populated by solid steel crucifixes.
Back in 1982, word of the Batcave tore through the squatting scene with macabre gusto, until Nick Cave, Robert Smith and the band Bauhaus were among its attendees. Soon, Klein was selling Batcave t-shirts designed with BOY London, the cult punk label founded in 1976. But when Klein opened the Batcave at a strip club and propped up a coffin for the door, he didn’t anticipate a petri dish that spawned a global aesthetic – he wanted a DIY hangout for his band Specimen to play on Wednesday nights and dress up. “Wearing black in bohemian poverty culture is an easy way to make everything match,” he recalls, now 66 years old.
Now, in 2026, the Batcave merch worn by the first-ever goths makes a comeback thanks to a collaboration with the 80s postpunk brand Pure Sex, which was revived this year after a three-decade hiatus.