See what everyone wore to Zimmermann’s party in L.A.
For our Weekly Drop Watch column, Fashionista scours the market to curate the most noteworthy releases from our favorite fashion and beauty brands. Keep scrolling for this week’s highlights. Elsa Hosk stars in the campaign for eyewear brand Elisa Johnson’s Holiday Edit, which features nine frames …
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Goth is back, but this time, it’s softer, more chic, and easier to wear. Soft goth makeup has taken over Instagram, with over a million views on tutorials, and we have no doubts as to why: it gives that effortlessly moody, cool-girl vibe without looking like a costume. In fact, celebs are loving it too. From musician Billie Eilish’s dramatic stage looks to singer-songwriter Rosalía’s romantic, cinematic makeup, stars are experimenting with smoky eyes, sculpted cheekbones, and deep lips.
But what exactly is soft goth?
This trend tones down the drama of classic goth makeup, creating a modern, wearable look that balances edge with elegance. If the full goth look is all-black everything and heavy liner, soft goth is its chill, fashion-forward cousin. It’s more about smoky shadows, neutral skin, and a statement lip that feels effortless.
Before becoming an internet trend, goth makeup had a rich history. Emerging in the late 1970s as punk faded away, it drew on Victorian fashion, old horror films, and gothic literature, emphasising pale skin, dark eyes, and a sense of dramatic rebellion. By the 1990s, movies like The Craft (1996) gave goth beauty a cinematic, sensual edge. Today, the style has evolved into a modern, polished, and wearable everyday look.
Why is everyone suddenly into it?
“Soft goth fits perfectly with today’s mood. After years of glowing skin and glossy pink cheeks, people are ready for something different. There’s a craving for depth, texture, and emotion in beauty again. And soft goth makeup hits that sweet spot,” says makeup artist Yamini Grover.
Pop culture has played a huge role in its comeback. Actor Jenna Ortega’s Wednesday Addams look made dark eyes and pale lips feel cool again. Musicians like Billie Eilish and Adela keep the vibe alive with their moody, otherworldly styles. Even fashion runways have gone darker, with models wearing diffused smoky eyes, matte skin, and shades of greige lipstick.
Here’s how to nail the look:
Use a matte or semi-matte foundation for a smooth, even finish. Keep your complexion neutral rather than overly bronzed or dewy.
Contour with cool tones to define the cheekbones, temples, and jawline. Keep blush subtle or skip it completely.
Blend dark shadows like grey, charcoal, plum, or brown close to your lashes. Focus on soft blending instead of sharp lines. A touch of shimmer in the inner corner can make it more modern.
Choose a lipstick in deep berry, plum, or greige. A satin or soft matte finish gives a polished but moody touch.
The key to soft goth is imperfection. Let the eyes look a little lived-in, keep the edges diffused, and embrace a bit of rawness.
(With inputs from makeup artist Amita Juneja)
Drew Daniel is getting ready to release his first Soft Pink Truth album since 2022. The new album, Can Such Delightful Times Go On Forever?, is out January 30 via Thrill Jockey. The record’s lead single, “Time Inside the Violet,” comes with a music video made by animator Matthew Murray Sullivan in collaboration with visual artist Vicki Bennett. Watch the visual below.
Daniel worked on Can Such Delightful Times Go On Forever?—the follow-up to Is It Going to Get Any Deeper Than This?—with his husband and Matmos bandmate M.C. Schmidt, guitarist Bill Orcutt, and many others. On the new album, according to a press release, “Daniel probes the limitations of pleasure in the midst of our dystopian contemporary landscape.”
Read more about Is It Going to Get Any Deeper Than This? in Pitchfork’s “The Best Electronic Music of 2022.”
All products featured on Pitchfork are independently selected by our editors. However, when you buy something through our retail links, we may earn an affiliate commission.
Can Such Delightful Times Go On Forever?:
01 Mere Survival Is Not Enough
02 And By and By a Cloud Takes All Away
03 Phrygian Ganymede
04 Underneath (I)
05 L’Esprit de l’Escalier
06 Time Inside the Violet
07 Orchard
08 Underneath (II)
Jenna Ortega and her stylist Enrique Melendez have spent the last year going all-in on Ortega’s brand of gothic glam. Inspired first by her leading role in Netflix’s Wednesday, Ortega has delighted in dark, sexy style codes: a reptilian skin-like Ashi Studio gown, pirate cosplay in Vivienne Westwood, a shredded, ripped-up GapStudio jersey dress that’d make any mid aughts emo princess swoon, a ruffled suit that reflected Stefano Gallici’s avant grade gothic vision at Ann Demulemeester. From mall goth boots on an Australian beach to mussed-up, don’t-mess-with-me makeup and backcombed hair, Jenna Ortega has stayed committed.
Last night, at InStyle’s Imagemaker Awards, Ortega opted for something a little different. Don’t get me wrong, with those bleached eyebrows, it’s still very much giving ethereal creature of the night, but this veered more romantic. More Du Maurier than Poe. Ortega wore a sheer lilac gown from Amiri’s spring 2026 collection, which features delicate, leaf-like beading, a see-through bodice, and thigh-high slit. She paired it with a fluffy oxblood coat, platform sandals in metallic silver, and a mirrored silver, boxy clutch bag. Melendez posed with Ortega on the red carpet in a similarly toned red suit.
Photo: Getty Images
Dave Ball, the multi-instrumentalist, producer, and songwriter who performed alongside Marc Almond in the influential synth-pop duo Soft Cell, died yesterday (October 22). The band’s publicist, Debbie Ball, confirmed the news, writing that Ball died peacefully in his sleep at his London home. No cause was given. The musician was 66 years old.
Raised in Blackpool, England, after his adoption into a working-class family, Ball grew up a budding artist with a penchant for the Northern soul craze then sweeping the north of England, obsessively collecting Tamla and Stax singles. He moved to Leeds to study fine art in his late teens and met fellow student Almond, a lamé-clad performance artist. The pair bonded over punk and electronic music and cult films; after a few weeks of futzing with a Korg synthesizer, Ball enlisted his flamboyant new friend as a bandmate.
They were a strange pair—“Marc, this gay bloke in makeup; and me, a big guy who looked like a minder,” as Ball put it to The Guardian in 2017—but the contrast neatly superimposed onto their musical loves. They named the duo Soft Cell, punning on what they called “consumerist nightmares and suburban insanity,” and made songs amalgamating an unlikely trinity of Kraftwerk, Suicide, and cabaret. They made their live debut “at a college Christmas show two short months after they met, performing ramshackle, anticonsumerist songs against a backdrop of Super 8 films of destroyed radios and industrial landscapes,” Pitchfork’s Eric Torres wrote in his review of the band’s debut album, Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret. “The art-punk spark was lit.”
An early breakout single, “Memorabilia,” co-produced by Mute founder Daniel Miller, united their love of kitsch and acid house in a floor-filler that suggested the underground, avant-garde curios of their Some Bizzare label cadre were about to boil over. The eruption came with “Tainted Love,” a tempestuous, darkly intoxicating cover of a Gloria Jones song Ball had heard in a club as a teenager. Backed by a cover of the Supremes’ “Where Did Our Love Go,” the single was the United Kingdom’s second-best seller of 1981 and topped the charts in more than a dozen other countries.
The hit, and the debut album that followed, affixed Soft Cell in British music history: contemporaries of Depeche Mode and path-makers for bands like Pet Shop Boys, Erasure, and Spandau Ballet, even if Almond accused some of that crop of making heartless music “to pose against the Berlin Wall to.” The duo released two more studio albums in the ensuing years, The Art of Falling Apart and This Last Night in Sodom; both charted in the United Kingdom, despite the latter’s release after the group’s dissolution. Soft Cell also released one of the first remix albums, Non-Stop Ecstatic Dancing, and Ball, closely attuned to the evolution of electronic music, would fashion 12″ edits of their singles by splicing together segments of tape. Almond and Ball’s embrace of the clubland party lifestyle, and substance use, contributed to their split. As Ball wrote in his 2020 autobiography, Electronic Boy, “We’d been so successful very quickly, in constant demand and therefore always together—living out of each other’s pockets. I don’t think any relationship could have endured that pressure.”
World Spine Day 2025: 16 October is observed as World Spine Day to raise awareness regarding spinal health. This year’s theme is ‘invest in your spine.’ On this observance day, let’s take a closer look at some of the daily harmful habits.
ALSO READ: Spine surgeon warns Indians not to ignore back pain until it’s too late, reveals who all ‘should be extra careful’
To understand how some common habits may impact spinal health, Dr Gaurav Batra, neurosurgeon of brain and spine at Max Super Speciality Hospital at Vaishali, shared with HT Lifestyle, that one needs to take care of the spine as it is the very bedrock of the body’s architecture, responsible for the majority of movements. But nowadays, some daily habits put spinal health at risk, causing severe backache.
“Back pain will also accumulate slowly and will become increasingly worse. Most stress that is acquired from posture, ergonomics, and habit can be avoided by being aware,” he emphasised. “Minor adjustments in how we sit, move, and sleep can have a big difference in how it keeps a healthy, ache-free spine.” To fix your back pain, you need to change some habits.
Dr Batra shared these five habits that quietly destabilise your spine, along with one pro tip for each on how you can rectify them:
1. Long sitting and posture
- Hours of sitting, and particularly with a curved back and bowing neck, puts the lower back under tremendous tension.
- Gradually, the constant tension seeps into the muscles of the spine, represses disc nutrition, and hastens wear and tear. The consequence is nagging stiffness of the back, fatigue, and even disc prolapse.
Tip: Sit with support for your lower back, screen at eye level, and take hourly moving breaks.
2. Excessive smartphone use
- Repetition of neck flexion for extended periods of time spent on a phone can multiply the cervical spine’s load hundreds of times.
- This is commonly referred to as ‘tech neck’, which results in neck pain, shoulder stiffness, and premature cervical spondylosis.
Tip: Phone at eye level with two-handed support, and intersperse gentle neck stretches during practice.
3. Having a sedentary lifestyle
- A sedentary lifestyle weakens the deep spinal stabilising muscles, such as the back extensors and core.
- This loads the discs and ligaments mechanically, resulting in chronic low back pain and deteriorated posture.
Tip: Regular stretching, strengthening, and brisk walking restore spinal balance and endurance.
4. Picking up objects the incorrect way
- Bending at the waist to lift heavy objects places extreme stress on the lower back and may result in disc injury or abrupt muscle spasm.
Tip: Always bend knees and hips, keep the object close to the body, and never turn while lifting.
5. Using defective mattresses
- Lying on a sagging or soft mattress will most likely disturb the spine and hyper-extend the back muscles during sleep.
Tip: Lie on a medium-firm mattress.
6. Sleeping on stomach
Lying on one’s stomach will most likely hyper-extend the neck and lower back as well.
Tip: Lie on a medium-firm mattress and experiment with lying on the side with a pillow between your knees to maintain the natural spinal alignment.
Note to readers: This article is for informational purposes only and not a substitute for professional medical advice. Always seek the advice of your doctor with any questions about a medical condition.
Of all the shoe trends for fall, soft loafers might be the most comfortable and practical. So naturally, it hasn’t taken them long to become a total favorite among fashion pros.
Not sure what we mean by “soft loafers?” They’re like classic loafers, just with a slimmer silhouette. And as the name suggests, soft loafers are characterized by being more flexible and, well, soft than their counterparts. This might include gathered edges, very thin and flexible soles, or other details that give the shoes an elegantly lived-in feel.
We’re seeing this manifest in a few different ways, from classically sleek loafer styles in more pliable fabrics to a newer hybrid that looks like a cross between a boat shoe and a moccasin. For both, the defining traits are a slim silhouette, a low flat heel, and buttery soft leather or suede fabrics. And we’re seeing style influencers wearing them with everything from mini skirts (almost always with socks) to trousers to maxi dresses.
Moritz Scholz/Getty Images
Retailers are already betting big on this shoe trend, so you won’t have to look far to find soft loafers at your favorite stores. We’ve even shopped a few out for you, below.
A version of this story was previously published in Vogue Spain.
Producer Rajan Shahi has come to the defense of his show’s lead actress, Rupali Ganguly, calling her a “soft target” who is often unfairly criticized. In an interview with Screen, Rajan stated that people “derive pleasure” from speaking ill of Rupali, and that they do so to gain media attention.
Rajan recalled an incident where he had to throw an actor off the set after learning the person was inviting journalists to their home to “badmouth” the show. He said that this actor later ran a smear campaign against the series. “Why didn’t you speak when you were a part of the show?” he questioned. Rajan emphasized that Rupali is an easy target, and speaking against her guarantees coverage.
He revealed that he constantly tells Rupali not to be affected by the negative comments. “Nobody is perfect, even Rupali might be at fault in places,” he said, “When you work together, issues are bound to happen.” He added that he and the team sometimes “laugh” at the immature behavior of actors who speak against her, especially when they have no professional achievements of their own to talk about.
Rajan also praised Rupali for her immense dedication to the show, noting that she has sacrificed a lot of time for the role. He credited her with taking a stand to be on the show despite initial division from the channel. The producer compared her success to that of other television legends like Smriti Irani, Sakshi Tanwar, and Mona Singh, stating that only a few actors have ever achieved this level of success in their careers.
About Anupamaa
Anupamaa is a Hindi television drama that premiered in July 2020. The show, which is a remake of the Bengali series Sreemoyee, streams digitally on Disney+ Hotstar. Produced by Rajan Shahi under Director’s Kut Productions, the series stars Rupali Ganguly in the titular role, along with Sudhanshu Pandey, Madalsa Sharma, and Gaurav Khanna.
Rupali Ganguly has had a long career in television, with notable roles in shows such as Sarabhai vs Sarabhai, Sanjivani: A Medical Boon, and Kahaani Ghar Ghar Kii. She has also appeared in several films, including Angaara and Eti.