Even if you haven’t watched the Addams Family riff “Wednesday” yet, you’ve probably seen the “Wednesday dance.” It’s the show’s most memorable and re-watchable scene: actor Jenna Ortega takes the floor at her school’s “Rave’n dance” to perform a lovably odd, lightly possessed sequence of stomping, thrashing and arm waving — all while maintaining that signature unmoving gaze.

The dance has been viewed over 20 million times on YouTube and hailed as a clarion call to “get weird” by the New York Times. But what’s not being talked about enough is what our titular heroine was wearing to do it: a billowy, ruffled black sheer and lace Alaia dress that’s helped catapult goth fashion into sudden mainstream popularity.

Few esthetics evoke such an immediate and clear image as the goth. The all-black everything, the sun-avoidant complexion and the sense of haunted dishevelment. It’s such a singular, enduring trend that it needs no “-core” at the end of it, unlike many of today’s fleeting and fractured trends. Goth fashion’s origins lie in Victorian mourning attire — with mortality rates high, ladies signalled grief via their dress. Women were expected to don black for two years after the loss of a loved one. (Men? Just a few weeks.)

Fast-forward to the late 1970s, and the rise of rebellious punk rock and melancholy sounds from the likes of The Cure, Joy Division and Siouxie and the Banshees required an equally expressive uniform of edgy meets…