Eli5: How did the term “Goth” go from Germanic tribes destroying Rome, to the music and fashion we know today?

Question

Eli5: How did the term “Goth” go from Germanic tribes destroying Rome, to the music and fashion we know today?

In: 7280

Answer 1

Victorians were big on BS-ing history around what they could observe. And by the Victorian era gothic architecture was grimy, dirty and dark. While on their time, a lot of it was bright and shiny.

So our views on what “gothic” is today comes from people seeing dirty, old, eroded stuff from 600 years prior and going “oh, that must’ve just been the aesthetic of the time”.