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

At first, there was Gothic architecture. This was a new style of church architecture in the High Middle Ages, and was derisively called such because it was “Germanic” and deviated from Roman canons.

Then there were Gothic novels. They were named after old medieval churches and castles where ghosts, vampires and other relics of the past threatened the new, enlightened way of life of the XIX century. So the “Gothic” was appropriated to mean “ancient, dark and spooky”.

And then there was a music and fashion subculture that tended to dig the ancient, dark and spooky aesthetic.