Teen Gothic

As the title says, I've recently gotten super into gothic fashion after admiring it for most of my life, and I finally built up the confidence to start buying and creating outfits from a local alternative fashion store in the past few months. I absolutely love how it looks on me and already have amassed quite a wardrobe of goth wear, from dresses to corsets to pentagram skirts, and have even started learning new makeup skills to match.

Through this I've ended up reconnecting with an old friend from back in school who has been wearing goth fashion for years and whose fashion sense really inspired me back in the day. Today I sent her a text with pics of some of my new outfits and was excited to want to talk with her again; however the response she had confused me.

She essentially told me while goth fashion is fun, "just don't forget to educate yourself on all the goth subculture too." I feel this is phrased weirdly as if it was more of a warning rather than an invitation to learn more about what being goth meant as I assumed at first.

This has left me a bit confused, and I can't tell if she's supportive of my new style or slightly gatekeep-y. Is she saying I can't wear gothic fashion if I don't understand the intricacies of goth subculture? Is this a suggestion that how I've gone about wearing goth fashion is wrong and that I need to educate myself on how to wear it properly? Or is it simply a friendly suggestion to look into the subculture that could help me improve wearing gothic attire?

Would anyone have some idea of what this could mean and how important educating yourself on the goth subculture is? Thank you in advance!

Me and a friend are going and we’ve both never gone to an event like that before. Anything we should know ahead of time?? We’ve both been into the music and fashion for a few years but this is going to be the first actual goth event we’ve gone to.