Goth style's rejection of mainstream values, emphasis on freedom of expression, and challenging taboos makes it difficult to define its aesthetic principles. Goth fashion emphasizes transformation of the body, elements of beauty, order, conscious eroticism and 'otherness' that flouts conventions.

While a member of the Goth subculture may or may not embrace nihilism, many are drawn to the fashion or music due to a sense of alienation, which may explain the style's fascination with morbidity or vampire style. Wearing black eyeshadow and shroud-like clothing that refers to the dead or undead, may express grief, despair, mourning or deathwish. However, this is not necessarily an anti-life attitude. Rather, Goth fashion can be a positive transformation from alienation through self-expression via beauty and fashion, and through a sense of belonging to a community that shares the same sense of alienation. Alternately, the choice to embrace this fashion may simply rise from a far less complicated psychology, and reflect an attraction to Eros through Thanatos, an attraction to the 'darker' side of sexuality. The wearer may find the extremity, intensity or 'otherness' of the dark Goth look or preoccupations to be sexy or empowering.

Theda Bara's look has inspired some types of Goth fashion.

^{[citation needed]}

For women, Goth fashion embraces all body types, unlike mainstream fashion that relies on a hierarchy of beauty superiority based on body and hair type. Goth fashion privileges voluptuousness, sensuality and sexuality through its referral to fashions and even individuals of other eras that also prized these qualities. One famous female role model is Theda Bara, the 1910s 'Vamp' femme fatale known for her dark eyeshadow, curves and smoldering onscreen presence.

Like the Urban Primitive movement, the goth subculture rejects mainstream conventions and encourages reinventing oneself by transformation or physical modification. That one may take total control of one's image is a powerful individual response to a society dominated by Photoshop images that prescribe a rarely attainable ideal of a faked 'natural' beauty. With its obviously dyed hair, pale skin, and differently-defined physical aesthetic, Goth fashion is a calculated "unnatural" response to the unattainable "natural" California Girls golden Barbie (or Ken) image.

Goth fashion can be recognized by its stark black clothing (or hair or makeup), often contrasted with boldly colored clothing, hair and makeup in strong shades of deep reds, purples or blues, in fabrics and styles that evoke romantic eras as well as morbidity, that usually combine style elements that flow and drape as well as restrict or emphasize and sexualize a body part (i.e. corsetry or tight sleeves or trousers). Goth fashion further emphasizes the personal power of an individual, as the calculated juxtapositions of elements of the rugged accessories(i.e. metallic and leather), to that of the vulnerable, fragile and sensual restriction of body parts (i.e. lace, silks, and high heels for either gender). Like other fashions that embrace elaborate fashion choices and rules, goth fashion elicits attention from others, both goth or non-goth.