Goth, Emo and Alt Femboy Outfits: 10 Looks, Where to Buy

Goth, emo, alt and punk get used as if they were one word, and on a femboy they often end up in the same outfit. They are not the same thing, though, and knowing which one you're reaching for makes it much easier to get the look right.

The short version

Goth is dark and romantic. Black on black, velvet and lace, silver jewellery, pale skin, sharp eyeliner. It comes out of post-punk music at the start of the 1980s and it takes itself a little seriously on purpose.

Emo is the 2000s. Skinny jeans, band tees, studded belts, a side fringe over one eye, and more eyeliner than anybody's parents were comfortable with. It is sadder than goth and much more casual.

Punk is the loud one. Ripped, patched, pinned and home-made, with an attitude about it.

Alt is the umbrella. It covers all three plus grunge, e-boy, pastel goth and whatever TikTok has named this month, and it is mostly used for looks that mix them. It is also the fastest-growing of these searches, which makes sense: most people wear a blend.

Femboy style fits all four more easily than you might think. Every one of these scenes had androgynous men at the centre of it long before anyone said "femboy." Robert Smith of The Cure has worn smeared red lipstick on stage for more than forty years. Mid-2000s emo bands made eyeliner on boys so ordinary that the word "guyliner" had to be invented to describe it. You aren't bending these styles to fit; they were always wide open.

Goth femboy style

Where it comes from. Post-punk bands in the late 1970s and early 1980s — Siouxsie and the Banshees, Bauhaus, The Cure — and the club nights that grew up around them. The look is borrowed from Victorian mourning, horror films and old glamour, and the mood is drama, never cheer.

The palette. Black, and then more black. Deep red, purple and dark green are allowed as accents. Silver, not gold.

The pieces that carry it:

A black skirt — pleated, tiered or long and full. A long skirt reads as more goth than a short one.
Mesh or lace long sleeves worn under a tee or a corset-style top.
Velvet anything: a blazer, a choker, a top.
A lace-up or buckled platform boot. This one piece will change an outfit more than anything else on this list.
Silver jewellery: rings on several fingers, crosses, moons, bats, a chain or two.
Black nails. Chipped is fine; chipped is arguably correct.

The sub-styles worth knowing. Trad goth is the original club look: big backcombed hair, heavy makeup, fishnets, lots of black. Romantic or Victorian goth leans into lace, ruffled blouses, long coats and anything your great-grandmother might have been buried in. Pastel goth keeps the shapes and symbols — crosses, bats, platforms — and swaps the black for lavender and baby pink, which makes it the easiest entry point for a femboy wardrobe that already runs soft. Soft goth is the everyday version: a black turtleneck, a pleated skirt, one silver necklace, a bit of eyeliner. You could wear it to the office.

The trap. Every piece in pure black makes an outfit look flat in photos. Mix textures — matte cotton, shiny vinyl, see-through mesh, velvet — so the black has some depth.

Emo femboy style

Where it comes from. The name comes from 1980s DC hardcore, but the look everyone means is the mid-2000s one: pop-punk and post-hardcore bands, Hot Topic, MySpace profile pictures taken from above. It has been back for several years now, and the revival is softer and more mixed than the original.

The pieces that carry it:

Skinny black jeans, ripped at the knee, or a black mini skirt worn over leggings or tights.
A band tee, ideally a band you can name a song by. Nobody will actually quiz you, but it helps.
Striped long sleeves under a short-sleeve tee. This is the most emo layering trick there is.
A studded or checkered belt, and wristbands.
Converse or Vans, beaten up. Checkerboard slip-ons if you're committed.
A zip hoodie a size too big, with thumb holes.

Hair is half the look. A heavy side fringe over one eye, choppy layers, black or dark dye, maybe one bright streak. If that feels like too much commitment, a clip-in fringe lets you try it for a weekend.

Emo versus scene. Scene was emo's louder, brighter sibling: neon hair extensions, bigger backcombed hair, rawr, cartoon prints. If your emo outfit has gone pink and electric, you've drifted into scene, and scene is having its own revival.

Alt femboy: the mix

This is where most people actually end up. An alt femboy outfit takes a piece from each of the styles above and adds whatever else seems right: a plaid skirt from grunge, chains from the e-boy look, pastel colours from kawaii fashion, a jacket covered in patches from punk.

A few combinations that work well:

Grunge femboy. An oversized flannel over a slip dress or a band tee, a pleated skirt, fishnets and boots. It looks thrown together on purpose.
E-boy crossover. A striped long-sleeve under a tee, a chain wallet, a padlock choker, painted nails, a little blush under the eyes. Loose on top, shorter or slimmer on the bottom.
Soft alt. A pastel hoodie, a black pleated skirt, platform boots, thigh-highs. A hard shape in soft colours.

What holds an alt outfit together is keeping one thing consistent. Hold one thing steady: the colour (all black and one accent), the fabric (all worn denim and cotton), or the footwear (the same boots every day). Change everything else.

Punk femboy

Punk gets its own short section because it's the most home-made of the four. The ripped fishnets, the jacket with patches sewn on by hand, the safety pins, the hair you bleached yourself in a bathroom — punk rewards doing it yourself badly more than buying it finished.

It's also the style of the first character we built. Jax is a record-shop bassist whose look we called "poppy punk": spiked choker, black nails, thigh-highs, wrecked sneakers — and then a heart pendant on the spikes, heart patches down a purple-and-pink jacket, and hearts on the laces. Taking a hard style and making it deliberately cute is one of the most femboy things you can do, and it works with all four of these styles.

The pieces that do the most work

If you're starting from nothing, these five pieces cover all four looks:

Black thigh-highs or tights. Opaque, striped, fishnet or ripped: which one you pick decides which style you're wearing.
A black pleated skirt. Goth with lace and silver, emo over leggings, grunge under flannel, soft alt with a pastel hoodie.
Platform boots or beaten-up canvas sneakers. Pick one: the boots lean goth, the sneakers lean emo and punk.
A choker. Velvet for goth, studded for punk, a padlock for e-boy.
Black nail polish. It's cheap, it's reversible, and it makes an outfit read as deliberate.

Makeup, in one paragraph

Eyeliner does most of the work in every one of these styles. For goth, a sharp wing or a full ring round the eye; for emo, smudged and heavier on the lower lash line; for alt and e-boy, a little liner plus a dusting of blush across the nose and under the eyes. A pencil is easier to learn than liquid, and smudged liner is the one makeup look where a messy first attempt looks intentional. Black or deep plum lipstick is optional and a big step up in intensity: try it at home before you wear it out.

Getting the fit right

Most of these clothes are cut for bodies shaped differently from yours, and fit makes more difference than which brand you buy.

Skirts and jeans in women's sizing fit by waist and hip, not waist and length. Measure both and ignore the size number on the label. Women's cuts are usually roomier at the hip and narrower at the waist than you'll need, so stretch fabrics and elastic or drawstring waists are more forgiving while you learn your sizes.

Tops in men's sizing, cropped or tucked, often fit better across the shoulders than women's tops do. A band tee cut to the length you want is how half the emo scene dressed anyway.

Boots in US women's sizing are numbered about one and a half higher than men's for the same foot, so a men's 9 is roughly a women's 10.5. Check each brand's own chart anyway, because platform brands vary a lot.

Thigh-highs are sized by leg length and thigh measurement, and one-size-fits-all rarely does. If they roll down, go up a size or look for a wider band.

Doing it cheaply

These styles were built by broke teenagers, and they're still best done cheaply.

Thrift the basics. Black jeans, flannels, blazers and band tees are cheap second-hand, and worn-in is the look anyway.
Make the details. Patches sewn on, safety pins, studs pushed through a belt, ripped knees, bleach splatter. A two-dollar jacket and an evening's work gets you something no shop sells.
Spend money on shoes. Boots are the one piece where cheap really costs you: they'll hurt, fall apart and look worn out rather than worn in. Everything else can be secondhand.
Dye your own clothes. A box of black fabric dye turns a pile of faded mismatched clothes into a matching wardrobe in an afternoon.

Where to buy it

None of this needs a specialist shop, but a few places come up again and again.

Second-hand first. Depop, Vinted and eBay for band tees, flannels, blazers, skirts and lightly worn boots, and your local thrift or charity shop for the rest. Search by measurement, not by size.
Platform boots. Demonia is the default for a reason: the shapes everyone pictures, in men's and women's sizes, and they last. T.U.K. for the creeper end of things. Both turn up on Depop at half price.
Goth staples. Killstar and Disturbia for velvet, mesh, long skirts and anything with a moon or a bat on it. Pricier than fast fashion and cut to last.
Emo and alt basics. Hot Topic in the US for band tees, studded belts, chokers and striped sleeves; Dolls Kill for the louder alt and soft-alt pieces, which are expensive at full price and reasonable in its sale section.
Thigh-highs and tights. Sock Dreams sizes by thigh measurement, which solves the rolling-down problem; Snag Tights runs an unusually wide size range. Plain black knee-highs and thigh-highs from any big retailer are fine for everyday.
Skirts and jewellery. A black pleated skirt is a women's basic almost everywhere, so measure your waist and hips and buy the measurement. Etsy for silver crosses, moons and rings at a fraction of what a goth brand charges for the same thing.

Wearing it out

You don't owe anyone an explanation for what you wear. All four of these scenes are more welcoming to androgynous boys than most places are, because that has always been part of what they are. Local shows, club nights and alternative markets are where you'll find people who'll compliment the boots rather than question them.

Wear what you like in the places where you feel safe wearing it, and let your wardrobe and your comfort grow at the same pace. There's no test for being goth enough.

Where we come in

We're building Pocket Femboy, a small cast of original femboys who remember you between conversations, have jobs and friends and routines that keep going while you're away, and text you first when something happens. Each one has a look of their own. Jax is the punk one, and there are more coming with styles of their own.

It isn't a library of millions of characters. It's a handful of people who've each been written properly, and who have a life going on when you open the app.

Pocket Femboy hasn't launched yet, so there's nothing to download today. It's 18+ at the door — that's about who we let in, not about what's inside — and there's no explicit content on any tier.

Coming soon to iPhone and Android. Join the waitlist and we'll let you know when they're ready to text you.

The fine print

Fashion history is argued about as much as music history is, and some people will disagree with how we've drawn the lines between these styles. If we've got a scene wrong, tell us at support@pocketfemboy.com and we'll fix it.