Let's make the most of the night like we're gonna die young

£170 Alexander McQueen skull scarf
which encapsulates his
"dark and dramatic style". Whatevs,
Selfridges. I can buy dramatic
in Primark for peanuts.

Seems lately that everywhere you turn you cannot move for skulls, bones and death stuff. Be they Mexican Day of the Dead style tattoos on rockabilly girls or t-shirts, skull bracelets, or just a mayfly-like sentiment found in Ke$ha's Die Young or any of Lana Del Rey's songs, death is everywhere. Literally, of course, but also fashionably.

Is this a bad thing? Probably not. It means that a goth is totally on-trend and that anyone who is naturally interested in the subject of death (i.e. me) looks like less of a weirdo. On a deeper level too, it could be a good sign. If people are more comfortable with death and bereavement then it might not be such a scary thing to talk about and experience. It might make people more determined to live life to the full (woo, you go Ke$ha, get drunk and kiss some randomer in a club, we're all gonna die anyway).

And for some closing words, how about these:

No people who turn their back on the dead can be alive. The presence of the dead among the living will be a daily fact in any society that encourages its people to live.

From: C Alexander with S Ishikawa, M Silverstein, M Jacobson, I Fiksdahl-King, S Angel A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction New York (1977). Found in this book.