Why yes, those are curly-toed shoes…and bellbottom pants slit halfway up the legs…and a pimp hat with feathers in it…along with a host of body straps and a pink vinyl vest…not to mention the ubiquitous corset. You can’t tell this from my dolls of Will, but Will almost always wears a corset, a fact that I finally get to represent. It’s not merely decorative; it actually squishes, but he doesn’t care because he doesn’t have to breathe. If I were more accurate, I would show him with an actual very narrow waist, much more dandy-like, but I’m too lazy right now, so look at this instead.

I finally figured out where Will’s fashion inspiration comes from. He’s a vampire, so he’s marginalized from the dominant culture and its conceptions of clothes as utlilitarian objects that should conform to certain rules. Ever since he was a dandy before his death, he has always been interested in clothes more as social currency, body language and extravagant decoration. As he mentions elsewhere, one of his idols in this regard was, of course, Oscar Wilde. Therefore, he continues in the same tradition of dandyism now, but not in a classical, fashionable, well-tailored sense. He’s playing. He should stop worrying about his writer’s block and realize that he has other forms of artistic creativity.

Oh, by the way, this is probably what his hair would look like if he would stop combing it back like some 75-year-old balding guy. I think he looks much cuter with his hair down and ragged; it softens his skeletal face and adds to his androgyny.