In her majestic, yet haunting, home in West London, Tish Weinstock sits opposite me, her vampy presence like a Henry Fuseli-cum-John William Waterhouse painting come to life. Behind her a decrepit tapestry falls to the rear of an antique side table peppered with avant-garde art and family photos. The blood-orange walls are covered in gilded picture frames that flavour the manor. She looks otherworldly, like a literary character lost in time, from the dollish contours of her face to her Snow White-like porcelain skin and jet-black hair. It’s all far from how she describes her mood.

“I feel kind of deranged,” she starts. “I’m just doing lots, spinning lots of plates. Is that the expression?” Weinstock’s days are usually spent juggling two rambunctious kids – Reuben Wolf, 4, and Phoenix Fox, 18 months – back-to-back Zoom calls and writing articles for “something or someone”. She says, “I’m managing a thousand different things and then also trying to fight my social media addiction, which is not easy.” Not to mention being swept up into the weird whirlwind of catwalk craziness and editorial glamour games, posing for magazine shoots – like this one – and taking self-assured strides on the runways of brands like Collina Strada and Conner Ives. This is all an unexpected turn in her career as an editor extraordinaire – she’s beauty director at System and a contributing beauty editor at British Vogue – and she quips, “I’m still trying to get my head around being this geriatric model… I’m kind of convinced it’s going to fizzle out.”

In addition, the Oxford graduate, 34, has just released her debut book, or should I say dark tome. Entitled How to Be a Goth: Notes on Undead Style, it’s a morbid style bible tracing the aesthetic across literature, art and fashion, from Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs Du Mal (1857) and the haunting works of artist Hans Bellmer to the subversive theatrics of Vivienne Westwood. “It’s basically a love letter to all things morbid and macabre. It traces the history of goth, something that precedes the [music and fashion] subculture [of the late ’70s and] ’80s, and is a celebration of all things dark,” Weinstock says. The kind of thing gothic fever dreams are made of, the book unfurls across three distinct sections that map a woman’s life with style and beauty advice from “your teen tearaway years to your midlife crises to those final witchy winters”.

What, according to Weinstock, does it mean to be a goth? “Being a goth is a myriad of things, as so many different facets apply to all areas of one’s life. But essentially, a goth is someone who identifies outside of the mainstream and who errs aesthetically, emotionally, spiritually and physically towards dark matter, towards the shadows of things.” Weinstock is a natural goth, from her wardrobe to her not-so-humble abode.

Located in Notting Hill, the home, which they moved into in August, is a Victorian gothic erection with the chiaroscuro interiors to match. We’re in the sitting room, a space cut through with arched, stained-glass windows salvaged from a church that cast kaleidoscopic patterns on the floor. She and her husband, the stylist Tom Guinness, have opted to maintain the integrity of its original design. “There’s something quite beautiful in living here the way it is now, in someone else’s space,” she says. “The previous owner had very wonderfully done this up.” What they embedded into the space was of a more maximalist style, the kind that evokes nostalgic playbacks of Sleepy Hollow or Interview with the Vampire. “A lot of [the objects] are antiques I bought at vintage fairs or markets or online. I’m a real Etsy and eBay girl.” While Guinness maintains a more minimalist taste, his deft ability to “brilliantly” juxtapose the modern with the old – for example, “pairing a tapestry with a brutalist lamp” – has contributed to Weinstock’s love of interiors. “During lockdown he gave me all of his interior books, so I was reading about John Richardson, who was Picasso’s biographer. Richardson did his house up so beautifully; it wasn’t gothic, but it was full of rich fabrics, dual tones and animal print – very maximalist. And then I read about [the designer] David Hicks, who loved Coca-Cola lacquer and oxblood [colours], which really speak to me. I’ve always had quite grand taste but not shiny, new grandeur. It’s this faded grandeur, [one that’s] decaying. I love pieces that are distressed or old, something that someone would say is ruined. I love a tapestry that’s falling to pieces; something that’s been stored in an attic that I can rescue and give another life to.”

Perhaps this draw to the dark side is a symptom of her youth, which was marked by quiet introspection, a natural interest in the hidden corners of culture and the looming presence of loss. “When I was six my father died and so, early on, death became this presence in my house.” It was a shadow that seemed to hang over her, turning the world into a place where she was treated differently – “like, ‘Oh poor girl.’” In the silence left by her father’s absence, and with her two older sisters away at boarding school, Weinstock found comfort in things that were “slightly spookier and darker”, especially films. Beetlejuice, The Craft, Coppola’s Dracula, Nosferatu, Ghost World, The Addams Family – all opened up her imagination to a world beyond measure.

This sentiment bleeds into the editor’s style. Equal parts faded romance, gothic wit and carefully curated history, Weinstock’s look has come a long way from the matted hair she once sported with abandon. Now, she revels in a good blow-dry – sleek on day one, charmingly tousled by day four. The shade is her natural colour, though stray grey strands have started to peek through. She laughs at the thought of one day channelling a “white witch” with long silver hair, but until then she’s holding out, bemused by the “grey pubes” phase of the journey.

Her make-up has matured, too, evolving from eyes caked with slept-in black liner to a more ethereal approach. Where once she’d layer on enough kohl to earn herself the odd stye, today it’s all about Vaseline-glossed lids, a swipe of mascara, her natural “booze rouge” blush and an occasional smear of crimson across the lips.

It’s all inspired by Morticia Addams – Weinstock’s muse – and not just because they share a nickname (Tish). “The first time I saw her on screen [in 1991’s The Addams Family] I was like: oh my God who is this woman? The bias-cut black dress with its eerie tendrils, the long raven hair, the red lips… and obviously Anjelica Huston is an icon – she very kindly gave me a quote for my book. [Morticia] taught me how to be a woman in a way that wasn’t very stereotypical. She eschews normative standards of beauty and does things on her own terms.” So does Weinstock and, like the cinematic muse, black is her chosen palette. She quotes Yohji Yamamoto’s wisdom on it (“Black is modest and arrogant at the same time”) and lauds its chameleon-like ability to transform into whatever she desires.

John Galliano – her design holy grail – is everywhere in her wardrobe. Bias-cut silk, devoré velvet, chiffon slips and skirts: she collects them from every dusty corner of eBay, Etsy and beyond. “I’m a vintage whore and a keyboard warrior,” she declares. Her daily uniform is a Galliano cardigan and long skirt, though her wardrobe overflows with rare, timeworn finds, from a Galliano lace wedding dress to a McQueen ‘shipwreck’ dress with unzippable seams from his SS03 Irere collection. Other 1930s-era gowns are “falling apart” and layered in “faded grandeur,” like the interior of her four-storey townhouse. For Weinstock, there’s beauty in knowing a piece has lived a life before hers, like her archival Comme des Garçons and Prada pieces from the ’90s. “For me, just owning these relics of the past brings a joy I can’t describe.” And while most of her jewellery holds a dark elegance, like her Tom Ford crucifix or Chanel chokers, a few pieces carry extra sentiment: Chanel jackets and rings inherited from her grandmother and an heirloom Chanel bag that’s full of holes.

As tasteful as she is, for Weinstock a career in beauty editing happened almost by accident – “I was never like, ‘I love beauty,’ growing up.” She remembers watching her mother put on make-up, but didn’t start with any grand passion for the industry. Her career took shape at i-D, where she “championed stories on the fringes”, amplifying voices outside the mainstream and exploring themes like body positivity and gender expression. “It became clear,” she says, “that beauty wasn’t just about, ‘buy this mascara’ – it was a lens to talk about identity, race and sexuality.” And what a lens it was. When she moved from i-D to Dazed, joining Isamaya Ffrench in launching Dazed Beauty, the industry itself was transforming. “It was the birth of social media,” she recalls. “Kids in their bedrooms were doing crazy shit, transforming their faces into monsters.”

Then, at Vogue, she entered a wholly different world. “It was all about product focus,” she says. But the role changed her perspective. “That’s where I learned all things skin,” she recalls, discovering facials and self-care at a point when she was ready to invest in her own wellness. That’s become important to her, though she’s quick to joke about the “tension” between ‘real’ wellness and commodified trends. “I’m interested in practices that make you well, but let’s be honest – are we all getting ripped off by these brands? Probably.”

The fast-paced nature of her life means she’s still “too busy”, but is committed to finding moments for relaxation. From vitamin drips to Pilates, Tish wrestles with the tension between true healing and the industry’s sometimes dubious promises. And yet, it’s in the simple moments – spending time with her family in their Wiltshire country pile most weekends – that she finds real balance. “I just want to be well,” she admits, as she navigates a career that blends her editorial drive with a genuine curiosity about self-care.

As Weinstock gears up for the US leg of her book launch in January, she’s ready to take on her own “New York minute, just as the Olsen twins once put it”. But knowing her, that minute might just stretch into the next venture. “I’d love to do a podcast,” she muses, “about beauty, identity and style – a place to celebrate those who live their look, do their thing and refuse to conform.” Not a gothic deep dive exactly, but close. In true Weinstock style, she hopes to take beauty out of the box and onto a mic, where it’s bound to be anything but ordinary.

Taken from 10+ UK Issue 7 – DECADENCE, MORE, PLEASURE – out NOW. Order your copy here.

@tishweinstock

Photographer JOSHUA TARN
Fashion Editor and Talent TISH WEINSTOCK
Text EMILY PHILLIPS
Hair SKY CRIPPS-JACKSON at The Wall Group using OLAPLEX
Make-up YASMIN SALMON using CHANEL Les Beiges Highlighter and Rouge Coco Baume Sweet Treat
Manicurist SASHA GODDARD at Saint Luke using CHANEL Le Vernis Rouge Noir and CHANEL La Creme Main
Fashion assistant FREYA GOODCHILD-BRIDGE
Production SONYA MAZURYK
Special thanks to MIA STENT and RHIA NOTTINGHAM