I love Rosalind Wiseman's stuff, I think she's excellent.
I did just want to make a comment about wanting to look different - I never grew out of that. For me it has never regularly been about making a statement (sometimes, but I think that would be the same for most of us). I just never got in to the whole thing about everyone having to have the same stuff, look the same etc - especially because it didn't always look good on me. Having my own sense of style meant I could opt out of a lot of the competitive stuff girls have with clothes.
Don't get me wrong - I'm not out there and people have called me 'stylish' in the past (I think as a compliment - LOL!), but I've always just dressed as me. There is no trend I fit in to, but I take what I like from lots of them. DD is very good at putting combinations of clothes together, often in ways that are quirky but that look great. I would draw the line at sexy stuff (though we've limited her exposure to anything remotely sexy and so she has no concept of it and her school is quite conservative in that way too), but otherwise I'm pretty open to whatever dd would like to do.
DH was a goth as a teenager. He's ended up ok
(so was my gifted best friend in high school too) I can imagine the goth subculture appealing to gifted kids, given it's focus on misfits and it's associations with emotional sensitivity and intensity (and the aesthetics of it can actually be quite stunning). It's got some good literary credentials as well - Byron, Poe, Wilde and Dickens among the authors who influenced/were influenced by gothic culture. I can see how it could become an issue if you were religious or a child got involved in some of the more extreme aspects of the subculture, but the latter could be said for most things. You could do worse
