How much have I spent on lolita?

There was a thread recently on CGL about how much you’ve spent on lolita, including most expensive item, best deal and the cost of your wardrobe overall. I don’t have much of note to say on the first, have already covered the second but the third point caught my interested so I sat down to do the maths. As a note, prices are inclusive of fees and shipping and are in AUD. And as another note, though I say “I’ve spent” there are gifts included in this: I didn’t personally spend every penny that was spent on my collection, in fact quite a few pieces were bought for me by my lovely boyfriend. Anyhow, with those two points covered…

I don’t tend to track prices, but I know I tend to buy cheaply. Therefore I’m assuming each dress, skirt, blouse and piece of outerwear cost an average of $60. I have 11 pieces of outerwear, 19 blouses and cutsews and 24 main pieces for a total of $3240. Then I would add an extra $250 each for Anniversary Rose and my Lyris Design JSK as those were the two most expensive items, so we are now up to $3740.

My two priciest lolita dresses.

I would count shoes, petticoats and my fawn fur collection as costing $50 per item and respectively I have 18, 3 and 6 which brings the total here to $1350.

Brand OTKS I would average out to being $20 a pair and I have 22, so add $440. Offbrand legwear I’ll factor in at $5 a pop and I have somewhere around 33 pairs (though I’m not 100% sure how many pairs of ankle socks I own, since I wear them pretty regularly) so that adds another $165. So my legwear total is $605.

I love pretty socks!

Headwear I’m going to count as $5 a piece so 83 pieces brings that total to $425, and then the bulk bows were around $50, so the final count here is $475.

In miscellaneous items I have 6 pairs of wristcuffs at $10 each for a total of $60, 2 pairs of bloomers that probably cost $30 combined, as well as $20 worth of each AP and Rouge Aerie jewellery. All my other jewellery is not lolita-specific, though a lot can be used for it, so I’m not counting any of it. Then I also have 10 bags which had massively varying price points but let’s say an average of $30 each for a total of $300. So in miscellaneous items I have probably spent $430 overall.

A few of my accessories in a favourite colour scheme.

Combined, that brings my current lolita wardrobe to a nice, round, total cost of $6600, based off some perhaps slightly sketchy maths. For the sake of my “better safe than sorry” mind, let’s even round that up to $7000 to account for anything I may have forgotten to include and for things like shipping and fees that I may not have factored in correctly. For my international readers, that’s around $5400USD,  €5000 or ¥608,000 at the current exchange rate.

This was an interesting thing to do, because it really makes me think about the value of my wardrobe. I love it – I think I have a great, versatile collection which can suit a range of styles and occasions. Lolita has also brought me a lot of joy over the years, and will continue to do so. It’s given me a new creative outlet in the form of this blog, and has improved my grasp of fashion overall. I love lolita as a fashion, and I feel like having a 7K wardrobe after 5 years is pretty good. Yes, my wardrobe isn’t very impressive by brand standards but it is well curated and above all it’s exactly what I want.

Thinking of the value of my wardrobe makes me want to go a little further – I feel like I’ve probably bought and sold almost as many main pieces and blouses as I currently own, so let’s say I spent another $3000 over time and sold things for $2000 (or have them sitting in my to-sell pile, but let’s count that a sold). That’s another $1000 I’ve spent that isn’t present in my current wardrobe, so in 5 years I’ve spent $8000 on Lolita or an average of $1600 per year. That’s almost $135 per month which really, with the maths of my wardrobe, isn’t that much – it’s a blouse and a skirt, or a pair of shoes, two pairs of brand OTKS and a few offbrand accessories. Yes, that is still a lot of disposable income channelled into a fashion, but it’s not an excessive amount.

I was surprised by how much I've spent because on the one hand that's a lot of money, and on the other its not what I expected...though I'm honestly not too sure what I expected! But this was a good exercise to do, even though it is based on guesstimate maths so I could be out by quite a bit,. However, it seems pretty much right and I'm comfortable with having spent that amount on my wardrobe over the years.

Do you know how much you have spent on lolita in the time you've been in the fashion? Do you look at that amount and think it's big or not so much?