Lolita 52: My best deal

Oh, this one is a bit of a challenge! Mostly because there’s a few ways you could define “best deal” so I think I really have two answers.

First of all, if you define best deal as something along the lines of price-per-wear I’d have to say that Bodyline's L279, that gorgeous floral brown velvet OP, is my best deal because it was cheap when I bought it and it’s probably one of my most worn lolita pieces. I think that’s because you can dress it up in a very lolita way, or you can tone it down and it just looks like a vintage dress so you pass under the normie radar. So it’s a good option if I want to wear something cute but not too attention grabbing.

Then, another possible definition of best deal is the item bought at the greatest reduction based on its original retail price. In that definition it is probably my short-sleeved black Baby bolero, but I can't identify it and thus can't track down it's original price. Though given that it cost me 900 yen I think it's safe to say that is my best deal. However two other items were very good deals, the Innocent World French Lace Bolero and Metamorphose Patisserie Dream skirt at only 23% and 19% of their original retail prices respectively.

Of course, you have to factor in shipping and shopping service fees but still! I've managed to get some pretty good deals of Yahoo Japan. And that's not even to mention all the OTKS I've bought at even bigger discounts compared to their original prices.

What’s one of the best deals in your lolita wardrobe?

A perennial classic; Shirring Princess outfits

As my regular readers know, I recently got my hands on a JSK I consider one of the quintessentially recognisable lolita pieces; Shirring Princess by Baby, the Stars Shine Bright in the black x white colourway.

The lace in particular is something I adore on this dress...just look at it! The dress overall also has a balance between casual and dressy that I like; the materials and construction and fairly simple, but the bustle back and layers of lace mean it could also be rather elegant if coordinated right.

And, speaking of coordinating this JSK...

First up, I put together something that immediately made me fall head over heels in love. How cute is this? I honestly am so keen to wear this sometime, it's just so me! I really don't have more to say.

Next, I wanted to try bringing in some colour, and decided on pink with hints of red. I feel this really needs a pink and red belt to tie the colours in better, or alternatively instead of a pink blouse, a pink bolero. However, given that I don't own any of those items I did what I could and even though I'm not 100% happy with the outcome I enjoyed stretching myself a bit with this.

Lastly, I ran with something of an updated old-school look; same items as a stereotypical old school look, same colour scheme but some slight differences such as a the blouse being chiffon and the headwear being a lacemonster bow rather than a rectangle headdress.

Do you have a piece in your lolita wardrobe that you consider to be a lolita classic?

Lolita 52: Impulse buys that were totally worth it; and, Wardrobe blunders! Things I bought that I ended up regretting

I am once again lumping two of the Lolita 52 topics together as I don’t really have much to say on either. Though a few of my lolita purchases have been a bit impulsive, nothing really stands out as having been truly impulsive and then “totally worth it”. Similarly, though I’ve bought many things that I’ve then had to sell on, again nothing really stands out as a regret. 

I think it’s commonly accepted that lolita, being as it is for most of us in the West a fashion that you tend to buy for online, there tends to be a lot of trial and error; things match or don’t, fit or don’t, are well made or not. Impulse and regret are part and parcel of it. Though it would be nice to have a story about that one thing that I bought on a whim which turned out amazing, overall I think I’m lucky to not have any grand stories of surprise happiness or regret in my lolita wardrobe.

Angelic Pretty's Twinkle Doll special set was something I bought and basically immediately sold, but I made my money back so no regrets!

Do you have any stories of things you were happily surprised with, or that you ended up regretting?

Project 333: A lolita capsule wardrobe

For a while, I've wanted to try doing a Project 333 style lolita capsule wardrobe. I even created one from my own clothes, but the photos turned out badly so I never posted it. Recently, I had the urge to experiment with this concept again, so here we are.

Project 333, if you haven't heard of it, it the idea that you have a wardrobe of only 33 items for 3 months, at which point you cycle out some items to suit your style and the change of seasons. These 33 items are meant to include everything but underwear, work-out specific clothes, and any items of sentimental jewellery, like a wedding ring, that you always wear.

For my lolita variant, I went with the following rules:

• This is a year-round 33 piece wardrobe, not seasonal
• It does not include the necessary underthings, such as petticoats and bloomers
• It does not include jewellery or small accessories (though, given that it is quite cohesive you would probably not need to many different pieces to match everything anyway)
• It does not include bags (and a single, neutral, big ivory purse would go with everything)

So I know it's not exactly Project 333 rules, but that gave me a good starting point to build a hypothetical capsule wardrobe, which you can see below.

As you can see I ran with a pink, lavender and ivory colour palette in a floral theme, ending up with a very sweet-classic point. I chose main pieces that ranged from fancy to simple, and did the same with my collection of blouses, cutsews and outerwear. True to my usual stance on lolita wardrobes, I have focused more on having a variety of supplementary items rather than a large number of main pieces. I found it somewhat challenging to stick to a set number of pieces, and was constantly tweaking it - exchanging a blouse for a pair of shoes, for example. But in the end I feel like I came up with a very well rounded wardrobe which has a lot of coordination opportunities despite its small size.

To show this wardrobe in action, I've come up with four outfits for each main piece.

I'll admit, sometimes I like to live vicariously through hypothetical wardrobes because I adore Angelic Pretty florals but AP is too short for me! Here you can see both seasonal variations and outfits that show differing levels of fancy that could be achieved with this JSK.

This lovely Baby JSK was chosen to be the OTT centrepiece of the wardrobe, though Dramatic Rose above could also fill that role. So most of these outfits, by virtue of the dress itself, are on the fancier end of the scale. I thought choosing a solid colour piece for the OTT option gave the most coording possibilities while still allowing the hypothetical wardrobe owner to have a "wow" piece. I toyed with the idea of making the OTT piece OTT in every way, like a princess-sleeve AP onepiece, but decided I wanted to prioritise versatility.

Sweetie Violet is another AP love of mine that would never look good on me, so here it is. In this wardrobe lavender plays second fiddle to pink, but I felt having both kept the wardrobe more interesting, even if it meant the lavender coording options were a little more limited.I think it would also have been interesting to pull together a cute OTT look with the JSK and the Infanta princess sleeve blouse, and something causal with that same blouse with the princess sleeve part detached, but I do like the range showing the the four outfits above. I guess the fact that there are still more outfits I could have made without getting repetitive does prove that the wardrobe works!

I only ended up choosing a single onepiece for this wardrobe, and even chose the matching headbow for it. I felt the headbow worked well with Sweetie Violet as well, and it gave a little extra something to this dress to be able to do matchy-matchy outfits. I know full sets are somewhat unoriginal but I did like being able to have a little bit of that going on in this wardrobe. There's just something so very quintessentially lolita about matching sets that even I, lover of versatility that I am, really enjoy.

For a slight change of pace, the first skirt in this wardrobe is a sweet Innocent World print, as opposed to all the other prints which are slightly more classic leaning Angelic Pretty. It is also probably the most casual main piece in the whole collection because the cut is incredibly simple despite the print, and that casualness is reflected in the outfits.

The last main piece in the wardrobe is another solid, again from BTSSB. It allows for a range of looks as it's neither particularly dressy nor causal, and also gives an opportunity to work with the lavender pieces again. At this point in the post I don't have much more to say about this set of outfits specifically, except that I really think this skirt is super adorable!

After having made the outfits, I have to say I was really pleased with how well this wardrobe worked. There's certainly an outfit there for any occasion for a quick run to the grocery store to a fancy tea party, in any season. I would possibly make a few tweaks if I were to do it over but, speaking generally I was very pleased with the versatility of this hypothetical lolita capsule wardrobe.

October auctions haul

I've been pretty good about not spending much on lolita this year but recently... well, my hand slipped a few times on Yahoo Japan. I actually got outbid on a few items as well, most notably some socks lots and a BTSSB fawn fur beret which was a real bummer, but especially given how awful the exchange rate is for me right now it's probably for the best.

Anyway, I ended up with a JSK-apron-headpiece set, two red-and-white cutsews and a little something that will either be part of a giveaway, or a Secret Santa gift if I either sign up for the CGL one or actually woman up and go to my comm's Christmas meetup.

As usual I used Buyee, and have nothing to say about their service that I haven't covered before. So, onto the clothes!

I know it's bad photo, but anyway, this is the set! The JSK is BTSSB's Shirring Princess (or Princess Shirring, I don't even know) and the apron and maid-style headdress (which kept folding in on itself in the photo) are both from Marble, which is a brand I know nothing about. The Marble items are good pieces to have, though they will probably have more costume/photoshoot use from me than actual lolita wear, but that's fine.

I have to say that Shirring Princess is really beautiful, the laces in particular are lovely, and because this is such a classic, perennial lolita piece I really get a kick out of owning it. It is also my first dress with a bustle back! However, I am iffy about how I like full shirring on me so I'll have to try wearing it a few times before I can make the verdict of whether I will keep it or sell it in the long run. But for now, it really is making me happy to have this dress.

The place where my hand really did slip was with these two cutsews, from a brand called Mary Rose on the left and Angelic Pretty on the right. What happened is I saw the AP one, liked it, and immediately put a starting price only bid on it, thinking I'd get outbid and could then decide how badly I wanted it. Then I came across the Mary Rose one, which was cheaper and I thought was likely to fit me better, so I did the same with that. I did feel a bit silly, bidding on two such similar items, but I really did think someone would outbid me on one of them but no-one did! So I won both!

However, when I got the package I was really happy to see that in real life they are quite different in colour and style, and that they both work with my wardrobe in different ways! Neither of them fit perfectly, but I am working on losing weight so hopefully soon they will fit better.

So that's my October haul! Have you bought anything interesting lately, lolita or otherwise?

Lolita 52: How long it took me to build a complete wardrobe

This is a bit of a hard one to answer, because to an extent I still don’t feel that my wardrobe is wholly complete. It’s definitely well-rounded, and I can coordinate everything in a variety of ways, so if that is the yardstick then it certainly is complete now and has been since about a year ago, so after I’d been in the fashion for around three years. However, I know there are still some gaps I want to fill that perhaps are not essential but would make my wardrobe that much more complete.

A glimpse into my wardrobe...I arrange things by colour.

This topic is an interesting one because it really raises the question of what you consider a complete lolita wardrobe to be. Caro-chan of FYeahLolita in her post “Building a Complete Lolita Wardrobe” defined it as one where you can wear a different outfit every day for a week, and I’ve used this as my definition in my $500 Wardrobe posts. However, when I’ve done my Wardrobe Challenge posts I’ve come to feel more that my definition of complete lies in how versatile and well wearing a wardrobe is, rather than a particular size. It is complete if everything works together well.

So, if I were to distil that down into a single sentence, it would be this: A complete lolita wardrobe is one that is cohesive, regardless of overall size, which has multiple coording options for each main piece and no impossible-to-wear pieces.

I can now say that now I have defined my own version of what “complete” means in regards to lolita wardrobes, I can safely say that mine certainly is complete.

As for how long it took me, as I said at the start of this post I think it took me approximately three years, really. And I’ve been continually improving it since then, and have even further to go.

The little brown dress; Lyris Design outfits

This JSK is, without question, one of my favourite lolita dresses. Possibly the favourite. I think, if I could only keep on JSK it would be this. I mean, I would be sad about ti an it would be a very very hard decision, but I really do love this one. It's exactly what I want, which is as it should be, since it was a custom commission.

If you're interested in reading my original review of this JSK, please click here.

First up, I paired Lyris Design with more Lyris Design! I think she used the same, or at least remarkable similar, fabrics for the JSK and the steampunk bodice, and they pair together really nicely. I feel like some more steampunky tights and maybe a gold hairpiece would make this pop, but as is I think it's a very cute steampunk lolita look.

Next I pulled out my trusty Axes Femme blouse to do a more casual classic look. I love this, I really do. It's simple but not boring and all the burgundies match really nicely!

Lastly, I tried a sweeter look with pink and hints of blue. I feel like a little blue ribbon tied in a bow under the blouse collar would complete this look perfectly, but even as it is I rather like it.

I know I probably sounds like a broken record, singing the praises of solid coloured main pieces on this blog all the time, but I think this post really shows that there's nothing boring about non-prints in lolita. If anything, they give you a great opportunity to showcase all the details that can sometimes be overwhelmed in a printed piece.