Merry Christmas!

A very brief post today to wish my readers (and any random internet passersby) a Merry Christmas. Whether you're celebrating Christmas, another holiday, or nothing at all I hope you have a wonderful day.

Have a picture of some Christmas themed donuts for visual appeal, and if you feel liek chatting about Christmas or anything else please feel free to leave a comment  ^__^

Lolita 52: What I thought when I got my first real piece of Lolita

Simply put; I loved it. Whether it was the pieces for eBay I bought at the very start, my early Bodyline, or my first brand, Lolita has always set my heart a-flutter. But just saying that would make a very short post, wouldn’t it?

If you count my first real pieces of Lolita as the first clothes I bought that were designed for the fashion, those would be an Ekaterina replica (though I didn’t know it was a replica at the time, not really) and dress/coat/thing from eBay. I enjoyed both of them so much. I felt pretty and happy and frilly when I wore them, and even though they weren’t perfect in construction they brought me a lot of joy.

The JSK from my very first Bodyline order, the only piece I still have from it.

However, if you’d call my first lolita perhaps more accurately as my first Bodyline, then my main thought here was that I was wowed by the prints and the details. You can see the pieces I got from Bodyline in my first order here. My love of lolita was cemented now – what was there not to love about this pretty, feminine, detailed fashion? I also started to fall in love with lace around here and even though Bodyline lace may not be the greatest, this was one of my first experiences with lace that wasn’t cheap raschel or basic eyelet lace, and I have never looked back since.

A flat lay with Loyal Rosette, before I sold it on.

And for the people who don’t count “real lolita” as anything other than brand, well, my thoughts then were a continuation of the same. Loyal Rosette was my first burando main piece, and it was such a lovely thing. Mostly, the quality was such a surprise and such a step up from Bodyline. I hadn’t truly believed that brand was really so different (and I still think there are a great many excellent non-brand lolita pieces) and so I revelled in the luxury of it all.

How was it for you when you got your first piece of "real lolita"?

The lolita LBD: L348 outfits

I won't bore my regular readers by repeating my praise of solid coloured main pieces...I'll just share some outfits that prove my point for me. Before I start rambling I want to apologise for the picture quality - shooting black indoors is just not good. Due to that and the fact that this is a solid colour piece there's no usual detail shot to start the post.

L348 is one of my many Bodyline pieces, and it has served me well over the years. It's a little bit old-school in style but not so much so that it limits how it can be worn. It's comfortable and sturdy and has a good amount of detail.

First up, I ran with red and hints of white to make a really cute outfit! 10 out of 10, would wear. Legwear would be simple black tights, which like always I didn't put out for aesthetic purposes. This is just such a wearable outfit, I really like it.

Next I put together a look that's a little more obvious and ran with black and white. I think they key to this outfit would really be in the accompanying hairstyle and make-up. It looks a little boring as a flat-lay, but big double buns for hair and perhaps a statement lip would really make this something rather fabulous.

For my last outfit I just had to run with black and pink - it's one of my all time favourite colour combos! Once again, it's a bit of a simple outfit but here I don't think it really needs to be made more elaborate, you know? It's rather lovely with the the big blocks of contrasting colour.

Are there any Bodyline pieces in your lolita wardrobe?

Lolita 52: Something that I made

If you’ve followed my blog for while you’ll know I’ve made several things in the time I’ve been in lolita. I even have two relevant blog tags; sewing and crafting (though not everything in those tags is strictly lolita). So since I blog about everything as I make it I don’t really want to just rehash that for this post.

For curiosity’s sake, I decided for this post to pull out everything I have made in my current lolita wardrobe to take a look at it all together.

Overall, I'm pretty happy with that turn out! I have made other things that have shortly made their way out of my wardrobe; two JSKs, at least two skirts and another short-sleeve bolero are what I can think of offhand. But these things I've kept are items I'm happy with and that I do actually wear. The cherry skirt in particular I wear a lot casually, and the brown bolero is just so handy!

I have plans for several things I want to sew, so we will see how that goes. I'll definitely blog about it ^__^

Review #43: The best part of lolita is the OTKS...

...and I recently bought myself three new pairs from Innocent World. A bit of an impulse buy, to be honest, as my OTK collection really is quite well rounded but as I've said before - OTKS are my favourite part of lolita! And you can never find anything like them anywhere else.

The pairs I bought are Union Flag Lame Overknee Socks in beige, Antique Bouquet Overknee Socks in Beige×Bordeaux and Diamond Rose Overknee socks in Beige×Pink. As is standard of innocent World the socks are soft, stretchy and all-round delightful.

It also seems like the "handwritten note" is actually a handwritten note these days!

However, also as is usual for Innocent World, the colours are not exactly as they appears on their website - I think IW stock photos tend to be brighter, in most cases, than the products really are. But regardless, these still all match my wardrobe pretty well. Also, oddly enough though they are all labelled as "beige" the Antique Bouquet ones are a distinct tan-ish colour, while he other two are off-white. And the last funny thing is the that Union Flag Lame pair are several centimetres shorter than the other two! Different manufacturer, perhaps?

Regardless of my comments above, which may sound a bit negative, I am really happy with these socks. Yes, maybe a bit of a frivolous purchase, but one that brought me quite a lot of joy! Turns out the most useful ones will probably be the Union Flag ones as the pattern is very generic (except for the crown part) as is the colour and I didn't have anything like this. The others are a lot more distinctive and limited due to colour, but I love them regardless.

Have you bought anything for your lolita wardrobe recently?

By name and by nature; Handmade cherry skirt outfits

My honest to goodness real surname is Cherry, so ages ago I bought the last of a roll of this satin cherry fabric when it went on sale super cheaply at my local fabric store. Eventually I made a lolita skirt from some of it, and it's been one of my most worn lolita items... though to be honest, most of the time I wear it casually, outside of lolita so I'm not sure if that counts!

I know satin is not generally thought too well of in the realm of handmade lolita but I love this skirt to pieces, and part of that is because the satin gives it an extra something. I don't tend to have much fabric variation in my lolita wardrobe, most everything is good old cotton or cotton blends, so this is a nice change of pace.

For my first outfit I wanted to do something light and bright with one of my new red custews, and I think it turned out very cute! I left legwear out because this would be worn with either black tights or black ankle socks, both of which don't look too good in flat lays. In a way, this is a bit more otome than lolita almost, but regardless of who you categorise it I would certainly wear it!

Next, I tried something different by coordinating the skirt with my lemon and cherry Meta OTKS. I think this still needs a little tweaking to be perfect, but I love the unexpected direction of adding pink (and lemons!) to the mix.

Then for my final look I went casual again, but a bit more of a layered casual and I think this is my favourite look of the three. Like the first outfit, I would definitely wear this out and about. It's distinctly lolita, but still fairly casual... just the way I tend to like it!

Another lolita capsule wardrobe

What can I say, when I like a thing I tend to stick with it for a while. So, shortly after having put together my hypothetical Project 333 inspired lolita capsule wardrobe, I immediately thought about how I could possibly improve it. Mostly, though I am a huge fan of having more options than main pieces in small lolita wardrobes, I wanted to try putting one together with a wider selection of main pieces. Then, because that's not challenge enough, I wanted to put something together that was more thematically varied as well.

So, below is the wardrobe I devised. I really tried to stretch myself both aesthetically and colour-wise here, and to make it less matchy-matchy than the first hypothetical capsule wardrobe.

As you can see we're spanning religious themes, a floral piece, a harlequin chess-piece JSK, whatever you classify Dim Light as, as well as having a few different solid pieces. Burgundy is decidedly the dominant colour, but instead of running with a more easily neutral burgundy/off-white/brown colour scheme I also added black piece to really add some different looks to the wardrobe, which I think make it more realistic, in a way. Yes, it would have been a lot easier to run with brown (or maybe even pink) but using black as well give the hypothetical wearer a lot more actual variety. You can pull almost gothic outfits from this wardrobe, as well as almost sweet ones, which you wouldn't have been able to if I'd kept it in a more cohesive, 100% classic colour scheme.

However...it is very burgundy! So all in all I'm not sure how successful this attempt at versatility was - it's certainly thematically versatile, but not so much in colours. But if this was for a person who has a favourite colour in burgundy, or who looks best in that colour, that would not be a problem. Personally, I'd rather limited themes with more varied colours but it was good to experiment with trying to get as many different prints and patterns in there as possible!

Of course, no hypothetical wardrobe from me is complete without example outfits, so here we go.

I actually really adore this JSK, it's really a piece that you can dress up or down...though I don't think you can ever make it casual! Though these four outfits are all distinctly in the same colour scheme I think they all convey different aesthetics.

Spoiler alert; the coord on the bottom left is the only outfit where I pair a burgundy main piece with black. I thought it worked here, but not really anywhere else. I really love Dim Light...it's such a lovely print and this cut in particular is so very dramatic.

Antique Bouquet is another Meta print I love, and can be worn in a few different ways in this wardrobe. Not much more to say about these outfits, really, except that I would wear each and every one of them!

And here we see how this wardrobe can produce some very different outfits! I would say that the top right outfit is quite gothic, bottom left is gothic-sweet (if there is such a thing). while the other two are firmly classic.

Again, the second black JSK gives the hypothetical wardrobe wearer some more versatile options as this JSK is firmly classic, but a rather cute classic, and that is reflected in the different aesthetics of these example outfits.

The sole skirt of this wardrobe is simple black, which I felt allowed for a range of looks from old-school-esque almost sweet to classic to kuro.

This OP is adorable, and though it is a solid colour, sailor lolita is very distinctive! This particular dress, I felt, could be styled in simpler, cuter ways and also in rather more opulent classic looks.

Lastly, the second OP in this wardrobe is a very, very, very obviously themed piece. I found it the hardest to coordinate, but given that this is more of a special occasion piece anyway, that's not necessarily too much of a bad thing.

Lastly, I threw together a couple of coordinates with the coat, because I didn't use it in any of the outfits because, well...it's a coat. It's just there to go over things when it's very cold, but I thought it deserved a couple of outfits as well.

So there we have it, my second hypothetical Project 333 inspired lolita capsule wardrobe. To be completely honest, I don't like this one as much as the first. however, it was good to stretch myself and try an approach to this that is not my favoured way.