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.