Lolita Blog Carnival: Create a Capsule From Your Own Wardrobe

Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy. Am I ever happy this topic got picked this week! This was so much fun and, me being me, I am going to ramble to high heaven about how I put my capsule together.

See, I just had to make this harder for myself. There are a number of easy capsules I could do - sweet lolita in black and white with red (berry themed, of course), or black and white with pink sweet with more general themes, a classic collection (or several), a semi old-school black based sweet capsule. But I didn't want to do any of the obvious ones, I wanted to stretch myself and try something new.

Before I start telling you about what I specifically chose (which I will do in excruciating detail, trust me) I wanted to run over some of my principles regarding lolita capsule wardrobes. Broadly speaking, I have some core ideas in terms of number of pieces and types of pieces that I want to share.

Whenever I put one of these together in the hypothetical digital sense, I tend to base it off five main pieces. I feel like five is a good amount for a capsule - let's say you can make four or five unique outfits for each main piece (which may seem a little ambitious, but capsules are meant to yield a high amount of coordinating options) you've got 20-25 outfits, without factoring in things such a changing up small accessories and hair and makeup. If you wear lolita once a week, you're only wearing each coordinate twice each year. If you wear lolita once a month, you've got a couple of years worth of outfits! I also try to make sure I have at least two of each other item in an outfit to go with each main piece, so my capsules can appear to be a little light on main pieces compared to everything else. But I've always said I like more options rather than more dresses, and that's nowhere more evident than in a capsule wardrobe.

Then in terms of types of pieces, again I normally try for versatility. In particular I always try to have something more dressy in the wardrobe, and something more casual. Normally it's a matter of adding in an OTT main piece, and making sure there's a skirt and cutsew pairing available ^__^ I also really try to not depending too heavily on neutral colours, because in a small wardrobe too many neutrals is boring (at least to me), and to keep up some variety in fabric types and patterns in the supporting pieces. My usual set of main pieces includes three jumperskirts, one skirt and one onepiece, but that's not so much a rule but more of an attempt to keep things for getting too samey.

So I eventually decided on doing a sweet lolita capsule without any black, which really made me push outside of my usual styles. For my main pieces I immediately knew I would include Rococo Soul's Jam Paradise as well as Meta's Teddy Chocolatier and Flower Bottle. That gave me a brown/mint/pink colour palette, which I really liked, and was both cohesive and varied. I then thought that Dramatic Rose would be good to include, as it fits the colour scheme and also gives me something OTT and a tiny bit more classic leaning. Then I remembered that I now own Innocent World's Icing Cookie, which fits the wardrobe perfectly!

Also, how embarrassing is it that I'm at a point that I'm forgetting what main pieces I own?!?

Don't they make a pretty set? And I'm happy it's not a stereotypical me kind of collection!

I was a little bummed that none of my OPs would suit this wardrobe and that I didn't have a second skirt to include, but that's okay - I think I've still avoided being too samey. I did toy with the idea of including Jurassic Party, but the colours in that are just too far out. As it is, even though I'd ideally like a bit more variation in cuts I think I've still got good variety. I have one fancy JSK, three other JSKs in different cuts that are all thematically similar but visually quite different, and a fairly causal skirt. Overall, I also really enjoy the flowers and chocolate theme that's going on.

With the main pieces chosen, it was time to select blouses and outerwear. I decided to pick out two long sleeve tops, two short sleeve tops, one long sleeve and one short sleeve bolero or cardigan, one coat, and one set of fawn fur. It's my capsule, of course there's going to be fawn fur!

Blouses - a nice variety of chiffon and cotton.

A very diverse set of boleros!

A coat and some fawn fur ^__^

In the end, I found limiting my outerwear to one in each sleeve length just wasn't working for me so I ended up choosing two at each length.

After selecting those items, it was time for shoes and bags. It's my capsule, so I selected more pairs of shoes than is necessarily necessary. Same with bags - I could have just had by big offwhite bag, but that's just not interesting enough!

The shoes are arranged from tallest heels to flats!

Then it was time for what is one of my favourite aspects of lolita fashion - all the accessories! I started with headwear. Some items here were obvious, like the matching hairpiece for Dramatic Rose, but the rest were chosen to match well and give me lots of options. I tried to not go overboard, which was hard, but the idea of capsules is that they're small so I did my best to keep it that way! As well a big items I included some of my smaller bits, because it wouldn't be me without little bow clips.

For aesthetic reasons I decided to photograph socks and wristcuffs together - aren't they pretty? For once, however, my sock collection let me down a bit - I did not have a good sweet white x pink pair that suited the wardrobe. I also don't have any tights that go! But still, I think I chose some good and varied pairs to go with the wardrobe. In an ideal world I'd also have had something mint, but alas, I don't own them.

I did wuss out on photographing jewellery. I already had pulled out so much I was really not keen on having to put it all away after taking photos and didn't want to add a bunch of bracelets and necklaces and other tiny things. Just know that I do some have jewellery that matches as well ^__^

When I do photoshop capsules, I like to include example outfits. That was a bit daunting to do IRL to the extent that I normally do so instead I decided to put together the most interesting (your mileage may vary) outfit for each main piece that I could without repeating things between outfits. Since this post is already quite long, I'm going to not include commentary on each outfit for once in my life so please enjoy the pictures!

I also have one last outfit to share. James was hanging out with me for a bit while I was taking these photos so I asked if he'd want to put on together...and he did! So here's a flatlay picked from this capsule that he chose ^__^

I honest to goodness love this coord and fully intend to wear it sometime!

So there you have it, a capsule wardrobe made from my wider collection. I had a lot of fun putting this together, and I'm pleased that I chose not to run with any of the more obvious/easier capsules I could have done. It was a lot of work to actually photograph this all and I think I'll stick to digital hypothetical capsules in future but still, so much fun.

I need to end this post before I ramble more, so I'll leave you with a shot of the aftermath ^__^

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Cupcakes and Unicorns
Ruffle Road