LBC: Goals for 2015!

It's nearly 2015, and right on schedule, it's time to share my goals for the new year! I have three main ones and one super-secret one (which I will keep really vague until I'm ready to make an official announcement) that I'll talk about today. Feel free to share your resolutions as well--and I hope that we can keep each other on track!

Things I learned from cosplay that I apply to lolita.

It may be taboo to mention cosplay and lolita together in one sentence, but all joking aside, I think there is a lot that I learned from working on cosplays that helped me put together better lolita outfits! There is always something to be learned from others, even though they may be completely unrelated.

(Cosplayers: CureCos)

1. If you are planning a complex coordinate, test it out before you debut it.

A big thing I have realised (especially with over-the-top coordinates) is that I always end up regretting adding something to my outfit because it was just way too much upkeep. Whether it was a mini-hat that doesn't sit on your head for longer than a few minutes before it comes tumbling down, or a beautiful detail that you end up covering with a scarf, or even a pair of super-uncomfortable eyelashes that look perfect with the outfit but you just can't wear to the meet-up, doing small test runs of parts of an outfit are absolutely vital to ensure that you have a good time when you go on that outing. It's one thing I've definitely learned from cosplaying--you don't want to wear armor that ends up badly chaffing your shoulders because you never did a test run beforehand.

2. Lolita is head-to-toe, not just about the dress.

When you dress in lolita, you are fitting a certain overall aesthetic, not just wearing a petticoat and leaving the house. You need some make-up (at least a bit of concealer and powder), an appropriate hair style, and good shoes. A cosplayer would never be able to cosplay someone with bright red hair without an appropriate wig without just looking sloppy, and even lolita fashion has those kinds of standards.

3. Work within your means.

Sure, that Angelic Pretty headbow would be absolutely perfect with this dress, but you don't have forty dollars to blow right now. Try and DIY something on your own, or find someone to commission something cheaper for a fraction of the price. Check out Etsy, or even ask a family member for some help with adding that perfect touch to your coordinate if it is just too expensive for you right now. You may even want to walk away from that perfect (and expensive) coordinate for some time until you have the money for it later. The same can be applied to cosplay, that full scale-mail cosplay for a character you have always dreamed as dressing up as is just so expensive, so look into a temporary solution, or just pick a different character for now.

4. No cheap material!

This is pretty self-explanatory. You never want to use cheap supplies for your lolita coordinate or your cosplay or else you just look like some unfortunate figure-skating wardrobe accident.

5. If you wear a wig, get a high-quality one.

Another self-explanatory point,  but you never want a wig that is shiny and reveals a bunch of wefts when you pull it over your head. A wonderful coordinate or cosplay is easily ruined by a bad wig. Of course with cosplay, it's generally a base rule to never really use your natural hair since most anime characters have extravagant hair colours and styles, but of course that isn't the case with lolita. Wigs have been becoming more of a staple in the fashion though, so I thought I would include this little lesson.

Even though I understand that they are completely different hobbies, there are a lot of practical lessons that criss-cross along both hobbies that I think people can learn from!

Does anyone else cosplay and also wear lolita fashion? I know I'm more into the crafting aspect and almost never end up wearing my cosplays, but I want to do it more often because it just seems like so much fun! I'm holding off on it now since I'm having a lot of budget (and room) constraints. I have no idea where I can store my cosplays, I barely have room for my clothing as it is. ;A;

Check out the outfit I posted recently!

Hope you all are having a wonderful week!! Until next time~

Lolita 52 Challenge: The ways in which I fit (and don't fit) the cliché.

(I couldn't help myself, this topic can come off as pretty special snowflake-y haha!)

This week's Lolita 52 Challenge pulled up topic #42: the ways in which I fit the cliché. I have been involved in lolita fashion for such a long time now, I have trouble determining what is even considered cliché because it seems like everyone involved in the fashion has different opinions--and I very rarely tend to not speak too much about the fashion in depth with people who are coming in with a pretty clean slate--most everyone has already established an idea of what lolita is to them and are wearing it relatively often.

So I chose to define the cliché in this case by looking at what anime and some popular movies make lolita appear to be--which is some weird mishsmash of Kamikaze Girls/Shimotsuma Monogatari and Rachel Alucard from Blazblue with a dash of Stocking from Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt.

Lolita 52: Describe my style is 5 words?

Tomorrow I'll be leaving my home (again), this time for a law internship in Maryland--so bear with me since it seems like the filler posts will have to continue for another couple of weeks. =(

The topic I drew this week for the Lolita 52 Challenge was "5 keywords that describe your style." I really suck at picking pretty unique words for this so this may be pretty boring--so I decided to spice it up with some photos of things in my wardrobe that fit that word!

Since I was a kid, the word "dream" was a real source of inspiration to me. I wanted to take the things I dreamed about (both awake and sleeping) and make them a reality, create soft silhouettes and crown everything with wings.

This is something that I think only really started to make an appearance in my personal fashion in the past year or two. Although most of the things pictured here I had for longer than that amount of time, glitter used to be something I found tacky or just garish. But lately, soft glittering accents have really pulled me in!

Looking back at my advice for buying a versatile piece for your wardrobe, strange colour combinations and outlandish ideas have really been at the forefront of my wardrobe. I really like the idea of taking something most people find ugly and just having fun with it! I guess that's why "aomoji-kei" is such a turn-on for me.

The older I become, the more I want to tip my hat to the things that made me who I am today, whether it's the Power Rangers or Cardcaptor Sakura. There are things I never really stopped loving that I always want to bring into every coordinate!

Last and certainly not least, is adding a little reminder of loved ones, family heirlooms, and "lucky" items. They end up sneaking into my coordinates one way or the other, and I wouldn't have it any other way!

How would you describe your style in 5 words?

Lolita 52 Challenge: How people react and how I respond in return.

Okay, this is probably my favourite topic I have ever pulled for the Lolita 52 Challenge, I really love talking about things like this!

44. How strangers react to my clothes, and how I react to their reactions

For those of you who have been following this blog for a while, I do wear alternative fashions as a whole pretty often, even if it isn't necessarily lolita. If I'm leaving the house to do something other than go to the bank/post office, I try and dress up in something unique. For that reason, I've pretty much had a whole slew of responses to what I wear, but thankfully the bad responses aren't too severe. (Although there is this one time.)

I get anything from "are you part of a play?" to "you look like a princess!" or even general comments of admiration like, "wow, that's so cool you dress that way." If people ask a question I usually just respond with "this is a Japanese street fashion popular among some groups of young people," and they're usually just happy hearing that.

But I think the biggest (negative) thing I get are people blatantly pointing and staring at me to laugh or take photos. I usually just turn to them, smile really largely, and say "hello," and that terrifies them into submission, haha! I guess they expect no one to actually call them out on their rude behaviour, especially with kindness. I've realised that if they're around teenage age, they tend to be the meanest, especially where I live. Kids get away with too much here. D= If they're younger or older you tend to get generally positive comments, and old ladies are probably the funniest.

I also get "Lady Gaga" a lot, to which I grimace and say I have no intention of looking like her, but it is a Japanese street fashion--and then they laugh and say that's cool and move on. Most of my reactions don't last longer than a couple of sentences.

I've realised that just being nice to the people who are rude to you tends to rectify things faster than being rude. I've been with girls who would yell at them or glare and it just makes them want to poke fun at you more since they know they're getting to you. Just stay positive, or even goofy!

Previous topics:

6. My favourite lolita brand.
10. How I first found out about lolita.
14. Lolitas I would love to meet.
20. How satisfied I am with my current wardrobe.
26. How I get out of a wardrobe slump.

I'm currently traveling right now, so I won't be responding to comments as quickly as I normally do! Hope everyone is staying safe and having a good time. =)

Lolita 52 Challenge: How I first found out about lolita.

By the time this posts on my blog, I'll probably be half-way through my three-day drive across the country back home. My blog will definitely be more active once I have some time to sit down in my apartment, but I feel like until March my life is just going to be way too busy. Just to keep my blog active, here comes the next entry in my 52 Week Lolita Challenge!

10. How I first found out about Lolita.

A lot of the details surrounding what happened when I first got into Lolita fashion 5-6 years ago is already fuzzy, and it doesn’t help that I found out about the fashion a good three years before I actually took the plunge and started purchasing pieces for my wardrobe. All I remember is that when I was 13 years old, and a freshman in high school, I had met a close friend of mine who introduced me to Japanese street fashions in general. Both of us had met at an anime convention (you could bet I was in my full-fledged fangirl phase—it’s a little embarrassing thinking back on it), and I wasn’t too big on dressing myself well or really just caring about my appearance in general.

My friend used to dress in Visual-kei type fashion back in the day (she’s graduated to largely 80’s grunge), but when she showed me some photos of her favourite bands, members wearing big cupcake-dresses with lots of frills and lace immediately caught my attention. I grew up watching Cardcaptor Sakura, and pretty much every aspect of my life was directly influenced by the show, and I always wanted to wear Sakura’s beautiful dresses that Tomoyo lovingly made for her, but could never find anything like it in the store. I even designed a couple of my own dresses that I had seamstresses make for me when I was in middle school which were really quite nice too! I only had a few select dresses handmade by some aunties that fit the aesthetic, and I literally wore them to pieces. I started to do more research, a friend later showed me Fan+Friend, and the rest was history!

I think my initial influence from Cardcaptor Sakura is a big reason why I'm so big into "anime-kei" now and always love to mix in some Magical Girl influences into most (if not all) my outfits.

Of course I had a pretty terrible ita failure somewhere in between, but I was dead set on wearing shiro Lolita, since to this day I’m not a huge fan of how pink looks on me (at least the straight pastel pink normally used), never liked any shade of blue, and wanted to control my spending by only buying things in my two favourite colours; white and lavender. Back then lavender wasn’t a very popular colour in the fashion (that has, of course, changed), so I settled on just straight shiro.

Since then my style has fluctuated and changed and I'm still trying to put together that perfect coordinate that really embraces all the things I love about fashion into one big ball! I love pastels, but I also love Cult Party kind of silhouettes and fabrics, but not straight sweet lolita... Who knows what I like.

These two coordinates are probably the closest I've gotten to that perfect sweet spot!

What are your stories about coming into the fashion? Was Lolita the first Japanese fashion you were interested in, or were you introduced through another fashion?

Previous entries:

14. Lolitas I would love to meet.
20. How satisfied I am with my current wardrobe.
26. How I get out of a wardrobe slump.

Lolita 52 Challenge: Lolitas I would love to meet.

Today's Lolita 52 challenge is pretty straight forward. It's about lolitas I would love to meet! Judging by how there is another criteria for "lolitas I have met already," I can't sit around lovelorn saying I miss some of my friends who I have met before, haha. And believe me, that was very tempting to do since I haven't been back in my own apartment for some time now.

Please check out the previous Lolita 52 challenge I have completed!

14. Lolitas I would love to meet.
20. How satisfied I am with my current wardrobe.

Noor (sugarnoor)

I've been a huge supporter of her wearing hijabi in fashion since she first posted a couple of her outfits on daily_lolita and received a lot of criticism for it. She is really a sweet girl, who has improved so much over the years, and her smile is absolutely radiant! She's all the way in the UK though, one day we will be able to meet, I'm sure of it. ;A; We talk relatively often, and we plan on putting together some fun matching outfits someday!

Ruth (Princess Peachie)

Another girl who's style I have watched grow and fluctuate, she is one of the few lolitas who post on Tumblr who really let her personality shine through what they post. I've only spoken to her a couple of times, and she has always treated me kindly. Not to mention we have similar taste, and we can probably talk for hours about the things we love.

Caro (F*** Yeah Lolita)

When I recently joined the Lolita Blog Carnival, I was able to speak to her every now and then, and she seems mature, intelligent, and really knowledgeable about the fashion. I have always been in awe of how in-depth F*** Yeah Lolita has been, and she seems to know so many things. I really had no idea who was behind F*** Yeah Lolita since I only sporadically read it before going ahead and using my abandoned Blogspot account. Now that I have more insight into the type of person she is through Facebook, I really want to meet her!

Zeruda (Zeruda's Wonderland)

Zeruda doesn't dress in lolita fashion anymore, but I thought I'd include her in this list anyways since we've known each other since before she decided to leave the fashion. When I asked if we could be penpals, she happily obliged! ;A; She has inspired me for years, and we always chatted a little bit on the side, but not as closely as we do now. Next time I'm in Sweden I need to see her, distance is nothing when you have some stamps and paper!

Is lolita fashion dying?

I'm sure a lot of other J-fashion blogs are going to blog about their thoughts on this topic that seems to be especially rehashed this past week on a lot of major websites. I know what brought it to my attention was a good friend of mine, go_slow_ly, getting into a Facebook conversation about how lolita as a fashion seems to be evolving and moving towards toned-down brands.

This question is asked literally every year, someone randomly posts on their blog "I heard (insert brand here) is going bankrupt soon, is lolita dying???" The answer is, of course, the very vague yes and no.

Trends I like and dislike.

I have been wearing lolita fashion for about five years, and a lot of things have changed both in the community, what is popular, and how exactly my fashion has changed. On that topic, I thought I'd include the look voted as a favourite from my Wardrobe Challenge post last week, since it is actually a revamp of an old coordinate I wore years back.

This is how I wore it the beginning of my junior year in college (omg this photo looks so old, haha, I don't even use that camera anymore, I have TWO new ones!):

I feel like now I have have a much better grasp of colour balancing and make-up, hahaha~ A lot has changed in a couple of years. Also omg, look at my dorm room!! This is when I first moved in with one of my best friends.

Getting my hands dirty again...

It's been a long time since I worked with some traditional mediums. I cracked open my recycled paper sketchbook, some white charcoal, and my nearly decade old Copic markers and doodled something. It was great fun to get warmed up for commissions (which I am opening up soon). If you're interested, leave me a comment or message me on my Facebook page. =)

Facebook.

After attending Indy GenCon this past weekend, I have had a lot of requests to be added as a friend--but the problem is, I tend to keep my personal Facebook to just IRL friends and coworkers. For this reason, I went ahead and made a Facebook fanpage for this blog and my online "persona," for lack of a better word, so people can stay in the loop their own way. Apparently Facebook is pretty much a necessity nowadays, and I always want to stay in touch with the people I meet through conventions!

Please click through the photo below to be redirected to my brand new Facebook page! Feel free to ask me questions or fuel a discussion--I currently have a post about femininity and empowerment up on the page and would love to see what everyone can contribute to the discussion.

Although this blog has mostly been about webstore reviews and fashion-related finds, I definitely want to make sure that my initial passion also comes across--I am very much into activism and eradicating the unbalanced power dynamics that are so prevalent in (especially) American society. Hopefully my Facebook can get that across more.

Missing a certain kind of sky.

I've been completely swamped with work at my legal internship job, so I haven't had time to really dress up or even go outside for that matter. I found myself really missing the beautiful sky this morning, and dug up a bunch of old pictures of the beautiful skies I have seen over the two years, starting in June 2010. (These are all from my Tumblr, hence the watermarks.)

Feeds are open!

Follow my blog with Bloglovin

I realised that my layout was not allowing people to follow my blog, so I've opened up feeds and Bloglovin' for those who have pointed it out to me!

Thanks so much everyone for supporting me over here, hope to update soon!!

Hi there!

I'll probably be posting more reviews and little diaries about my day on here. I normally post frequently on my Tumblr here; but I think it would be nice to have an old-school blog too, rather than a "Pinterest" type of site.