Five Facts About My Lolita Wardrobe

Another topic from the 365 Lolita Challenge: Share five facts about your wardrobe!

1. Almost all of my main pieces are brand

With the exception of my Sweet Mildred JSK, all of my dresses and skirts (not including the underskirts) are brand. After I bought my first piece years ago, I knew there would be no going back for me.

2. My wardrobe used to be entirely pink

Yep. Right now, I have mostly darker colors, but about a year and a half ago, I had mostly pink! A couple of Baby babydoll JSKs, an Angelic Pretty lucky pack dress, and even Happy Garden and the Sugar Pansy special set, all of it pink. This is why I still have pink shoes, a pink parasol, and my pink Usakumya.

3. Almost all of my main pieces were purchased second-hand

Again, my Sweet Mildred JSK is the exception, though it was still purchased for a similar price to a lot of my other dresses.

4. My clothes get hung up in sets

I pair blouses and JSKs on the hanger, and occasionally headwear and boleros. This saves on closet space, and is good for putting together coordinates so you don't have to scramble the week before a meet!

5. My Lolita clothes take up half the closet

We have a walk-in closet, and since my significant other only uses a quarter of the space, I was encouraged to use more space to set apart my "normal" clothes and my Lolita wardrobe.

Lolita 365 Cluster: Coordinate Challenges

I'm sorry that this post was late! I recently started a new job, and they've been having me very busy with training!

There have been a couple of themed coordinate challenges on Lace a la Mode's page in the last week, so I thought I could throw them together in this post! Let's get started~

Day 163: Design a Coordinate Based on a Book

I actually did a couple of these a long time ago, centered around the main characters of the Gregory Maguire novel, Wicked.

"The Glindaberry Bush" is from a very specific scene in the novel: it's just after the death of Nessarose, the Wick Witch of the East, and Glinda and Elphaba have a strained reunion. The description of Glinda's style is quite outrageous, and perfect for OTT Sweet/Hime Lolita.

The Elphaba coordinate was a lot of fun, since she was the main character and there are so many symbols to associate with her. Almost all of it translated into accessories, such as the Innocent World bag for the Grimmerie, the black rose-patterned scarf, the flying monkey pin, the broomstick necklace, and the mirror ring. Of course, we also had to throw in a big, beautiful witch's hat and a couple of other Gothic accessories to round out the look.

Finally, I had to make a coordinate for Nessarose. In the books, she's described as being very much style savvy in her youth. During her introduction scene, as a teenager, she's described as wearing apple-green silk and a black shawl that all of the students at Shiz university wear. Along with a pair of silver beaded shoes (the Ruby Slippers were originally silver, though in Wicked they were described as having no color), I also added in a crucifix (she was extremely religious in life), and some more generic Classic-styled headwear, tights, and wristcuffs.

Day 164: Design a coordinate using contrasting colors

Lavender and yellow is my favorite Sweet color combo! That's part of the reason why I love Angelic Pretty's Sugar Pansy so much in the yellow colorway. I also would like to pair yellow with the lavender Dream Sky print.

Did you do any of these challenges this week? What's your favorite contrasting or complimentary color combo? Let me know in the comments below!

365 Lolita Lifestyle Photography Challenges

There were lots of topics for this challenge since the end of May that have had to do (or I made do) with pictures, so I decided to put them all on one post!

Day 148: Carry Something to Take Notes On and Fill it With the Wonderful Things About Your Day

Or: I took a long walk around the lake and took pictures of some of the good things I saw.

Day 151: Photograph Your Favorite Lolita Purse

Ruby had a long day at Colossalcon-- I loaned her and the rest of a coordinate to a friend. She's been chilling in my desk ever since.

Day 154: Design a Coordinate Based on a Uniform

This is usually a pretty easy challenge: there are a lot of pieces, particularly Angelic Pretty, that look like they were inspired by the typical school uniform. Lots of pleated skirts, and plenty of sailor-collar-styled tops and dress bodices. I wanted to try something different, though I can see a lot of other people trying this out for their uniform of choice, too.

This is based on the girl's uniform from Ouran High School Host Club. It's definitely a warmer outfit because of the layers, but using a cutsew instead of a blouse should help that.

The Bedroom of a Victorian-Rococo Lady

The challenge for May 16th involved describing your ideal Lolita interior, and a thousand things flooded my brain: daybeds and loveseats and four-poster beds with chiffon curtains, collections of tea cups and bouquets of flowers on top of lace-covered end tables, absolutely everything in my favorite shade of powder blue.

There's a particular bedroom setup that I'm head-over-heels in love with, and it comes from Versailles:

The private sitting chamber of the Queen that inspires me so.

This room is known as "The Cabinet of the Meridian," and was a part of the Queen's private chambers in the palace of Versailles. It was used as a setting in several scenes of the Kirtsen Dunst movie Marie Antoinette, and I was enchanted with how cozy it seemed!

A modern-day take on the Cabinet of the Meridian!

Now, I love the idea of having a bed or daybed set directly into the wall, with decorative curtains for privacy if needed. The biggest downside is that this setup might make making the bed a little more difficult, but I'd be willing to put up with that. The rest of the room would be dedicated to living comfortably. I spend almost all of my time at home in my bedroom, but I don't want to always be sitting in a desk chair or on the bed.

Personlly, I'm partial to a Rococo-styled chaise longue or a Victorian loveseat, but other (probably cheaper) options include antique armchairs. Luckily for me, Rococo and Victorian can be easy to blend together in the same room.

Other things to dress up a room with a Victorian or Rococo theme are chandelier lamps, decorative, four-legged end tables or coffee tables, and fancy tea cup displays!

Even if I can't decorate an entire bedroom this way, I'm absolutely determined to have a sitting or relaxing room with this theme of Rococo-Meets-Victorian. What kind of room style is ideal for your Lolita world? Are you a Rococo, Victorian, or some other kind of interior design enthusiast?

365 Lifestyle Lolita Cluster!

It's been a while since I posted something from this challenge! A lot of the things for May weren't really bloggable, or were things that I was unable to do for whatever reason, but there are plenty of little ones that I can combine right here!

Day 117: Look through photographs from before your time

Tracking down old photographs of my ancestors is a great personal joy of mine, part of my lager hobby of building my family tree. Getting to see images of the people who allowed me to be sitting here typing this makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Here are some of my favorites:

Circa 1890; my great-great-great grand-
parents, Joseph and Louisa. They both look so stately!

circa 1900: My 4th great-grandfather,
William. I'm in love with how decorative
the framing is!

c. 1900 - The second wife of William;
I think she's an aunt? Mostly, I wanted to
show the matching frames.

1961 - My grandmother and her family when
she was a child (right). I really enjoy my
great-grandma's knowing smile.

Day 124: Photgraph Your Online Handle Handwritten

I tried my best to make it look nice

Day 127: Photograph Your Room

I won't take you through my whole room, especially because I share it with someone else, but here are a few snapshots of my favorite spots!

That's about it for this post. Have you blogged about any of the recent 365 challenges?

Water Lilies: The Dress Print I Desperately Need to See!

There was a 365 Lifestyle Lolita challenge topic last week that asked us what paintings would we like to see on a dress. Of course, the first thing to spring to my mind was a Monet Lily print!

The Water Lily Pond

I know that Juliette et Justine sort of has the monopoly on painting dresses, right now, but if I could pick another brand to make a Monet dress, I'd be interested to see a Victorian Maiden or even Moitie spin on my favorite artist.

Nymphéas reflets de saule, or The Willow's Waterlily Reflection
by Claude Monet

In fact, with inspiration from the above painting, I threw together a Monet-inspired coordinate on PolyVore using a Moitie JSK!

Monet is known for his floaty colors that can be surprisingly rich; everything is a haze of color, like you're looking through light, and you have to take a step back to see the bigger picture. Moitie's Rose Print JSK is perfect: the chiffon overlay hides the brightness of the orange flowers and has a very watery, Monet-like effect on the print.

Navy is the primary color in the painting, but you can't ever fail to notice the lesser accent colors: after all, nature does not make landscapes in one color, but many. That's why I brought back the light blue and the greens in the accessories.

What are some paintings that you'd like to see as Lolita dresses? Let me know in the comments below!

Share a Piece of Lolita Advice

This was the 365 Lifestyle Lolita topic for April 22nd, but I wanted to really think about this before posting. I've been a part of the fashion for about four years, now, but I still feel like I'm brand new, so being asked to give advice to Lolitas is a little... eh.

I feel more comfortable directing my advice towards new Lolitas, or people who are thinking about jumping into the fashion and are working on their first coordinate. I'm new enough that my own closet is still recovering from newbie mistakes, but I've been around long enough to recognize what my mistakes were, and how to fix them.

So, Floating on Macaron's First Rule of Lolita:

Your Dress is Not the Only Part of Your Coordinate

From lolitafashion.org

This really sounds like a no-brainer, but half of the people I see getting ripped on for being "ita" get it because they're wearing a dress and shoes... and nothing else. You need your petticoat, your blouse or cardigan, your headwear, your socks, and your accessories, and it all has to go well together.

Made with the Sweet LolitaMega Dressup game
on DollDivine

I whipped this up on a dollmaker, and it isn't terribly far off from what I was talking about above. Your dress can be as cute as can be, but this isn't a full outfit, and doesn't look like one. Not for Lolita, anyway. However, a blouse and a few accessories can fix this:

No, I didn't change her facial
expression; this is just what the
doll looks like with lip gloss on.

Lace-topped socks, a white blouse, a pink headbow, pink purse, and a floral corsage make a simple, but very cute coordinate.

My closet fell very hard into this trap: I have tons of dresses, but almost no blouses or proper accessories, and definitely not enough socks. Even my shoes are suffering, because two of my go-to pairs crapped out on me within the last year.

I'm currently holding off on buying new blouses for a few reasons, but that just means I can focus on saving to replace my shoes (I need two or three pairs at least just to round out my outfits) and to collect more accessories (thank God for OPs).

I know that Lolita fashion is expensive, and that even a cheap outfit will still run you around $100, but it's so worth it. If you put in the effort, you'll be rewarded with a very special, beautiful outfit.

What's your first rule of Lolita? Let me know in the comments below!

Macaron Madness! (Coordinate)

We had a topic from the 365 Lifestyle Lolita Challenge that was pretty easy: build a coordinate around a dessert! I've had macarons on the mind, recently, and I'm pretty in love with an Innocent World print from a couple of years ago, so that's what I decided to throw together on PolyVore!

The JSK is Innocent World's Patisseries de Paris JSK in beige with the matching socks, Inocent World shoes, a Magic Tea Party blouse, a headbow from Baby, the Stars Shine Bright, and a couple of accessories from Etsy.

Did you make a coordinate for this challenge? Let me know or link me to it in the comments below!

My New Garden!

The 365 Lifestyle Lolita Challenge topic for April 12th was "Create a wishlist of flowers you would plant in a garden," but because my garden shopping for this year was coming up soon, anyway, I decided to turn it into a blog post about my new balcony gardens!

Sage, lavender, rosemary

Sweet basil, onion chives, and lemon
thyme

They're so cute~ I plan on hunting down some other plants that the stores we went to didn't have (Since two of my planters have space for more), but for now, we've got quite the collection!

Lavender and Rosemary

Sweet basil

Lemon thyme

I love keeping an herb garden for making tea, cooking, and for a few other things (sage makes a great rinse for brown hair), and I'm very excited to have one again! Before now, I've always lived in a stand-alone dwelling and had a yard, so my plants could go directly in the ground, but this is my first time in an apartment. Railing planters were necessary. They're easy enough to put up, but I would definitely recommend putting them all together during the day (instead of at night, like me).

I'm also ecstatic to have these! They might look like regular old strawberry plants, but these are, in fact, pineberries!

Ripe pineberries-- mine probably won't
look this pretty.

Pineberries are a hybridization of the Chilean and Virginia strawberries, and were originally native to South America. White with red seeds, these little berries are supposed to taste like pineapples! I first learned about these in early 2011, when I was researching hybrid foods for a project about genetically modified organisms in a high school Microbiology class, but these little guys wouldn't be available commercially in the U.S. until a year later.

Because they didn't do "well" ("critical responses were mixed" says Wikipedia), pineberries were restyled as "Hulaberries" in 2015 and can now be found as plants in Home Depot. In fact, while desperately trying to hunt down chamomile at 9:30pm, that's where I stumbled upon them and eagerly snatched up a set of starters!

  

Now, if I had the space to grow flowers, I'd probably stick with snapdragons, marigolds, geraniums, and roses. I could probably squeeze some snapdragons and marigolds out onto the real balcony, but definitely not rose bushes. One day, I'll have a yard again!

What are some flowers that you all would like to plant? What do you like to keep in your garden? Let me know or link me to your own blog posts in the comments below!