AYWi30C #21 - Based Around Your Favourite Shoes

Like a good mother, I don’t have favourites. Although I can’t deny that I reach for some pairs more than I do for others. There are also different reasons to love a pair, since looks and comfort don’t always come together. This led me to trying to pick the most interesting shoes for this prompt, which I always knew were going to be one of my Irregular Choice ones - and in the end it worked out to be my very first pair.

| Lady Sloth Look at My Dreamy Sky Casual OP | Angelic Pretty Lovely Ribbon OTKs | Irregular Choice Total Freedom shoes | Celestial Castle double bow hair clip | Angelic Pretty Crystal Dream Carnival ring | vintage belt | handmade wing clips |

The beauty of the shoes I picked for this prompt is that they are incredibly versatile. This could’ve been almost any coord and the shoes would’ve looked great. However, the point was to create a coord based on the shoes, which led to a lot of brainstorming. The gold made me think of Ancient Greek gods, and the idea seemed so exciting that I simply had to go for it. Even though this is far from what I would eventually like to do, it’s a good enough work-in-progress that I went with this. As we go through this coord, I’ll mention what I’d like to change or add in the future, so that one day this outfit will fully spread its wings (pun intended).

The wing clips were attached to the shoes as Hermes was my original inspiration. It seemed appropriate for a prompt focused on shoes.

The sequins are a lovely yellow gold tone, but can be flipped to pure silver, which you can sort of see in the top left corner.

The bows and glitter add a touch of cool-toned gold, which makes the shoes match even more things.

Slightly blurry at the top, but you get the gist.

For now let’s talk about these shoes some more. Irregular Choice shoes are a lot like lolita dresses: full of little details that make them extra special, even if they may seem simple at first glance. These ones have flip sequins, which I tend to keep on their default gold side, but have flipped to silver once or twice. The T-bar design topped with bows makes these perfect for wearing with lolita. Everywhere you look there’s something sparkling, be it sequins, glitter or those metallic bows. Get enough light and all you need is the slightest move to make these twinkling and reflecting that light like Cinderella’s slippers. Although these are sadly not my most comfortable IC shoes, I keep persevering, hoping that this way I will break into them eventually, since the majority of that discomfort seems to come from how stiff the material is (though I may try a cushioned insole too). They are such stunning shoes that they are worth this, and since for the time being we’re still stuck indoors, pushing through the discomfort isn’t quite as taxing as going out to a meetup in those would be. Let’s hope that by the time in-person meetups are a thing again, I will have won the battle against these beauties, even if a part of me is petrified of wearing them in the ugly, mucky outdoors.

Honestly, they're not AP's best socks, and I moaned about that here, but damn it, they are cute.

Seeing as we started with the shoes, we might as well continue upwards, which leads us to socks. When I think about Ancient Greek gods, I think of sandals, which obviously weren’t going to happen here. What I did instead was create a nod to them by opting for OTKs with a criss-cross lace design. Part of me wondered whether the BtSSB replica mesh and lace socks might be better, considering how the coord uses an OP and there’s hardly any other white besides the wings, but since those don’t stretch over my knees and the dress sits above them, I decided against that. Granted, these particular OTKs only barely stretch above my knees too, but at least they do. One day I should probably get a pair of tights with a design like this…

Hello, minimalism, you seem to have been a frequent visitor recently.

The accessories section is very minimal here. This is where I would make the most changes going forward, as I simply didn’t have the kinds of pieces that I would match best with this theme. Still, considering how this is the best I could’ve done with what I currently own, this really isn’t bad, I’m pleased with the result and will keep working on the improvements in the meantime.

I recall being able to customise these both with ribbon colour and charm shape. I really thought I'd get loads of wear out of these and ended up hardly using them.

These clips don't hold up too well to such closeups, but they get the job done.

My headpiece was a combination of this double bow clip that I bought in my early days of serious wardrobe building (so around 2016) and the wing clips that I made myself. This exact look is what spurred me on in getting these clips done sooner and not procrastinating so much, so if anything I’m grateful for that. They’ve already been worn once more since this look and I have at least one more planned for the future, which is great. The bow clip doesn’t get the wear that it deserves, however, as with most things sax, it only really matches this dress. That and the asymmetric bow sizes, one bigger and one smaller, don’t lend themselves to easy coordinating, which I simply didn’t realise would be a thing when I bought it. Still, I hang onto it because it is very pretty. When this look gets redone, I would love to have a more god-like gold laurel wreath. I’d probably still adorn it with those clips, possibly even with this bow clip too, to make it extra fancy.

One ring to rule them all? Well, not quite, just one ring.

This ring looks so lonely here as the sole item of jewellery. On the day I contemplated wearing the heart and arrow necklace from Rose Marie Seoir, but in the end decided that it was too Cupid-like, whereas I was aiming more for Hermes. Not that a pegasus has anything to do with Hermes either, but at least they both have wings. Wings and clouds was the overarching theme here, so I decided that it was better to have fewer jewellery pieces that matched that well rather than add bits that might just about do for the sake of filling in the gaps. Though rest assured that an expansion with more jewellery is on the cards for this look when the update happens.

The more I wear it, the more I realise how much I love belts like this one with lolita, I should get more.

Here’s a very un-fun fact: I wore this belt for the lookbook and then proceeded to forget to include it in the flatlay photos at first. Redoing all the photos was not something I was in the mood for, but I had to take at least some of them again. In the absence of any other accessories, having this belt feels like a bit of a saving grace. It’s that one element that announces that this coord is simple by design rather than (completely) through lack of suitable pieces. And for that I am eternally grateful.

Sweetheart neckline isn't that common in lolita, though part of me wishes that it was, at least a little more.

Considering that there's a horse in the print, we can safely say that the ring matches.

The beauty of OP coords is that you get to the main piece a lot quicker. I am very happy that I bought it because even though it sometimes feels like a struggle to coord it in particularly new ways, it’s also so incredibly comfortable and light. Every time the UK gets hit with a heatwave, I remember how I don’t have actual summer clothes, and so this OP becomes my saviour. Plus, that neckline and sleeves are incredibly flattering. The flounciness of those sleeves also reminds me a little of wings, which together with the cloud print made perfect sense as a base for a coord inspired by Hermes, the Ancient Greek god.

Seriously though, the print idea is wonderful. Surely we've all spent a lot of time looking at the clouds and seeing the fantastical shapes they can be, right?

My favourite cloud from the whole print. It's just so quintessentially lolita.

What’s extra fun is hunting for all the different cloud shapes. At first glance the print looks simple, it’s only the more you look at it that the more you notice. The ribbon is my personal favourite, however, the teapot is the most lolita one on the whole print in my opinion.

An obligatory "I didn't notice it until now" caption: a bird! Looks a bit like a kiwi bird to me, though I doubt that this is what the illustrator actually intended.

A solitary strawberry appears.

See what I mean? Some of those clouds are pretty random and just fluffy, though they look so full of depth. And then you look at another spot and find something else. If I wanted to really stretch myself, I could try to make this my berry print or my tea print, or whatever, there is bound to be something for most themes found in sweet lolita. This was also the first release I ever saw where the two ‘colourways’ weren’t just the same thing in another colour palette, but an entire reinterpretation of the print theme, with Day colourway showing clouds and Night showing stars. So whatever sky you preferred, you could get a print to match.

Between the editing and the pure luck, this is the best look at the makeup I could manage. I pulled out literally every eyeshadow palette I own and used at least one shade from almost every one, so can you blame me that I wanted to document the makeup as best I could?

Sadly, despite my best efforts at both photographing the look and later editing it, the full impact doesn’t quite come through. I’ve no idea why I struggled so much with getting a good picture of this makeup, but I am bummed that I did because it’s probably the most intricate one that I did for this challenge (not sure if the most intricate ever, but it’s certainly up in the top three). Even the video does only a slightly better job because the day I filmed this was miserable as hell and I had to rely fully on indoor lights. When looking for makeup inspiration on Pinterest, I tried to find one that’d strike a good balance between natural and OTT - as well as find one that’d work for my complexion since Greeks are naturally more tanned than I am and thus look loads better with golds and turquoise. Was I overcompensating for the simple coord? Definitely. But despite not having a photo that I’d be 100% happy with, I was pleased with how the makeup came out. This is the photo I used for reference and the only real difference was that the eyeshadows I had available to use were less yellow-based.

This is substantially more photos than I thought I had, but probably still not every instance that I actually wore this dress.
From left to right these are frm: October 2017, June 2018 x2, July 2018, April 2019, June 2019, April 2020, June 2020, August 2020 and November 2020.

The collage above will tell you exactly the point at which I stopped wearing this OP just for casual non-lolita outings and when it became a proper lolita piece. As well as the struggles I’ve experienced trying to match it with anything. At this point it will be better if I give up trying to match and focus on introducing new colours. The outfits I like most (the last two) are doing exactly that, so this is clearly the way forward.

As usual when my ideas are too specific, I struggled to find some music I liked. Filming such a summery and breezy look in indoor light only during winter was certainly odd, but I guess this is what happens when you do one look a month and only ever film indoors. I hope that you like it nonetheless and that the video does add something that the pictures weren’t able to convey.