September Coords Roundup

Green Day sang to “wake [them] up when September ends”. We’re not here to make jokes at Billie Joel Armstrong, because if you know anything about the song, you’d know how insensitive that is and how mean it makes us come across. But half of this month felt for me like I was putting out fires, so I would actually like to get some sleep when September ends and not to be woken up. Which I think comes across in how visibly fewer outfits I wore this month compared to the last few.

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Coord 1: Double Gobelin

| Angelic Pretty Royal Unicorn Switching JSK and headbow | Dangerous Nude gobelin bloomers | Sosic Shop shoes | offbrand blouse and socks |

I think in the future I will stick to a more traditional-looking oldschool blouse. But this was great for comfort.

These bloomers are probably the most ridiculous thing I own. They're literally hiked up to be just peeking because they go all the way down to my ankles! But I still love them.

This is from the very end of August which didn’t fit into the August coords roundup post. I can’t explain it better other than that I just felt the urge to wear these bloomers with this JSK, you know? I’m not massively into oldschool lolita on myself, but it is such a wearable way of styling your pieces since it doesn’t require a lot. That week in particular I’ve been feeling all over the place emotionally and in an attempt to help myself a little, I went for a sanity walk to Ordsall Hall gardens. Photographing the different fruit and plants (and a couple of bumblebees) whilst listening to music was incredibly healing. It may not have solved all of my problems, but it allowed me to get back home somewhat emotionally refreshed, which helped a lot.

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Coord 2: Preppy Pastel

| Innocent World Revival Sweet Teddybear JSK | Axes Femme blouse and cardigan | Red Maria tights | Irregular Choice Flickety Kiss shoes | handmade headbow | Madillustration brooch |

Blue eyeshadow was very effective with very little effort, definitely will do again.

Feel free to use as a reaction meme a'la the Arthur one.

Quick storytime first: the day before I wore this I was dressed in the most ‘normal’ ensemble I wore for years. I’ve been feeling quite down and my brain suggested that as an outfit. And you know what? It made me feel even more miserable and depressed, to the point where it was almost a eureka moment how much Not Me mainstream clothing styled in mainstream ways actually is. It jolted me back into wanting to wear something cute, so that I could escape feeling so bad and as soon as this outfit was on, I felt like myself again. It was all put together around this cardigan, since I thought a preppy look would be cute and not too much for a day with work meetings on Teams, and I even bothered with simple makeup, which helped elevate it that little bit more. Not that long ago I’ve been moaning about not having an excuse to wear a fancier coordinate and here I am, back at the “I am the occasion” train. Let’s hope that lasts. Also, fun fact: I recorded an introduction clip for students in this coord. The video only catches me waist up, but this is still different enough to typical office wear that I am bound to stand out. If any of the students who will see that clip clock me as a J-fashion wearer, I will be very impressed, but I don’t have high hopes.

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Coord 3: A… Meetup?

| Metamorphose Sailor Tiered skirt | Ank Rouge cutsew | Dancing Days cardigan | Angelic Pretty Candy Fun Fair OTKs | Primark shoes | Angelic Pretty Twinkle Sky headbow | offbrand hair clips | handmade choker and bracelets | After Midnight necklace | Twinkle Kitty Boutique rings | Angelic Pretty British Ribbon ring | offbrand ring | Dear Celine badge | Tea Party Club’s Dream Masquerade Carnival pin |

I am enjoying wearing false eyelashes more, at least in terms of the difference they make for a look.

Is this all of my tricolour accessories? Nope.

I wrote more about the coord and the day here, so to keep the post at least a little bit shorter, I’m sticking with only the pictures.

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Coord 4: Summer Never Ends

| Angelic Pretty Flower Garden JSK | offbrand blouse | Innocent World Rose Lace Millefeuille bolero | Innocent World Rose and Diamond OTKs | Sosic Shop heels | handmade headbow | Enchantlic Enchantilly necklace | Fluffy Tori Tea Party Hard pin | Dalao Home half wig |

Sometimes I get tempted to dye my hair. And then I remember how well this half wig matches, and the clip-on fringe, and how much I like my couple gray hairs, and that stops those ideas going further.

Although this is quite a ridiculously OTT dress, I'm glad that I was able to somewhat tone it down.

What I mean by this is that mentally summer continues for me for as long as I have to deal with bloody exam boards and their aftermath at work. And as we know, exam boards mean that I dress up to make myself feel better during what is otherwise a pretty miserable time. Having said this, while the boards mean that it’s still summer in my head, emotionally I am totally ready for autumn, which I embraced by coording this dress with brown. It makes for a very typical classic lolita combination, which I enjoy a lot, it gives me Innocent World vibes and those are never inappropriate in my books. It’s also one way to get around coordinating this awkward colour. Oh yeah, because temporarily I have reverted to letting Random Number Generator pick my main pieces again and it landed on this. Honestly, it’s so much easier with one thing fewer to think about and without forcing myself to coord this dress, I’m not sure when would I even consider coordinating it  with brown, you know?

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Coord 5: Something Similar

| Bodyline L380 skirt | offbrand blouse and flower clips | Innocent World Rose Lace Millefeuille bolero | Baroque Secret Garden tights | Hush Puppies boots | Fluffy Tori Tea Party Hard pin |

That fake leaf on the flower kind of looks like some flyaway hair, but it's fine. Noone is 100% perfect 100% of the time.

The damask-like pattern on those tights is perfect, it deserves a closeup because no-one could ever get close enough in person to see it properly without coming across as at least a bit creepy.

Since that week I had to prep as much as possible in advance, this included all my outfits. And when time is of the essence, forcing myself to come up with drastically different outfits is too much effort given the circumstances. So I reused a few pieces and ideas from the last outfit to make this one. The tights add a nice bit of interest to what otherwise looks very much like the previous coord with a different skirt and hair. But hey, you don’t have to sacrifice time for the sake of cute.

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Coord 6: The End Is In Sight

| Angelic Pretty Royal Unicorn Switching JSK | I Do Declare x Haenuli blouse | Peacockalorum underskirt | Angelic Pretty Toy March OTKs | Hush Puppies boots | Vierge Vampur bonnet | Haruhi Clover headbow | gold bow from Dear Celine’s Magic Book OP | AatP The Mouse King*Gualtiero Medal Pin II | Angelic Pretty Rose Princess wrist cuffs |

These glasses are great for distracting people, it is impossible to wear them without someone pointing them out.

I will never tire of the textures on this dress.

It may seem like I’ve only just worn this dress (at the beginning of this post, actually). And it’s true, I have. But it was the last exam board meeting and I used Random Number Generator again. The simple idea of pairing this dress with red morphed into using this blouse and ended up in this quite fancy form. Which I must say that I enjoyed, it was a good coord which I probably wouldn’t have worn for an exam board meeting had I not moved to using my office desktop which has no camera on it, so no-one could see me. It does, however, use a headset which together with this whole getup resulted in about 5 minutes of me feeling like an Angelic Pretty call centre operator. And given the size of Angelic Pretty’s head recently, as well as the general nature of call centre work, this would inevitably involve keeping people on hold and pretending like it’s not on purpose. Though a friend made a very valid point that AP could provide cute call centre-chan uniforms had they actually had a call centre, so I am now considering this completely impossible hypothetical scenario. I mean, I already have experience of wearing a headset over a bow, I guess?

Hello, you've reached the Angelic Pretty call centre, please, stay on the line.

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Coord 7: Filming Day

| BtSSB Full of Stars “Bright Starry Night” JSK I | Angelic Pretty Musee du Chocolat OTKs | collar from an Axes Femme cardigan | everything else is offbrand |

I would love to master the art of up-do's, especially if I can make them so that they're visible in photos. Up-do's and classic lolita seem like the perfect combination.

Also, I might add vintage fur collars and stoles to my regular eBay searches, I'm into the look that creates.

I had some videos that I wanted to record (that weren’t Around Your Wardrobe in 30 Coordinates!) and took this opportunity to put on something fancier. The idea was to create an elegant vintage look with this dress, which led to working everything around that faux fur collar. After the success of this outfit I would love to add a couple of more faux fur accessories to my wardrobe for more looks like this. With this I’ve also decided that it is now Cosy Season and I can’t wait to whip out my cardigans, it feels like too long since the proper warm ones have been out and I missed them. In the evening I took my Cosy Season further by lighting some scented candles, putting on fuzzy pyjamas, making seasonal tea and playing Fairytale of New York. What? I never specified which season I meant. Let me live my Christmas all year round life, I’m not the one interfering with other people’s Halloween celebrations, it’s just me on my own in my flat enjoying simple pleasures.

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Coord 8: More Otome

| Violet Fane Charming Town skirt and Post Office brooch | A.R.W. blouse | Fi.n.t. Cardigan | Innocent World Origa OTKs | offbrand shoes | Cutie Creator headbow | vintage flower |

Look at those fluffy curls! They came out so much better than I expected given how little effort I put into them.

It's fun to see that the brooch is exactly the same size as the sign on the skirt. Now I want to style it with the other pin from this series that I have (the Esoteric Shop one).

Having seen @frochan put an actual fluffy petticoat under their skirt of this print, I wanted to try the same and I’m positively surprised how nice that looks. I was worried that it would look overstuffed, but it turned out just fine. An almost entire week without anything nicer felt like an eternity, so it was time to change that. And since it is officially autumn, which I do like a lot, I wanted to embrace the autumn colours and cosy feelings. The Charming Town print seemed perfect for that occasion and whilst the coord is arguably more otome than lolita, both because of the pieces themselves and because of styling, I like it nonetheless. That flower probably needed a more thought-through placement, but eh!, it’s a minor thing. Instead let’s appreciate how I bothered to curl my hair during a week filled with extra work shoved my way and several hours of overtime. Overtime whilst working at home is the worst, 0/10, would not recommend!

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Coord 9: Cake in the Park

| Innocent World Georges Rose JSK | offbrand blouse | Axes Femme cardigan | Enchantlic Enchantilly The Crown of the Rose Princess tights | Hush Puppies boots | After Midnight beret | Cutie Creator headbow | offbrand brooches | Coscraft wig |

Oh my gosh, finally different and nice aesthetic outfit photos! And all of these ones came out so nice! The one above is in the park that's adjacent to the university I work at, whilst this one is at one of the campus buildings, which is actually an old fire station. And look at the autumn leaves! It's too perfect!

This wig enables me to live my dream of being ginger. I should get more ginger and red wigs, actually...

The beret has this amazing design, which is never seen on photos. Time to showcase that!

The Great British Bake Off had started on Tuesday of that week and to celebrate, I made a cake on Monday. Thing was, not only do I prefer to bake for others than just myself, the cake (although delicious) was quite rich. Even trying to eat the whole thing myself would be a lot, it probably would’ve taken me two weeks and I wasn’t sure if the cake would last that long. However, after sharing my woes of how the pandemic means I can’t even invite friends for some cake, the idea was born to have said cake in the park. Just like with the MOSI meetup, it’d only be three people myself included, and a park is an open public space, so the plan didn’t seem that illegal against the current regulations.

The other two quickly got excited about ‘last day of summer’ kind of coords, which I had neither the right pieces nor the mood for, so instead I went with ‘first day of autumn’ as my inspiration, giving rise to this coord. And I have to say, I really like how it came out, down to the makeup which I went more browny and peachy with. The wig served a double purpose of adding to that autumnal theme and hiding my hair being all in pincurls for the evening.

We shared the cake (which I’m so pleased they liked!), took some photos, saw many doggos and inadvertently ended up crashing the coolest wedding party ever. We were sitting on the benches by the flower beds to eat the cake when we saw a wedding party approach. I don’t know what language they all spoke, but everyone was black and the women all wore white flowy dresses with cuts and patterns that reminded me both of Middle East and some central African countries, with the most amazing hairdo’s ever. (It really bothered me that I didn't know enough to recognise their culture at a glance, so I Google Imaged traditional wedding dresses of every African country until I hit a match and discovered that they were most likely Eritrean.) The men all coordinated their suits too and everyone was just strolling, eating and taking photos, celebrating the occasion. They all looked incredibly beautiful, those women were absolute goddesses and I felt lucky to be able to bask in their glory, even if only for a little. At one point one of the wedding party’s photographers has asked if we wanted a picture too, which may be the first time I agreed to it thinking that this is someone much cooler than me asking. Although I’m not sure whether the bride and groom would really want to remember the three randos in frilly dresses eating cake as part of their wedding.

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Coord 10: Murder at the Tea Party

| Haenuli Just One Bite JSK | What Katie Did stockings | Vivienne Westwood x Melissa Anglomania heels | vintage gloves | offbrand jewellery and hair clip |

Proof that I was wearing seamed stockings!

Thankfully I didn't have to change my makeup much from earlier, just add eyeliner and change lipstick to red. And the Hair Gods have smiled upon my attempt at pincurls, I must leave them an offering of gratitude.

I have shoulders? Scandalous!

Two coords in the same day, wooo! Of the two, this was the one I actually anticipated wearing because I had been planning this virtual murder mystery meetup for literal two months and it finally took place. I will write more about the meetup itself soon, so I’ll keep this part brief and just about the coord. Whilst I still don’t have a dramatic hat, I basically took the WIP idea I had for this dress and ran with that. The glam film noir vibes felt appropriate for an evening meetup trying to catch a horrible EGL murderer. Since I was the host, I didn’t necessarily have a character to match, although I ended up stepping in for someone who couldn’t make it in the end and luckily my outfit still fit that character. It was elegant and quick to change into, and while I will re-wear this in its complete form once I acquire a suitable hat, I am very pleased with this result. It may be a bit of a stretch to call this lolita, even an ero one, it swings heavily to the glam vintage side, but whatever we call it, I was really feeling the entire look!

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And that is it for September. Yes, technically there’s still tomorrow, but honestly, I’m still putting out fires at work, so my energy levels likely won’t be up for that. However, things hopefully will start calming down soon. I really want to capitalise on the cosy autumn vibes and outfits that I can make before I fully switch gears for winter and Christmas. The spooky season holds little appeal for me, but I do have one idea that I would like to make happen. It requires some crafting though, so if that happens, you should see a post about that before I share the outfit. So here’s hoping for a calmer, more creative October. I would really like that, it would be amazing for my mental health as well as this blog. And to those of you excited for the spoopy season - may the month of Halloween be as good as you can make it in the current circumstances.