2nd Half of 2020 in Coords

If there is any redeeming quality to this year, it’s how much I’ve been able to wear lolita. That is probably the chief thing that kept me from losing all my marbles. Whilst no doubts I would’ve had some other outlet if I wasn’t into lolita fashion, I am grateful that I had this one. And as the second half of this year was made up of lockdown outfits only, the comparison will be even greater than in the first six months. I will structure the post in the same way as the previous one and just like then, when comparing anything to this time last year, I will use percentages rather than actual numbers, since anything else wouldn’t be fair.

COORDS

Coords from July.

Coords from July and August.

Coords from August.

Coords from August and September.

Coords from September and October.

Coords from October.

Coords from November.

Coords from November and December.

Coords from December.

This is it. Every outfit worn between July 1st and December 25th. In the first six months of 2020 I’ve worn 55 coords - the above amounts to 77. Together, as coords worn across an entire year, this is enough to do all kinds of really in-depth analyses of my style, which I may at some point do, we’ll see what madness energy allows for. Today let’s focus on the other comparisons at hand. Still, 77 coords in six months. Mind. Blown.

SUBSTYLE

There are really no surprises in what substyle I wear the most. Once again, this is broken down to the barest bones possible, no waffling around with hybrids or themes: no sweet-classic, no retro, none of that. Just the very core three, which sometimes was hard to pinpoint, so I did my best to decide at times which thing dominated. Particularly the 1% gothic feels spot on. I appreciate gothic and admire it, but when it comes to wearing it I feel like most of my attempts end up being classic in black. To be honest, that 1% literally equals 1 coord, the Spookiest Colour Combination one, and even that you could easily argue is still just classic. As for my almost 70:30 ratio of classic to sweet - yeah, that feels right too. Classic styling is what I reach for the most, even when I’m using sweet pieces (Crystal Dream Carnival is a great example of that). Again, as much as I admire sweet lolita and enjoy wearing it, looking at the outfits that I’ve labelled as sweet, the common thread is that they’re the ones that had more thought go into them. If I run on autopilot and want to put something together quickly, without thinking about it much, 9 times out of 10 it’s a classic coord. Sweet coords are the ones that I ended up thinking about, considering what pieces to use, how to put them together, what themes to go for etc. Some of it could be because of the colours that dominate in my wardrobe and the builder pieces that I reach for (e.g. the cuts of my boleros), but I think it is more to do with the fact that having worn classic a lot more, putting coords like it have become a second nature.

Of course, like in the first half year’s analysis, chunk of it is also due to the makeup of my wardrobe. When over half of what I own would be classed as classic, then of course that the majority of my coords would also be classic. The dips in both sweet and gothic coords in comparison to how many sweet and gothic pieces I own both account for the rise in classic outfits. As I said, this is the kind of styling that comes the most naturally to me. And if I said that sweet outfits are the ones where more conscious thought has gone into, then gothic is even more so, particularly as gothic requires some very specific pieces and styling for the overall look to read as gothic.

It is interesting to see how much more classic lolita has dominated my outfits in 2020. The same period of time in 2019 followed a similar trend, but was ever so slightly more diverse. Granted, the percentages for 2019 are made up of significantly fewer outfits, 27 as opposed to 77. I think that having worn lolita a lot less frequently meant that every outfit I wore involved some degree of thought put into its styling, which translated into more deliberate choices to go for certain substyles or not. Meanwhile, so many of 2020’s coords were… not necessarily thrown together, but certainly not planned in advance, more like picked the night before depending on how I felt and what I estimated my energy and ‘can-be-bothered’-levels were like. Moreover, some of 2020’s large number of outfits is more to do with the fact that I bothered to document them properly. My lolita skirts, particularly Fairytale Library, Winter Spices, Double Braid Tartan and Sailor Tiered, have been part of my regular work-wear, which technically means that however basic and uninspired the outfits may have been, they have been worn - simply not photographed. If those were to be included, some of those numbers may have looked slightly different. Most of those office looks would likely be labelled classic, skewing 2019’s stats closer to the ratios of 2020. In other words, whilst the overarching trends are similar between 2020 and 2019, the actual ratios differ slightly, most likely due to occasion influencing my coord choices and what I considered to be a coord in 2019 influencing what was counted to begin with.

But if 2019 showed a similar trend to what we’ve seen in the second half of 2020, then comparing the two halves of 2020 simply prove that this was the trajectory that was meant to happen all along. The slight differences in actual numbers are likely due to the first half still including just over two months of non-lockdown outfits, as well as the drive to do more specific looks that characterised the early lockdown days before being able to dress up however I wanted lost the novelty element. I guess this is as clear a representation of my style as we’ll get without going into the minutia of things like sweet-classic and retro lolita, which I know that I do a lot of. And that’s all that can be said about this.

MAIN PIECE TYPE

I am really pleased with the steady rise in ouji. Whilst it’s highly unlikely that this will ever become more than equivalent to my OP coords, it is a style that I do want to explore and expand. Similarly to skirts, ouji shorts have the magical ability of being incredibly easy to wear super casually and almost blend in or quite elaborate and definitely not mainstream fashion. Having said this, my particular direction for ouji fashion is leaning more OTT by virtue of leaning more towards the historical, which is why I doubt that I will ever get to the stage where I’d wear ouji as often as I wear skirts. Though life may yet prove me wrong. Everything else is as you’d expect it to be for someone wearing this fashion as often as I do and having as many pieces as I do.

This includes wardrobe composition. In the first half of 2020 the coords worn vs wardrobe composition were a tiny bit off each other - here they are almost a perfect mirror, a near identical graph bar one silly percent of a difference. There is something extremely satisfying in seeing those numbers align so well. It’s a sign that I am wearing what I own evenly, proportionately to how much I own and that no piece is getting neglected. I couldn’t have asked for a better sign that I’m achieving that goal well.

On the surface it looks as if I’ve had some shift in favour of JSKs this year in comparison to 2019. What we have to account for is that in the second half of 2019 I wore and documented more skirt coords by virtue of challenging myself to wear Winter Spices to work for five days in a row. Moreover, having worn lolita a far fewer number of times in 2019 than in 2020, my re-wearing two of my OPs several times meant losing out on an opportunity to wear a JSK instead. This year I have definitely worn JSKs more because I didn’t have to decide between what was office-appropriate. As such, I circulated through all of my main pieces a lot more consistently than I would have done last year, which included not wearing my skirts as often as I did, even if in 2019 I didn’t document every single time I did so. If I wore any of my lolita pieces in 2020, it got photographed and then put back at the bottom of my ‘last worn’ spreadsheet to await its turn, filling the time in between with non-lolita clothes.

A fact that is far clearer when comparing the two halves of this year side by side. Even with the non-lockdown first quarter of 2020 the overarching trend is that of circulating through my clothes evenly. Which goes back to wardrobe composition that dictates what will get worn more. The tiny increase in ouji outfits is primarily thanks to those Dangerous Nude Gobelin bloomers, with a bit of help from the one outfit using jeans (though honestly, I think next time I’ll use leggings instead). That is the only notable difference here.

COLOUR

You know, I did not expect to be surprised by any of the findings of this post - yet I am by this one. I did not expect the other colours to overtake every single other category at all, let alone by such a significant margin. Again, had I been able to commit the tricolour coords to any of their composite colours, this may have been different, but as that’s not the case, those other colours really crept up on me. Of course, I have noticed myself wearing a lot more brown and pink this year, I know that I’ve consciously been expanding my wardrobe with more greens and added some lavender… However, when tracking my coords I’ve been looking at those colours separately, not together as a category of ‘other’. That way it was easy to overlook things, after all 8 green coords, 5 black ones, 5 pink, 4 brown, 1 lavender and 1 gold don’t feel like enough to beat 20 red or 20 blue ones. Not until you add them up and then let a spreadsheet convert that into percentages for you.

My wardrobe composition is also something that would’ve blinded me to this discovery of what my coords were like colour-wise in the last six months. Once more we are dealing with the difference that there is no tricolour category for my wardrobe’s individual pieces, though my collection of other colours is notable and holds its own well. Having said this, it’s worth clarifying that my wardrobe composition only deals with the colour of the main piece, whereas the chart above looks at what was the dominant colour in a coordinate. Not only this justifies having a separate category for tricolour, but explains how there could be so many outfits labelled as ‘other’ when I don’t actually own that many pieces that aren’t red, white or blue. You can have a coord that uses, for example, a red or white main piece, but when all of the builder pieces are a much brighter pink or when the coord uses overlays like cardigans, hiding a big chunk of the main piece, it can skew what comes across as the dominant colour.

Whilst last year I was also more decisive in categorising coords (and did fewer actual tricolour coords), even ignoring that the shift is quite interesting. Last year my five Winter Spices outfits were enough to skew the ratio of red to blue outfits, although white ones were a particular favourite. This year not only I had an even number of red and blue outfits, with this half year’s coords being so dominated by other things, it came at a significant reduction of white looks. I’m not forgetting that the percentages are based off significantly different numbers, 27 vs 77, I think what pushed those white outfits to the fore in 2019 were lolita events. Don’t get me wrong, I love an all-white/ivory coord with pops of colour, they are very easy and look incredibly classy. Yet they’re not necessarily the most practical ones when wearing lolita to deal with daily life, even though all of my white/ivory pieces are machine washable and I’m not that prone to getting stains on my clothes. On a certain level I also think that as much as an all-white/ivory outfit stands out on the streets, the more colourful ones stand out even more. Events usually mean being in a group or with someone else, so the safety of numbers provides an emotional comfort, whereas in 2020 knowing that I’m not going anywhere and won’t have to interact with anyone encouraged me to explore being a colourful peacock within the comfort of my own home.

And it seems that comparing the two halves of 2020 to one another reflects that too. Although I wore white more in the first half of the year than in the second, the continuing prospect of staying inside encouraged trying out more colourful combinations, leaving the tried-and-tested whites for another time. The reds and the blues still seem to compete with each other, though they’ve kept to very similar percentages between the two halves of the year. The biggest shift is between having whites dominate the coord and playing with all those other colours that I have previously neglected. This will make observing how 2021 pans out incredibly fascinating. I wonder whether these two graphs are trying to tell me that having done lots of coords with reds, blues and whites in the past I was now on a kick of exploring all these other colours or whether this is a more permanent shift. Did I wear so many other colours because these are the previously unexplored areas in my tricolour wardrobe and I’m so keen on wearing new outfits every time? Or am I experimenting with things like colour to see whether my core style shifts or if the experimentation reassures me of my tricolour preference? Was what we’re seeing in these two pie charts an anomaly exacerbated by the highly unusual circumstances or is this the new norm for my style? *That* I am very excited to find out!

OCCASION

If anyone expected anything else here, then you must live in an alternative universe. As happy as I am to see that between filming, virtual meetups and the odd other thing there is enough to make pretty much a third, there’s no going around the fact that 2020 was all about dressing up with nowhere to go and staying at home. I probably shouldn’t complain as it’s precisely the staying at home that allowed me to wear lolita so often, but as I said already, I’d trade that in a heartbeat for a safe world that allowed meetups and being frilly with other people in person.

Just look how glorious and varied life was back in 2019! The ‘other’ coords mostly meant me going out places on my own. What this means is that whilst lockdown enabled me to wear lolita a lot more often, lolita fashion is my style of choice. Whether I’m going to a meetup or on a solo cinema trip, I was wearing lolita regularly. Had the pandemic not happened, I reckon that I would’ve been able to sustain wearing and documenting at least one coord a week for the whole year, including for some stay at home action, which would still be very respectable. Although that might have ended up being classed more as ‘filming’ coords rather than the typical’ stay at home’ ones, since with the outside world being an option in 2019 I didn’t have as many opportunities to film. When faced with a ‘rest or film’ or a ‘meetup or film’ choice, filming will lose almost every time. Although it will be interesting whether something from my current filming habits will stick in a post-pandemic world. I have learnt a lot just over the last few months, some of which could undoubtedly help in continuing to keep up with my YouTube channel. We won’t know until we get there.

For now, 2020 is a picture of staying at home. Again, the slightly higher percentage of ‘other’ coords is due to the first 2-and-a-bit months when the world was open, although I am pleased to see that even in the first half of the year my filming coords have held strongly on their own. Almost all of them were the Around Your Wardrobe in 30 Coords challenge coords, that turned out to be too comfy to take off afterwards, but still. Yet for the foreseeable future we are living in a world dominated by wearing lolita as means to keep my spirits up whilst at home. My work has claimed that we’ll carry on working from home until at least April, so could this time next year the ratios look different again? I don’t want to cling too much to a hope like this - certainly the first half of 2021 will resemble these charts very closely.

SUMMARY

This year has been a wild ride for us all and we’ve all coped with it as best as we could. Whilst analysing what I wore in this level of detail may seem silly, I’m actually really glad to have this insight. In non-pandemic circumstances it probably would’ve taken me at least another year, maybe two, to gain this level of insight into my own style. The unusual circumstances of 2020 have shown me not only how deeply lolita fashion became rooted in my identity and how much of a coping mechanism it is for me, but also what my style and preferences are. It has been fascinating to see that whilst my go-to look is classic, that I’m not as set on tricolour as I may have perceived myself to be. And whilst obviously this year forced me to wear lolita without any reason, seeing my style expand and grow to incorporate so many more casual looks, as well as grow into ouji, feels exciting, like I have so many more options at my disposal. There genuinely have been plenty of outfit ideas that I opted not to wear this year, as I felt they’d be better for actual meetups. At times when I feel like I’ve nothing to wear, it’s good to revisit those, see everything that I’ve already done and how many more unexplored ideas I still have, it stops me from dipping into another impulse purchase.

To everyone who kept reading all the way to the end - thank you ever so much. You are amazing and your support means the world. And as this is going to be the last post of 2020, I hope that you will be able to see this year off in style, feeling good about yourself and actually ready to tackle a bit more of what we’ve had at the beginning of 2021. Stay safe and take care!