2nd Half of 2021 in Coords

Coming to you once 2021 has finally finished, here is a look at everything I’ve worn in the second half of the year with the usual breakdown of some of the most common themes.

COORDS

Every single coord from July to December.
Click to enlarge.

The second half of the year was actually on par with the first - 72 now compared to 73 then. And considering how some months were definitely more intense than others, this is not a bad average by any stretch of imagination. If this is the sort of record that I can expect to maintain (which could happen if I do well on my 2022 goals), then I would be very happy indeed. Or at least would not have any reasonable grounds to complain.

SUBSTYLE

Okay, gothic, I see you. Well, not really, I actually had to look to see how it made it to an entire 6% wedge, but then I realised that it is just 4 coords, which makes far more sense, I can see how this happened.

My wardrobe has had a few changes (ekhm, additions), and even though none have arrived as of yet, they will be affecting things ever so slightly. Or so I thought. The differences are truly negligible, so it seems that I wear some of my sweet pieces in more classic ways and some of my classic pieces in more sweet ways. Such is the curse of sweet-classic (I am still not on board with the term swassic, do not try to make me).

Somehow the second half of this year ended up taking away from the classic, in both darker and sweeter ways. Some of this may be to do with the coord challenges I did in October and December 2020, which often leaned more towards classic. I suspect that at least some of this may be down to my looking more towards other fashion styles for inspiration, which ended up in me leaning more into those than classic.

Even in the context of the whole year the switch is actually impressive. Mostly because if you had asked me, I wouldn’t have said that I noticed any difference. Even looking at the coord collages and comparing those I didn’t necessarily notice that shift - in fact, even looking at the collages now I’d still say that the first half of the year seems sweeter than the second one. Very odd, but it’s nice to finally write one of these posts and actually notice some changes.

MAIN PIECE TYPE

This is pretty much on par with what I expected to happen here. The addition of the F+F shorts has led to a slight increase in the ouji department, but it’s still not something that happens too much or that I feel in the mood for that often. Without my spreadsheet prompting me to wear something there is a chance that I wouldn’t have reached for them as much as I have, despite the comfort of wear.

As I already mentioned, my wardrobe has undergone some slight changes in the form of a couple of additions, which shifted the ratios ever so slightly. However, even though it seems as if I’m not wearing my OPs as much as I could, for example, this is down to the fact that all of my recent main piece additions are still in transit or on preorder. Based on what I physically have these two charts are much more closely aligned - but again, even now the difference is practically negligible.

Against the second half of 2020 this half looks a bit more evenly balanced. Despite there being more coords this time in 2020, in 2021 other main piece types have taken a bite out of the JSK dominance and stolen a bit more of the spotlight.

If anything, that seems to be the theme for 2021 - taking the spotlight off JSKs a tiny bit. Which is another thing I certainly wouldn’t have noticed or commented on, in my eyes everything still seems to be fairly evenly distributed going by the ‘when was it last worn’ spreadsheet, as well as in relation to what I own. Those coord challenges in 2020 must’ve really worked hard to prioritise meeting the prompts, which often naturally leads to favouring JSKs over other main piece types. But I am glad to see this more even shift, particularly as I plan on focusing any new wardrobe additions on skirts and OPs going forward.

COLOUR

Now this is the one area where I have been noticing changes. As I kept updating my tracker, the blues and the reds were fairly consistently being added, but those other colours weren’t going to be left out. Especially green soldiered on like a trooper, in a way I am almost proud of that section of my wardrobe working so hard? For extra funsies, here is the split of those ‘other’ colours.

Seeing this has also forced me to rethink tricolour as being ‘my thing’. I doubt that I will ever stop wearing or enjoying tricolour looks altogether, to some people I will likely remain associated with them, but will they be as common as they were in the past? Something tells me that they won’t. Enjoying all the colours that I have and playing with them was so much fun that I could not sacrifice that for the sake of any kind of colour branding myself.

Going back to the point about greens working so hard, it’s because they are literally working against my wardrobe. Remember that when I say ‘coords by colour’, I mean the most dominant colour of the outfit, not the colour of the main piece. So when the majority of the items I own are blue, white or red, yet I manage to have a significant number of green, mint or pink coordinates - that’s impressive. If these coords were sentient beings, I’d reward them with a medal for effort or something, honestly!

And see what I mean about tricolour slowly becoming an ‘old thing’ for me? After 2019 and the struggle of trying to categorise tricolour looks into one of their component colours, I added ‘tricolour’ as a separate thing in these posts in 2020. One year after that the decline of tricolour is really tangible. Little seems to break the dominance of blue, but those ‘other’ colours are really fighting to be seen. Mad respect.

And seeing this strong performance against the first half of 2021 just serves to prove the point that this was a wider trend this year. I’ve gone from 2 distinctly tricolour looks in the first half of the year to 1 in the second. Yes, those white/ivory coords stopped other colourful stuff from gaining too much of a lead in the latter half of 2021, but mostly at the cost of red. I do feel for the red section of my wardrobe: I genuinely and wholeheartedly love red, love wearing it, and love inserting it everywhere I can. It just so often falls victim of being an accent colour or my being picky as to what red things I like enough to get. Though maybe 2022 will see some change in that…

OCCASION

The second half of 2021 was an odd one. Things were possible, but not really. Meetups were happening, yet it seems that what we managed was all that we’ll get for now because things are volatile again. My video inspiration levels dropping were proportionately compensated by the other opportunities to dress up, like the excursions with my friend or the dates etc. When I did a more personal year in review thing and saw how much I have actually done, I realised that I wouldn’t mind if the above was the ratio of what things were like for me. Sure, I’d love to have more meetups and big events to attend, but being able to compensate for having fewer of those with other occasions to frill up balanced it out for me. So the second half of 2021 was odd because whilst it was a temporary return to a fraction of what was normal pre-2020, I was oddly content with even that fraction.

Seeing that against the second half of 2020 really drives home how much this sliver of the life I knew and enjoyed was needed too. Sure, maybe it means dressing up more in 2020 or doing more things like filming. But the truth is that was just a way of compensating for the lacks of other occasions and reasons to frill up, as well as a way of maintaining my identity during a very tumultuous time for us all. Lolita fashion and myself became inseparable over the course of 2020.

Meanwhile, the entire course of 2021 was a journey of discovering what else is there to me and to my life. It was progressively easing myself out of the social isolation and re-entering society not just in a literal sense (return to regular office work, more meetups, dating etc.), but also in the sense of self-discovery and those ‘this is me’ moments, finding other things that I can rely on when times are tough and allowing myself to explore other facets of my interests and personality. Lolita fashion may never stop being key to my identity - but it’s certainly not the sole crutch that I rely on, and seeing how the occasions for frills have shifted over the course of the year seem to support that too. Or at least this is the aspect that the graphs cannot show you.

SUMMARY

Favourite coords from each month of 2021 chronologically. Admittedly, some were hard to pick just one for, after all this is out of 145 documented looks in total!
Click to enlarge.

Before I sat down to write this post, I actually put together the above collage of my favourite coords from 2021. When I did them, they seemed somewhat unusual compared to what I would’ve expected myself to enjoy and even to wear. Yet with all of the above now freshly in mind, this list of favourites makes complete and total sense. This is the direction my wardrobe went in 2021, this is where my heart was - and I love it.

Having said this, although chances are that I will be going through even more changes in 2022 in terms of my style preferences and all, this will be the last post of this kind of analysis. Not because I’m not interested, but because I am making 2022 about prioritising my mental health and free time, which I would like to dedicate to other things too. Tracking all of these things is a lot of mental work, as is writing up of all the findings. So as much as I love playing with graphs and having these tangible numbers to refer to, I will not be able to meet my main goals if I am constantly chipping away at my spoons with little things like this. Don’t worry though, in the tracking year of 2021 I was also able to expand on my ‘most frequently worn’ list, and the writeup for that will come in soon. After all the usual new year content.