AYWi30C #24 - Least Worn Main Piece

As of today I have two main pieces that would count as least worn, since both of them have only been worn once: L’Esprit de la Noblesse’s La Bibliotheque JSK and BtSSB’s Soiree of the Beginning of My Memories JSK. In the end I went with the former for two reasons. Firstly, the BtSSB dress could likely end up being used for the next prompt, which is “newest wardrobe addition” (unless the actual most recent purchase arrives with enough time for me to do something). And secondly, La Bibliotheque is strictly speaking the less worn dress since I’ve only worn it for all of 20 minutes tops for a photo. Soiree of the Beginning of My Memories got a full meetup worth of wear, which is good several hours, so it (narrowly) escapes the fate of being the least worn main piece.

| L'Esprit de la Noblesse La Bibliotheque JSK | Bodyline L581 blouse | Baroque Repose of Queen tights | offbrand shoes, hair pieces and necklace | Enchanted Dream Wear necklace | Le Petit Four Emerald Palace ring | handmade ring and chain of office | Tiny Passerine Creations The Duchess's Tea earrings |

Once the main piece was established, the coord just happened. Pretty literally too, since in my head I only knew the vibe I wanted and picked a blouse - everything else was decided literally on the day. As such this dress can claim another superlative title: the most time it’s taken me to get ready in a coord. In all fairness, given that these photos were taken with the aid of some artificial light around the time I’d normally be getting ready to wind down for the evening, I’m just grateful that they came out as well as they did.

I do keep thinking whether to order this blouse in other colours, Bodyline really did a solid job with this one.

The lace may not be super fancy, but it's decent enough, I've seen worse on bridal gowns priced at three figures and claiming to be luxury!

As is often the case, this isn’t the ideal version of this coordinate, merely the one that I could do now. My preference would be to do this with the beige Le Nuage blouse, also from L’Esprit de la Noblesse, but alas, it hasn’t even been shipped yet. So I went with the next best choice, which is this Bodyline blouse. And it’s not a bad second choice, it has the right shape and the right kind of sleeve for what I was hoping to achieve, which is an Italian renaissance fashion meets the pre-raphaelites sort of look. It’s merely a brighter white that I would’ve preferred. It still works and the coord is still great, it’s just that something more subdued like an ivory would’ve complimented the jewel tones of the dress nicer. But it’s no loss, as it gives me the perfect excuse to wear this look again.

The look was there, though sadly, the comfort was absent. At least I wasn't going anywhere...

The choice of blouse also dictated that I select one of my brighter pairs of legwear. The choice was between these Baroque tights and Angelic Pretty Lovely Ribbon OTKs, and what swayed me in favour of the tights was that the pattern was much more elaborate. The gold lace-up design of the OTKs may have been more in line with historical stockings, particularly as the clearly Rococo design to the chairs on the tights makes for a very anachronistic look - but when have I ever said “no” to a bit of anachronism if it made the look objectively nicer? Because it is a really elaborate coord and the shoes were already simple enough, I didn’t need legwear to be simple too.

For everyone who ever despaired about not being able to find emerald green shoes, I can't recommend these enough. I got them from AliExpress and in the Before Days even managed a few comfortable meet commuting walks in them.

Speaking of shoes, they are indeed on the less decorative side. However, it’s not as if renaissance shoes were that much more elaborate, particularly as women’s shoes spent more time hidden under dresses. These are a gorgeous shade of green, the velvet is enough of a luxurious fabric to not make the shoes feel too simple, and the small heel makes for a more flattering silhouette when worn. There’s also the pearl charm by the buckle, which you can juuust about make out on the left there.

Now that I think about it, this is a lot of necklaces, not all of which were used as such.

The one thing I am probably the most proud of with this coordinate are accessories. And not even the pieces themselves necessarily, but how I was able to think outside the box on the day. Plenty of elements here were used in different ways than originally intended to make up for the lacks in my accessory collection without sacrificing on the final effect.

Why buy a pearl headdress when you can use all the other pearl bits you already own?

Starting with the hair pieces - which are not hair pieces at all! Instead we have a necklace, a detachable pearl trim that came with a blouse, a pair of earrings and a broken belt. There was also a third earring that I lost somewhere when getting ready and haven’t found yet - wish me luck in finding it. Whilst I have been known to put necklaces on my head in lieu of proper hair accessories, this is the most things in my hair that were never intended to be worn in hair. Laid out flat they make only the barest bit of sense and since this coord included the most elaborate hairstyle I’ve done, well, ever, in my life, I’ll have to talk about it separately further down. It deserves it - and then you’ll see how all of that actually sat when worn.

It's too late to realise that I may have found my dream earrings, isn't it?

These earrings only made it to me earlier that week. I have a whole review of my Tiny Passerine Creations order, which will come round later this month (spoiler alert: it’s very positive), so all I’ll say here is that it’s the earrings that made me include more reds in the coord overall. Had they not arrived, I would’ve gone either with some pearl earrings or with my sparkly emerald green ones (even though their cut is a touch too modern for this look). Oh, I do bitterly regret not ordering these earrings in green too, but that’s just something I’ll have to live with.

These two look so lovely together.

Similarly, I also regret not getting the emerald green necklace from Tiny Passerine Creations, because that would’ve been perfect. But since I was dumb when placing that order, distracted by what I bought from Puvithel, I had to make do with something else. And it’s not that this necklace is bad - it’s just that the multiple strands of pearls push it towards being more modern rather than historical. Besides that it genuinely is perfect for this coord. I also couldn’t resist adding the cross necklace in an ode to how religion was an unquestioned part of life during renaissance in Europe. So much so that people would rather bicker over which kind of Christianity was better rather than whether Christianity even made sense at all in the first place. But who am I to judge, as an unchristened heathen who somehow managed 14 years in a Catholic country?

I'm actually really chuffed with this handmade ring and how well it fares against creations by people who are much better at making pretty jewellery, like Le Petit Four.

Initially my thoughts were circling round the smaller pearl rings I have from Primark and I’m not actually sure what the thought process was behind abandoning that idea. I think it crossed my mind that since my overall look was taking as much inspiration from the pre-raphaelites as it did from Italian renaissance, having lots of rings would be too gaudy and that it would’ve been better to simply have two large ones. And that’s precisely what I’ve done. Again, the green one leans much more rococo and baroque than renaissance, but meh, who cares, it’s lolita fashion anyway, not historical reenactment.

One day maybe I will alter this to have lobster clasps so that it can be a permanently multifuncctional item.

My other pride and joy of accessories: the chain of office. Except this time it never even touched my neck or shoulders - instead I’ve worn it as a belt. Since the earrings made me include more reds, I knew that this would’ve been the perfect accessory. Laziness and time made me abandon the idea of making a belt out of the leftover materials I have, especially since one of the links in this chain keeps coming undone. So two seconds with pliers to undo another link and reattach it elsewhere, and boom! A belt.

That floral border is genuinely one of my favourite elements of the whole print.

When you triumph so hard that you cry at how good a job you did. In all seriousness though, the fact that Fame has tears running down their cheeks is this post's Detail I Didn't See Until Now.

This coord genuinely came out so well that it made me both sad that I haven’t worn this dress more and glad that I had the excuse to do it. It probably would’ve happened at some point anyway. But because it’s my least worn main piece, it happened now - and now I know how much I love it. I was very reluctant to take it off. Although that could be because I spent more time getting ready into it and then spent about an hour total filming and taking photos, so I didn’t really have enough time to enjoy just vibing in it before I rushed to take the flatlay photos.

This blonde madam may be my next hair inspiration.

Whilst this one is clearly rich enough to afford being so very unimpressed with everything. Shoutout to the weird fish on the left.

The print on La Bibliotheque doesn’t cease to amaze me. I would love to one day see the original tapestry in person, ideally whilst wearing this dress myself (though probably in a much simpler coord). The sheer depth of detail, how every person has a uniquely shaped nose, how you can see the individual strokes making up the background greenery or hair strands - it’s magnificent. There is no shadow of a doubt that I would’ve literally kicked myself if I didn’t get this dress.

Between the rich shade of green and the metallic thread, this bodice is everything I want - in fashion and, in fact, in home decor.

Recently I saw someone suggest printing book covers that look like the old leatherbound ones for the extra aesthetic and were it not that measuring books and potentially designing the covers to have the right titles sounds like a lot of effort, I'd totally do it!

Literally the only thing I wanted to highlight here is this stunning shade of red. That's all, thank you for your attention.

We all know that lolita dresses are full of wonderful details, whether those be in print or structural. And for all the simplicity of the cut, La Bibliotheque is probably in the top five most intricate dress designs in my collection. (The other ones being Baroque’s Repose of Queen, AP’s Crystal Cream Carnival, Haenuli’s Whipped Cream Kitty and AP’s Flower Garden.) Which makes it pretty obvious why, sad though it may be, it ended up being the least worn dress. It only entered my possession in November 2020, with the world still gripped by a pandemic - where was I supposed to wear it? Yes, home and existing as a living being are no less worthy of celebrating, but that’s not enough of a motivation for OTT looks. Because there’s no doubt about the fact that this dress deserves to be celebrated through OTT looks.

Lolita problems are slapping on tonnes of blush and your camera ignoring almost all of it.

I’ve talked about pre-raphaelites being part of my inspiration and their influence was predominantly on my hair and makeup that day. Although it pains me to say that despite having genuinely a lot of blush on, my camera still had the audacity to say “Huh? What blush?”. It’s not until I was taking my makeup off later during the day that I remembered that my cheeks were pretty visibly orange - why couldn’t my camera pick up on that more? Especially since that was the most important part of the makeup too! The rest I kept simple, using a different cream blush instead of a lipstick to get a more natural look and focusing on getting volume in my eyelashes. I mean yeah, the selfies look lovely and natural - but they seriously underplay how much blush was involved, which upsets me.

Somewhat of a closeup of the front. If I could change one thing, it'd be to get rid of the fringe, but despite my best attempts, I couldn't style it into a no-fringe look without it looking too awkward.

And the back, featuring all the elements I couldn't see and therefore couldn't hide better.

Above you can see most of what the front of the hair looked like - that’s but part of the picture. When I say that this was the most elaborate hair arrangement I’ve ever done in my life, I’m not exaggerating. It may not necessarily be the most complex, although it certainly took me three attempts to get a four strand braid right following a YouTube tutorial (fyi, I love how they look and regret cutting my hair, even though it desperately needed it, because four strand braids on short hair are probably impossible). But between this, two regular braids, two bubble braids and plenty of pins to hold things in places, it’s a lot going on. In truth, I had fun doing something like this and will likely spend lots of time on Pinterest, trying to make more arrangements like it. They work beautifully with classic lolita, becoming intricate enough to replace hair accessory entirely, should you wish to do so.

When there is only one past outfit to feature, you know that this is truly my least worn main piece.
Coord is from December 2020.

It is truly regrettable that before this coord, La Bibliotheque was only worn once as part of #Frillmas2020. Even though I thoroughly enjoyed that outfit too, one can’t help but feel at least a bit guilty when gorgeous clothes like this JSK do not get the wear they deserve. Cue inevitable promises of doing better and prayers that this resolution doesn’t fail. Having said this, she is now in the top part of my Last Worn tracker, so it won’t be long before I will feel compelled to wear it. And now that I’ve done most of the work with the hair arrangement, which is what took me so long getting ready, maybe it will even be this very outfit that will get worn next? And if not, then at least something similar. This look really helped me realise how much I love the mashup between lolita and renaissance fashions.

Last but not least, the lookbook. I love it when the right music comes across my way quickly - finding the right track is often what takes the longest in the whole process (yes, even longer than this coord took to finish). Once the music is right, everything else falls into place a lot more easily. It’s just the way my brain works.