My Growth in Lolita Fashion

In line with spring, this month’s Bibliotheca theme is growth. Recently that’s something that I’ve been doing a fair deal of, both on a personal level and within lolita fashion. This post isn’t going to be groundbreaking, just a couple of reflections on how my style and attitudes have been changing recently from what they used to be.

What Kind of Sweet

The biggest growth, which I was hoping to pinpoint through my wardrobe overhaul and somehow managed to nail down before that happened, was working out what kind of sweet lolita I like on myself best. For a while I’ve been struggling to discern if I’m falling out of love with sweet altogether (couldn’t be, I still love Diner Doll unconditionally) or with the individual dresses in my possession (Crystal Dream Carnival still had be conflicted, but more on that later). Turns out that the sweet that I like the most and that I want to focus my efforts on is the kitschy, vintage-inspired one, mostly with food-based prints and usually in primary colours, though I’m not opposed to pastels if they work with the print. Hence my relatively recent obsession with Meta’s Vintage Fruit, hence my holding out for The Black Ribbon’s upcoming konbini print, hence my falling out of love with Fantasy Theater (which I’m in the process of selling, the auction is ending within just a few hours, if you’re interested). Finally figuring this out has lifted a massive weight off my shoulders, I can now look at my wardrobe with that little bit more clarity and let go of things slightly more easily, as well as look forward to seeing my collection take that shape and be excited about that.

I hope that this will be mine sometime in the not too distant future, but I also know that I've gotten way too hung up on the idea of wearing this in summer and it may simply not happen like that.
Image from Lolibrary.org

No Longer Not a Pink Lolita

If you fancy a trip down the rabbit hole that is this blog, then you will stumble across a post where I was talking about why I’m not into pink in lolita. Years later that same post served as a springboard to my discussing how lolita fashion was one of the things that helped me overcome a lot of internalised misogyny. And now, in 2022, I can confidently say that I’ve grown from being actively against pink on myself to actively being all for pink on myself. I may only own one pink main piece (and it’s a very light shade at that), but I’ve worn plenty of pink outfits with the various pink builder items that I own. Pink doesn’t scare me in sweet, it doesn’t scare me in classic, it doesn’t scare me in my looks outside of lolita either (where it’s actually a bit more prominent). If that’s not growth, then I really don’t know what is.

One of the pinkest coords that I've worn - and definitely one that I still like a lot!

Cool with Casual…

Back when I first got serious about lolita fashion, it was my fancy, going out-out clothing. Through the years lolita has grown to be a much bigger part of my style overall, first by influencing me to stop wearing trousers (excluding ouji), then by embracing it more and more as time went on. I’m certainly not a daily lolita right now, but I wear it regularly enough to consider myself a bit of a lifestyler. With that comes the acceptance that lolita can be both for special occasions and for daily activities. I’ve attended a wedding in lolita, as well as baked and cooked. There are lolita coords for special occasions and there are ones for lounging around in or for throwing your rubbish out in. From one extreme to the other, I’ve gone through the whole scale, which involved recognising, accepting, and embracing casual lolita as a thing that I do. If you’d have told me that back in, say, 2016 I wouldn’t have believed you.

This is the sort of coord that back at the beginning of my journey with the fashion I never envisioned myself wearing, let alone loving as much as I do.

… and Cool with Collecting

Don’t get me wrong, I still firmly believe that fashion and clothes are to be worn. This is my primary reason for keeping some clothes and parting with others. But recently (very recently even) I’ve remembered the various occasions when people would hold on to clothing for sentimental reasons, my Mum’s wedding dress being the prime example (fyi, she still fits it, good thirty years later, even better than she did then - why didn’t you pass me this gene, Mum?). As Crystal Dream Carnival kept nagging at me this way and that, with reason telling me to sell it and heart wanting to keep it, I remembered that at the end of the day… it’s my dress. I bought it. I can do whatever I want with it - which includes keeping it and not wearing it if that is my choice. Of course, I would prefer to see it worn plenty of times, but right now my preferences for cuts and my current style drift do not favour it. Yet since it’s just one dress and I’m not planning to start buying pieces as if they were museum items, it’s ok to keep it as a collector’s dress almost. If I ever do want to wear it, then I will. But if the thought of selling it is too much to bear and if I know that hunting it down again would cost me way more than what I paid for it, then I am ok with holding onto it. If that changes down the line, then so be it, future growth is inevitable. This is now and I am happy with that decision now.

She is so extra and I've accepted that she will make fewer appearances going forward. Doesn't mean that I love her any less.
Image from Lolibrary.org

No doubt there have been other instances of my growing within this fashion, from as significant as finding my style and confidence within lolita to more individual ones like working out what cuts I like on myself and focusing on those. These four are the most recent ones and ones that I have been wanting to somehow talk about on this blog, yet haven’t found the right angle for them. So big thank you to Bibliotheca for the prompt that allowed me to shove all of those loose thoughts into one bag and share them with you. If you aren’t signed up to the Bibliotheca newsletter, then I highly recommend that you do. Once it’s out, you will see not only the other posts for this month’s prompt, but a roundup of what the Bibliotheca bloggers have been discussing on their blogs overall over the month of April.