Reflecting on My Wardrobe Once Again

It will be almost two years since I last did a Big Load of Thinking about my lolita wardrobe and style more generally. And I mean that literally given how I broke down my classic style into a whole separate blog post. Yet here I am, once again finding myself at a point where new information and personal growth are challenging what I thought I knew about myself – and this time all because of generative AI technology.

Photo by Anastasia Kolchina on Pexels.com.

Determining Your Season

My friend told me how they used ChatGPT to establish what season they are. The Internet is once again obsessed with figuring this out and people out there charge hefty money for the service of throwing your style upside down – but ChatGPT can do that for you for free! Although I just tested the thing with a different AI chat and that one was quicker to say that this method isn’t foolproof and you may still want to consult a professional, but at least it ended up with roughly the same results. For those curious, the method is simple: take a selfie with no makeup and in natural light, then use any colour picking tool to extract the HEX codes for your eyes, lips, cheeks, skin, and hair, before asking your AI chat of choice to determine your season.

Thank you, ChatGPT, for providing this service.

Whether you use this method or shell out on a professional to analyse you, the vast majority of people end up finding out that nearly everything they own is completely the wrong colours for them, which inevitably leads to at least a bit of an identity crisis. The same happened with me. Both ChatGPT and the Ecosia AI Chat established me as a Soft Autumn, which is best suited to muted shades with warmer undertones. Yup, no true red/white/blue tricolour for me! Though at least my recent kick of getting greens, as well as embracing pinks more, has been a good move if I were to follow this to the letter.

Oh No, but That’s Not What I Wear!

The important thing to establish here is that just because you are a whatever season, it doesn’t mean that you absolutely aren’t allowed to wear other colours that make you happy. First of all, you absolutely can and should wear whatever you want, your body is your temple, adorn it however pleases you as its deity. And secondly – the seasons theory is there to suggest colours that highlight your natural colouring in the most complimentary way. Like any fashion rules, these aren’t set in stone and you can still incorporate other colours successfully by either ‘compensating’ for whatever has been washed out of you with makeup or by employing those other colours more strategically (more on that later).

The initial response may be something like this.
Picture taken from Amazon.

With what you are seeing of my style here, and given that I am very happy with where my wardrobe is right now, it is no wonder that this discovery has me questioning where I am. Fashion is never still and even those with very distinct, clearly defined styles still experience fluctuations within them. Mine happen to be of the larger variety and right now are centred on colours. Realising what colours might suit me most is something that I will be taking more into my non-lolita style (though even in that area there has been some resistance), but lolita is not immune to it. So here I am, thinking about how to use this newly acquired information to my advantage and make the most of it in lolita too.

What Matches That Currently?

Wanting to start with the positive, I’m not starting entirely from scratch. There are things already in my wardrobe that fit that season, a fair few actually, including some recent additions and favourites. Once I had my season, my search moved to Pinterest and this particular breakdown proved the most helpful to me due to how detailed it is:

The Internet swooping in to help with a whole bunch of similar breakdowns.
Image taken from Pinterest.

Green tea, rose, cornflower, burgundy, brick, spring, midnight, mocha, and bone – these are all colours that I have at least something in. And even if not in that exact shade, like the case may be with neutrals, then certainly something that still fits the bill of a softer, more muted shade of a colour with warmer undertones (specifically my many shades of ivory). Some of these include my favourite items, and if I were to go through my main pieces only, then out of the 54 that I currently own, 24 fit into the soft autumn colour palette, with a good balance between JSKs, skirts, and OPs (the ratio being 11:8:5). I’m not going to bother to count things like blouses etc. – even with just these it’s clear that I could easily keep my current lolita style, with its mix of sweet, classic, and retro elements.

I probably could have squeezed in one or two more reds that are closer to the brick shade, but I'll be honest, I found identifying the budgundy shades easier than deciding which is brick red vs true red vs some other red.

What About the Things that Don’t?

I already hinted earlier that not all is lost. It’s not like I have to get rid of everything else – mainly because I don’t have to do anything, remember, these things are just guidelines. But also because it is possible to wear colours that aren’t within your season without getting yourself washed out. The suggestions given to me by ChatGPT included stuff like not wearing those colours too close to your face (so skirts are a-okay), creating a barrier between tat and your face that is within your colour palette (AI suggested a scarf, but a big bow at the neck or a collar is more lolita), using that colour as an accent in an outfit that’s otherwise all your season or just a neutral (my trusty all-ivory-with-a-pop-of-colour formula), or just straight up makeup magic. It’s not like I’m going to get rid of my Dumb Airline Dress just because some colour theory says it doesn’t suit me when it brings me insane amounts of joy and I just bloody love wearing it.

Oh look, it's Totally Not My Colours in a coord that I bloody loved and still love looking at!

On top of this, I think that colour theory and seasons are great for determining one’s everyday wardrobe. Their point is to simplify our decision making processes by creating a wardrobe where everything will look good on us with the least amount of effort necessary (not unlike a capsule wardrobe, just with a different focus). The various points related to my newly discovered soft autumn-ess will be taken on board for that. But even though I wear lolita frequently, it is by no means my daily style (and is certainly less so now than it was at the height of the pandemic and working from home). And I feel that this is a sentiment that many others would share. Putting together a lolita coord is already such a labour and energy intensive process that going the extra few steps to adjust things to make us look our best isn’t that much at all. We’re already in the mindset of being willing to do that with how obsessively we can get tweaking to get a coord just right. Sure, for some folk out there knowing their season might be the guidance and direction they need to cull their wardrobe or to curate it in a way that brings out their best through colours. But I imagine those folks will be in the minority. Wearing something as loud as lolita is pointless if it isn’t making you happy and if what makes you happy are the brightest, sweetest pastels, even though these are not ‘your colours’, then ignore the theories and wear the pastels.

But Maybe A Tweak or Two…

That being said, I don’t plan on ignoring this discovery entirely when it comes to lolita and how I dress within that realm of my style. Pinterest makes it hard to look for direct inspiration in applying this to lolita fashion, given that all of the guides and suggestions are created with mainstream styles in mind. But since we are talking about something as basic and universal as colours, there are some things that I can surmise on my own.

1. It’s Time to Get More Browns

My back and forth with whether I should add more brown into my wardrobe has been going on for years. Whilst that was mostly relating to more brown main pieces, knowing that my colour season leans into autumn, I think it makes the most sense for me to get a few more builder and accent pieces in brown. Especially now that knowing this has solved my issue of which brown to get because the cool ones and the brown ones are so very different. Right now I’m thinking maybe one or two more blouses, a belt, as well as some more bronze-y jewellery so that I am not constantly relying on the same few things.

This very much feels like something that I'll focus my search on.
Photo from SonDeFlor.com.

2. Pink is Here to Stay

In lolita my forays into pink tend to utilise it as a secondary or accent colour. Unlike my non-lolita wardrobe, where I own and frequently wear pink as the main one. Although I am still as picky as I’ve always been, it is a good time to maybe introduce more pink through my main pieces. I’m mainly thinking of a skirt, but one more JSK that wouldn’t be limited by the season couldn’t hurt. That being said, whilst I have a whole bunch of pink brooches, my necklaces are lacking in those, so maybe I should look for something too.

I would fully swap my black Snow Dot skirt for the pink one, now that my eyes have been opened.
Photo from Lolibrary.

3. Rethink Some Colours

For now I’m not committing to acting out on anything, only to have a Real Good Think about some of them. Over the years I’ve had pretty much every colour imaginable in my wardrobe, some with more ease than others. Whilst I have enjoyed being able to wear yellow, I’ve been wondering about getting rid of it anyway, so this may very well prove to be the catalyst for that change. But in a more dramatic turn of events, stark white is also on the chopping block. It’s unlikely that I’d get rid of every single true white thing in favour of an all-ivory base collection, but it may very well lead me to getting rid of a few things – and we all know that every little helps in lolita.

Another coord that's absolutely not a Soft Autumn colour palette - but whilst Diner Doll stays, the fate of this cardigan and these socks is a little bit less certain.

In Conclusion

Finding out my season through ChatGPT was a fun exercise that I’d still recommend to people curious about these things. Everything that’s suggested for Soft Autumn people is going to get considered in the context of my non-lolita wardrobe first and lolita second – especially as it helped me put names to things that I was already gravitating towards. But lolita is my fun fashion, my most out-there fashion, and I don’t wear it to things like work that often. Not enough to warrant that level of overhaul, anyway. These ideas will still likely get implemented, especially into my classic wardrobe, which in itself is a lot closer to that season anyway than the sweet. But bar a few smaller additions or changes, at least right now, I won’t be doing any more major changes. If not for any other reason than because I simply can’t imagine myself parting with some of these pieces and still love myself in them.