The New Annual Lolita Awards

Don’t get too excited - that’s not a thing. Yet. Inspired by Bake Off: The Professionals finale, I decided to have some fun imagining what that could entail.

The Releases Categories

Since this is fashion, there could be no lolita award ceremony without categories for releases from a given year. The temptation is to create categories for Japanese, Chinese and Western indie brands, but that doesn’t seem fair, particularly for all the non-Japanese brands. There could be literal hundreds of nominations in the Chinese brands category alone, whereas lumping all non-Chinese and non-Japanese indie brands into one bag would mean that we could see something like Lief, Lady Sloth and DollBe compete against each other when they all do different things. So just like film or music awards split themselves further by gender, let’s split these further by substyle to make things fairer. As such I think we’d see the following categories:

• Best Sweet Release from a Japanese Brand
• Best Sweet Release from a Chinese Brand
• Best Sweet Release from Any Other Brand
  
  
• Best Classic Release from a Japanese Brand
• Best Classic Release from a Chinese Brand
• Best Classic Release from Any Other Brand
  
  
• Best Gothic Release from a Japanese Brand
• Best Gothic Release from a Chinese Brand
• Best Gothic Release from Any Other Brand

And to keep these fair, we should probably have an international panel of experts in each of these substyles, to judge the nominations accordingly and ensure that the nominees are as non-contentious as possible. I fully anticipate something a bit too cutesy slipping into the gothic or classic category unless there is expert vetting in place.

The Photoshoot Categories

It’s not fashion unless some sort of photography is involved. This is one where we could have a lot of fun, depending on whether we stick to creative categories only or include the pragmatic one. Most Accurate Stock Picture category anyone? That could get contentious and too tedious, though I’m kind of reluctant on flipping it into the negative, since award ceremonies should celebrate the achievements and not focus on the blunders. Still, we could have something like Most Unique Product Promotional Photoshoot and Most Memorable Photograph. Maybe even Best Runway Fashion Show could get squeezed in here?

Then, of course, there’s room to open this up into the people categories, e.g. Best Photoshoot Director, Best Photographer and Best Model. There would have to be some rules put in place to ensure that Chinese brands don’t entirely decimate the competition, maybe a limit on how many entries per country of origin were allowed. Nonetheless, this could get very fun and maybe it would encourage people to be even more creative with their photos.

The Newcomer Categories

The reason why this fashion keeps thriving is thanks to the constant influx of new people and ideas. Having a separate category that recognises that would enable to shine some spotlight on those up-and-coming folks that help our fashion grow. And this could really be quite broad, I guess probably depending on the budget of our awards.

• Best New Brand
• Best New Accessory (could be either in terms of originality or popularity)
• Best Newcomer Designer (maybe with the caveat of where appropriate, as the turnaround for designers doesn’t seem to be that high)
• Best Newcomer Model
• Best New Trend in the Fashion
• Best New Bit of Content (while ‘the golden era’ of lolita skits and music videos is kind of over, TikTok could potentially get quite influential here - we’re basically looking for the next iconic thing after Mc Melody Doll)

Part of me feels like this isn’t that much, but at the same time it really is given that there are only so many new things happening within our niche fashion. I’m modelling these awards mostly after stuff like the Grammys, which have a buttload of categories, but it’s probably best not to get too carried away here.

The Community Categories

Last but not least, this fashion would die out long ago were it not for the dedicated community that keeps it going. Because a fashion without people wearing it is well and truly dead. Having some awards to recognise that would hopefully help foster a community spirit and bring us closer together.

• Best International Lolita Event
• Content Creator of the Year (yes, it could be just Best Content Creator, but part of me is hesitant and feels like that title could get into people’s heads)
• Most Active Lolibrarian
• Best Collaboration Project
• Best Community Initiative

Yes, this last set of categories would definitely rely heavily on people within the community doing a lot of nominating and suggesting things. But one lot of nomination categories to three lots of expert panel ones feels pretty balanced to me. And if the popularity vote could skew things too much, there’s always the Eurovision semi-finals way of splitting things between the jury vote and the public vote.

And best of all…

… think of the red carpet possibilities! Anyone and everyone invited would no doubt bring their A-game to the ceremony. Met Gala wishes it were this fancy!

What other lolita awards and/or categories would you like to see? This is all hypothetical stuff, so be as wild as you wish with your ideas. Right now the best chance this stands of actually happening is if someone does it for their own community for a meetup or something.