Lolita Dresses as Songs

Way back when, when I was doing the 10 Day Lolita Challenge, I talked about how music is a big inspiration throughout my life, including for fashion. I enjoy getting ready with a playlist that matches the tone of my outfit, I have put together coords inspired by songs… and now comes the silly content of “If lolita dresses were songs, which songs would they be?”. Because not everything has to be that serious!

Angelic Pretty’s Holy Lantern

Photo from Lolibrary.org

This is the one that sparked the idea for the entire post. I love me a bit of Little Mix, girl power and all that - but their song “Black Magic” really gives me those “We’re all cute and girly, but look, we can be gOfF too”. Just like Angelic Pretty’s Holy Lantern. Both are still just that little bit too cutesy to be fully dark or gothy or witchy, though you certainly can do those things with them. Or you can just accept them at face value as the cutesy spoop that they are rather than the proper dark Halloween things that real goths do all year round.

BtSSB’s Kumya’s Sweet Ice Cream

Photo from Lolibrary.org

Ok, I get that this is very tentative, but hear me out. I’m not talking about the lyrics (for once let’s please ignore the lyrics). But The Baseballs’ cover with this 50s rock’n’roll twist has such a happy retro feel to it that it really demands a sweets print. With the video to this song being partially set on the beach, that requires that the sweets in question be ice-cream in particular. Again, let’s ignore the lyrics - and now you can hopefully see the fantasy of running a 50s style ice-cream parlour where Kumya’s Sweet Ice Cream is the staff uniform and this song playing.

Lady Sloth’s My Coffee Time

Photo from Lolibrary.org

A bit too much on the nose? But how could it be anything else? It’s a coffee print, an amazing one at that, it needs an adequately cosy and heartwarming coffee song to go with it. And Dandy Wellington’s “Pie, Coffee and You” is just the thing. I was never massively into this print on the basis of my hating the taste of coffee, but if I got a chance to style it at least once you bet that I’d do something suitably retro and kitschy to match!

Violet Fane’s Otome Nostalgia

Photo from Lolibrary.org

Whilst you could pick pretty much any city pop song and it would go really well, Yamashita Tatsurou is a classic of the genre. This isn’t necessarily my favourite song of his and the mermaid theme may seem odd considering how the print has precisely zero mermaids in it. What clicks between the two for me is the nostalgic and romantic tone of the song (reminiscing about a love that was never meant to be), which sits well with the vintage shoujo manga art style. The happy tone of the song itself reflects the bright colours of the print, whilst the very dated (by contemporary ear’s standard) style of pop just fits the vintage look to this print. They just go together. But if you would rather pick a different Yamashita Tatsurou song or even a different city pop song, I wouldn’t be mad at you either.

Aaaand last but certainly not least is…

Meta’s Airline JSK

Photo from Lolibrary.org

There is only one song that this could be. Ok, maybe not just one, I would accept O-Zone’s “Dragostea Din Tei” because of how ridiculous and yet super happy both of those are. But “Me and the Sky” from the musical “Come From Away” feels like the backstory to this dress. Being told that you can’t do something and then proudly showing the world that actually, yes you can and then living your best life - that is what this dress is all about to me!

Of course, there are some obvious candidates here, the ones that were actually inspired by pieces of music, such as Haenuli’s Angel of Music which is based on The Phantom of the Opera. In this post I aimed to keep my selection to the slightly less obvious, to match dresses and songs based on auras or vibes. Do you feel like certain dresses give off the energy of certain songs? Or maybe the other way around, some songs feel like they should match a particular dress? I love discovering new music, so please share your ideas and recommendations in the comments, I promise to give them all a listen!