AYWi30C Bests and Faves

Two and a half years, thirty outfits, 1 hour 6 minutes and 7 seconds of lookbooks - and it is well and truly over. The Around Your Wardrobe in 30 Coordinates challenge has become a significant part of my life and online presence, so it deserves a proper acknowledgement and a wrap up. This post will share everything that seems of interest or value to me, and at the end I will leave a video of me reacting to all of those lookbooks. So let’s go down this little memory lane, shall we?

Every AYWi30C flatlay

The Stats

It wouldn’t be a summary post without going into some sort of stats thing. I love basic stats, I love turning them into graphs and having things categorised like this - it just appeals to me. But there’s more that I want to say in this post so I will keep this section straight to the point and will use the same template as I’ve used in my half year in review posts.

Substyle-wise we have classic just edging it to claim the title of the most often represented substyle, followed tightly on its heels by sweet, with gothic far, far behind. A very accurate representation of both my wardrobe and style, particularly as one of these coords I have personally labelled as sweet-classic (though for the purposes of this breakdown, it got lumped with the classic lot).

With colours, I went with the colour of the main piece rather than my usual most dominant colour of the outfit. It made things slightly easier and changed very little as blue absolutely dominated the challenge. It also dominates my wardrobe, so again, little wonder. It further goes to show that the challenge was an accurate representation of my wardrobe and style.

Similarly with the main piece types - dominated by JSKs, which is what my wardrobe is, followed by skirts, then OPs, and lastly the singular ouji coord. Granted, considering the creative nature of the challenge, it was always going to be JSKs over other types given the versatility and variety that they offer in terms of styling possibilities. Nonetheless, there was room for a few more skirt coords, for example, than what was featured.

The Farewells

Over the course of the challenge I have parted with a few pieces that were featured here. It’s great to know that some of these JSKs (as they were all JSKs) have been immortalised in both a detailed outfit post and a lookbook, a sort of last huzzah for them. Though having said this, since there were only three that got sold, I think it’s also fair to say that this very small turnaround shows good consistency of style, as well as that I do genuinely buy to keep.

Thank you for the time you spent in my wardrobe and I am glad that you became immortalised through this challenge.

The Faves

A good mother doesn’t have favourites, but no-one ever said that I am a good mother! Admittedly, it isn’t that easy to pick favourites and I do want to avoid going down the route of ranking them all, so let me do my top 5 outfits and top 5 lookbooks (since the two aren’t always the same). They aren’t necessarily in priority order, i.e. this isn’t to say that what’s at number 1 is the absolute favourite of the lot - merely that these are the 5 that I could hand on heart say were a favourite of some sort.

Top 5 coords

1. #24 Least worn main piece
2. #19 Around a particular top
3. #13 Inspired by a historical era
4. #3 Something OTT
5. #18 Something you love but haven’t worn yet

Is it weird that my trademark look hasn’t made it onto this top 5 list? It feels a little weird. Then again, it is my trademark look, it’s something you will see me in fairly regularly, whereas these are the ones that have stuck with me for one reason or another.

Top 5 lookbooks

1. #16 Break the rules
2. #28 From as many brands as possible
3. #13 Inspired by a historical era
4. #17 Something you like, but wouldn’t wear
5. #19 Around a particular top

To me my best lookbooks are the ones where I’ve had a crystal clear idea from the get-go. They’re also the ones that get a little bit more conceptual and become almost story-driven rather than pure lookbooks. This and where I have had exactly the right piece of background music. Understandably, as I learnt more and got better at editing, I also liked the results more, so the later ones won over the earlier ones. Nonetheless, the ones that I enjoy coming back to the most myself all share the right music, right ‘story’ and right shots coming together to create a cohesive video.

The Least Faves

Given the positivity above it really does feel like I’m a bad mother that I’m so quick to point out the parts I like the least. The fact is that we constantly learn and there are some choices that I wouldn’t make now. #4 A monochrome outfit is a prime example of that - I tried to stick to the principle of being as monochrome as possible, but whilst the coord was ok for what I could do at the time, I don’t particularly like it now, I think I let laziness get the better of me with the styling and the whole look comes across to me as a bit uninspired at best.

Then there are the outfits which I don’t have so much beef with, but which I simply would not wear outside of the challenge, such as the #6 Channel a lolita era or #14 Inspired by a fashion trend. Those are not my silhouettes or styles and it was fun to try them, but other coords make me feel a lot more confident and are a lot more me. And considering how gothic and ouji aren’t even my primary or secondary styles, it is very telling of how foreign those two coords don’t feel to me that none of the gothic looks ended up in this section. But once you know what works for you, then you know, there’s no point fighting your instinct.

The Highlights

A big part of doing this challenge in such a public form are the reactions. Every now and then someone will respond to something in a particular way that will feel like the highest possible form of praise.

1. Getting #22 Around some interesting legwear drawn by @grimyapeee. This was so unexpected and the finished piece is so beautiful that I am still not over that!
2. Victor Lockhart, whom I admire for the style icon that he is, commenting on my final look and making me feel very validated in my attempts at goth.
3. This may sound vain, but the fact that I was able to stick to the full shebang: a lookbook and a detailed post, and keep doing them one per month without fail is a big win! There were times when I felt uninspired or just wanted a break. But every time I found it in me to push past that and make sure that there are no gaps with this challenge. It deserves an acknowledgement.
4. Every time someone leaves a positive comment on my editing, my heart absolutely soars. I am a self-taught amateur, I do this for a hobby, so seeing positive responses to my various attempts at trying something new has been massively encouraging.

The Things Left Out

Considering how my wardrobe is currently at 50 main pieces (it was much closer to 30 back when I originally started), there was never a chance that every main piece I own would get featured. That is ok. However, there were some ideas that nearly made it into the challenge. So whilst I won’t attempt to do them now, I will run you through the most notable ones that almost happened before something else came along.

1. For the final prompt my most initial idea was to do a mermaid makeup and use Resailan’s Jewelry Box JSK to build a mermaid coord around. That idea may still happen at some point, but I feel like it does need tweaking and polishing a bit more before it happens.
2. For #29 To suit a particular hairstyle I’ve had two ideas noted down in my notebook of ideas: a feminine Rococo look (so more Marie Antoinette hime lolita style) and an Irish dancer one with the ringlet wig. In the end ouji won because it was more exciting, because by that point I had already done the Irish dancer coord and because I was still set on not reusing main pieces for the prompts.
3. As you may know, the #27 From a single brand had a poll to determine the coords. The choices were between Innocent World, Angelic Pretty and Meta and I had some very bare bones of those coords laid out way back when. You’ve obviously seen the IW one now, so here are what the other two could’ve looked like. Those are very crude flatlays mostly for my own benefit, but you still get the idea.
4. Incidentally, the follow up #28 From as many brands as possible initially started out as due to use AatP’s Sheherazade and going for a more classic coord. Meta’s Bubble Bath, which is what I ended up using, won because that skirt almost won the poll for the previous prompt, and the Sheherazade coord never fully formed into an idea.

The Reaction

As promised, I am ending this post by sharing a video I’ve recorded of myself reacting to the playlist of lookbooks for this challenge. You will find a few extra bits of behind the scenes trivia scattered in there, as well as my genuine reactions to the videos (and to a lesser extent, the coords) themselves. Not to everything, after all this is over an hour worth of lookbooks, but the highlights are there. (Though if you do want the full unedited thing, it is up as an exclusive video on Patreon now.) I hope that you enjoy these!