24 Mar 2017

What is the Most Difficult Thing to Avoid in Lolita?



Some things will inevitably happen when you get involved with Lolita fashion. Some of those you might welcome, such as a confidence boost, but some – not so much.



There are actually many things that I find difficult to avoid in Lolita fashion, but if I were to list them all this post would become too long. Instead I will distinguish between hard-to-avoid things when wearing Lolita and those when buying Lolita. That will create a slightly more balanced overview of the situation.

Photo by Daniel Becerrill
The most difficult thing to avoid when wearing Lolita is attracting attention. This isn’t always just negative attention, you will probably receive compliments just as often, but there’s no two words about the fact that you will attract attention to yourself. Even at home your family or housemates, however much they may be used to and accepting of your fashion choices, are likely to make a comment (again, nice as well as a bit of a jibe). Learning to deal with this attention and creating some coping strategies is something you may have to do for your own peace of mind because even if you lived in the middle of Tokyo you would still stand out, let alone wherever it is that you live right now.

Photo by Mirukuma
As far as buying Lolita is concerned, I think we all know exactly what the most difficult thing to avoid is – cost. Doesn’t matter whether you’re an incredibly savvy bargain hunter, there’s always something extra that you’ll have to consider: the cost of shipping, service fees for shopping services, tax and customs if you were unable/not offered to declare the value yourself, cost of repairing any damage there may be on an item… Fortunately, most of the times these costs can be kept low, but unfortunately they won’t disappear entirely except for a few select purchases. This doesn’t mean that you can’t do Lolita on a budget or that you can’t buy the fashion cheaply – simply that when you do budget for it you can’t think just about the item price, but all of these other things as well.

As I said earlier, there are many more things that could be considered most difficult to avoid in this fashion – these are my two choices when it comes to wearing and buying Lolita. What would yours be? Have you found anything that was difficult to avoid for you personally? I’d be curious to know.



4 comments:

  1. Impulsebuying. I am good not thinking things through.

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    1. Even though I recently had quite a few impulse buys, I think that you can learn how to avoid it. This is something within our control, whereas things like costs or attention are outside of it. If I had to go for something that's within my control that's difficult to avoid I think I'd say creating at leas one poor outfit - you have to start somewhere to learn.

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  2. Ahh, I didn't even think about the hazards of buying and managing the clothing itself! Even if you find something for very cheap, a likely scenario for someone in this fashion might be to get hit with customs, or it might need alterations or dry-cleaning, all of which is additional cost, good point.

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    1. Exactly that! The likelihood of you paying just for the item and only a little bit for postage is pretty small. It's like with the "Grades/sleep/social life - pick 2" diagram, but with "Item cost/Other costs/Condition - pick 2". If an item is cheap and postage is cheap/no customs, then it won't be in perfect condition and may require further work. If it's in great condition and no other big costs are involved, then the item itself won't be cheap. And if it's cheap and in good condition, then you're likely to incur other costs (postage, customs, tax etc.).

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