Plans derailed

Whether you overestimated your needs and wants or whether what was on the photo on the online sale genuinely does not reflect the reality, even the most careful shoppers have gotten things which later turned out to not work as well as we thought. Although I sincerely hope that none of you have more than five of these!

Pictured in the middle

In no particular order, let’s start with my Innocent World lace gloves. I bought them whilst still in Japan and kept lusting after them every time my friends and I would go to Katamachi in Kanazawa. When something is literally and physically right there, you can touch it and feel how lovely the quality is, it’s so much more difficult to resist. And while I still adore them, having bought them in summer 2014 I have still not worn them, not a single time! The white is too stark against the ivories which dominate when I wear Classic and the lace and cut are too elegant to just throw on with Sweet Lolita. On top of this, I already struggle with rings on my fingers (I like big rings, but worry about breaking them when constantly getting things in and out of bags or pockets) and having worn some vintage gloves before I feel that I’d struggle with these as well (having to take them off to use my phone, not really feeling if I’m holding things firmly enough etc). But as God is my witness I will find the perfect coord for these, I shan’t give up!

This photo is a lie!

Next one is your typical “the colour was different on the screen” – my An*tai*na tea parties. They were meant to be sax, were described as such and shown as such on the stock photos, but arrived pretty aqua/turquoise. They don’t match my sax dresses (even given that every item described as “sax” is literally a different shade) and they don’t match the few mint things I have, so I’ll have to part with them. I just hope that there will be people wanting to take these off me – any takers?

Too bright to match,
too cute to give up

Another similar misjudgement was with my AP Candy Fun Fair OTKs. They were on my wishlist for quite some time and I thought that since they’re blue with white and red accents they’d go with a lot of things in my wardrobe, but I was wrong. This is your typical royal blue kind of shade: too bright for my navy stuff and too dark for any of the sax ones. Even Whipped Cream Kitty, also a more royal blue shade than any other, is a different tone and with the socks being OTKs, they’d be too close to each other and you could tell that they don’t match. I’m really bummed about this because I still really love the socks and want to find a way to keep them. It took me a while to find and acquire them in this colourway, so I’m very reluctant to part with them.

One of the very few black pieces I own

While not as much of an ‘oops’ as the other ones, the only black blouse I have is kind of a miss in my wardrobe. Despite having some dresses that it goes with, I don’t really wear black in Lolita and so far I’ve worn this blouse twice in total: once in a non-Lolita outfit (for a Tolkien society banquet, so it was appropriate) and once for the fortune telling meet. I don’t envision myself wearing it a lot more because I prefer to wear colours, but the hoarder instinct of “what if you throw it away and then need it” stops me from parting with it. Who knows, there may come another time and another coord where I genuinely would need it – but I’ll eat my own bloomers if this happens this year!

Pictured bottom row, second from the
right

I struggled a little with picking the fifth item. Not because there aren’t any more misses, but because everything I thought of I could justify or saw myself using it in this way or another. But in the end I settled on this headbow from “Mexican Sauce Shop” (or Mojiangxiaopu, 墨酱小铺, as they’re actually called on Taobao). I still adore the design to bits, but the string of pearls is very awkward sitting right across the forehead and despite claiming to do so during the unboxing, I’ve done absolutely nothing towards fixing it. I’m not sure if it even could be fixed, probably not as simply as I would’ve liked it to be. Since it was a cheap Taobao item, I’m not despairing, but it’s a pity because other than this it would go so well with the rest of my wardrobe. One day I’ll probably find it in me to do something about it, just not yet.

And that’s it. Well, there may be a few more, but luckily quite a few things I got with my Lolidrobe in mind which didn’t quite work with it I was able to incorporate into my daily wear and work clothes, so it’s not all a loss.

Do you have any items which you were very hopeful about, but which ended up not working with your Lolita clothes at all? Why don’t they work? Was it a misjudgement or a misleading photo kind of a moment? If you have things like that, don’t feel bad about them, we all do – just check what these bloggers have written!

Crimson Reflections
Vanilla Bear
Rose Nocturnalia
Sanakanin