Belated happy ILD to you all! Most of you would have
celebrated at the beginning of this month, but I was away and my comm planned
its celebration for this weekend just gone, a week after the official ILD. Not
only that, it was a joint ILD between the Leeds and Newcastle comms (whom I was
meeting for the first time) and they used the theme of EqualiTeas, a government
scheme aimed at celebrating the 100th anniversary of granting
(initially only some) women the right to vote. So I could have lolita and feminism in one meet? I couldn’t
have missed that!
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| BtSSB Sugar Bouquet Shirring Princess JSK | Angelic Pretty Romantic Bright
blouse | Angelic Pretty Salon de The Rose OTKs | Metamorphose shoes | Cutie
Creator hat | offbrand flower clips on the hat | offbrand jewellery | BtSSB Bird
Cage parasol | |
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| The lashes were great, but they covered up the makeup I was so proud of! |
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I was really happy with how my hair and makeup
turned out! |
My outfit was a variation of look 3 from the 17th installment of 1 Dress 4 Looks.
I had made some tweaks to it, especially since I simply had to incorporate my new blouse, but the overall style of it
remains pretty much the same. It was a good call: no last minute worries over
whether something will arrive on time (because if the blouse hadn’t, I still
had an outfit to wear), it was all light enough for the weather and plenty of
shirring to indulge in the afternoon tea service. What’s there not to like? I
ended up getting loads of photos of this outfit that I absolutely adore, so
excuse me if this post ends up a little vanity loaded.
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Shame that we weren't able to take out any of the books
behind me. |
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I carried this parasol with me purely for aesthetic reasons,
so I'd be damned if I didn't get at least one photo with it! |
Our venue for the day was the stunning Grange Hotel in York. I’m sure I said it time and time again, but I love York and I love
going out in lolita in York, it feels appropriate to dress fancy when visiting
such a beautiful historic city. We had the whole Library and Drawing Room to
ourselves, meaning maximum privacy and maximum comfort – as well as maximum
fanciness! You can actually take a virtual tour of those rooms (as well as
others) by going here, so while it’s set up
for a wedding on the virtual tour, it gives you a great idea of what we
experienced on the day.
The tea turned out to be a lot smaller event than I had
anticipated – with much benefit to the event itself, I must add! Leeds comm is
pretty big, it’s not unusual for even more casual meets to attract between 15
to 20 people there, let alone things like ILD. Knowing that this was joint with
another comm (and remembering calls from the organisers about minimum numbers
etc.) I expected to see the room packed with at least 20. However, on the day
there were 9 of us, myself included, with about an even spread between Leeds
and Newcastle comm members. And it worked out just perfectly, so I won’t bother
trying to guess why it happened this way. With this the tea felt both intimate,
since one could easily chat to everyone and get to know each other,
and like a large celebration befitting the occasion. I feel like I got to know
the lolitas from Newcaste well, to the point where I joined their
Facebook group immediately after getting home and genuinely hope to attend more
meets with them in the future.
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| Our delicious spread - the omnivore version. |
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Most of the sandwiches were gone by the end of the day.
Success! |
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Closeup of the desserts. A pistachio cake with lemon curd,
a lemon meringue mini-tart and brownie. |
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| The vegan/non-dairy desserts. |
Whilst we had some of the usual lolita event features, like
a raffle or silly games (namely pinning stuff onto Mr Yan and designing prints
based on randomly picked out words), EqualiTeas gave us extra things to do. Like I said, it is a government scheme designed to
commemorate achieving full suffrage for women and any party, be it individuals
or organisations, who wished to do an event to celebrate and/or discuss issues
like feminism, equal rights and history could register and get supplies from them.
Now, to clear some historical confusion, the EqualiTeas website actually
celebrates 90 years of voting rights this year, as they
are counting from the 1928 Representation of the People Act which granted fully
equal voting rights to men and women over the age of 21. However, there are
many events across the UK held this year commemorating the 100th
anniversary, because the 1918 Representation of the People Act granted voting
rights to property-owning women over 30 (and to all men over 21, regardless of
whether they owned a property or not) for the first time. Both are worthy of celebrating and it’s good to know why EqualiTeas as a scheme has a different number of years
than some other organisations and schemes might give. They gave us button
badges and pencils, as well as a board game (which ultimately we didn’t end up
playing), a tote bag (which was a raffle prize – and I ended up winning it!)
and plenty of postcards, both reprints of original political cartoons and posters
from that period of time and those with discussion questions written on them.
It turns out that as a group, despite coming from a fair range of different
backgrounds, we were on the same page politically, so it ended up more of an
agreement session than a discussion, nonetheless it was still fun to bring an
element of education and feminism into the meet.
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Others had (potentially) more challenging questions like: do you think we
have achieved equality in the UK and what do you think equality will look
like in 100 years. |
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| The EqualiTeas board game. |
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| A copy of a newspaper from the early 20th century. |
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Everything that at one point or another was pinned on to
the dreamy boy himself, Mr Yan. |
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Mr Yan, he so dreamy! And I ended up planting him a
kiss mark right on the neck - raunchy stuff! |
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Do click to enlarge, some of these prints are now in genuine demand (especially
Marine Angel Pony). |
Most of the day, however, was spent on typical lolita
things. We had the afternoon tea service, which was absolutely lovely (the
scones might’ve been the best ones I ever had, certainly noteworthy enough –
and usually I’m not the most keen on scones), we played some classical music
and sighed over wanting that drawing room to be our everyday reality like a
true lifestyler. Of course, a lot of time was dedicated to photographs, taking
and posing, as well as helping others pose. And, of course, lots of chatter and
laughs, about the fashion and Japan, as well as plenty of other things, both
serious and silly. Honestly? This felt like a perfect ILD to me and one of the
most fun and memorable meets I had. Even though I had only meet 3 people prior
to attending, I left feeling like I was good friends with everyone and would
love to hang out with any one of these lovelies again! Which is exactly how you
know whether your meet has been a success!
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| So many pictures! |
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Including loads of silly ones. Here I look like I'm very
short thanks to those shoes peeking out! |
Afterwards I had planned on going into York to do some light
shopping. That same day was also host to York Pride, which some from our group
planned on attending. However, we got distracted by owls in the park – pretty
much a fixture in York Castle Museum Park between Easter and October. There is
a charity collecting money for taking care of local owls and they will let you hold
one of their owls for a small fee. This was my third time stopping by their
tent with someone, but first time actually holding an owl myself. I didn’t plan on doing
it, but a friend wanting to face her fear of birds asked whether I wanted to
join in (it’s £3 to hold one bird, but £5 to hold two), so I did. Whilst I have
no idea what was the owl that she held, I asked to hold the tiny burrowing owl –
because the amount of fierceness, fearlessness and sass contained in that tiny
body was hysterically amusing! The owl was a male called George and I could not
stop laughing as George looked around, moving his head sideways or down, as if
judging people around for their poor fashion choices. He also had some
incredibly soft feathers and was just a darling to hold. After this, whilst I
started off with all the intentions of going shopping, my feet decided to
remind me of their discomfort, so I turned towards the train station instead
and decided to head home for the day.
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Not the most flattering photo, but it was George who was
the star here. |
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| You can also see my raffle win, the Votes for Women tote bag. |
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| George, the burrowing owl, is judging your fashion choices. |
It was an absolute blast of a day and I am so grateful that
I got a chance to attend. I can’t wait to meet up with the Newcastle lolitas
again (or to go back to York, for that matter, because York is even more
stunning when the weather is lovely) and The Grange Hotel was a marvelous
venue. Definitely would love to live there if only I ever could!
So now that probably everyone has had their ILD
celebrations, tell me what you ended up doing. Did you have a meetup or
indulged in some frilly self-love on your own? What would your ideal ILD
celebration look like? Is there any important event in your country’s history
that should be commemorated with a themed lolita meet up? (I do wonder whether
there are any French or Austrian lolitas reading this blog who will now throw a
mourning goth meet on the anniversary of Marie Antoinette’s execution – come on,
this is just waiting to happen!)
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