Patience is a Virtue

A fair warning: this post may seem a little ranty. It is not aimed at giving advice, if anything the intent is more of a commentary on things I’ve observed in the lolita community.

If you were to compare a lolita who started their journey in the fashion six months ago with one who has been actively participating for six years, what would you notice? First would probably be a difference in quality of their coords – very few newbies, if any, achieve the level of depth and detail of experienced lolitas. Then you’d probably notice a difference in attitudes, of which lack of patience is one of the common traits amongst newer lolitas.

Patience and perseverance allow you to achieve your goal.

Now, this is very much a product of the times we live in. Even if we take a newbie lolita who’s 18 years old – they were still born in the year 2000. With few exceptions, like countries that are now catching up in terms of technological and infrastructural development, they would have been brought up with internet being common part of your house equipment, at times of fast foods and fast fashion. But from the point of view of someone like me, who had to find things out on their own (once I learnt to read my parents even stopped answering the “What does word X mean?” questions, pointing at a dictionary instead), this is both puzzling and frustrating.

Puzzling because as people who have grown up with Google (created in 1998) I would expect newbies to be much better at researching the fashion for themselves before asking the typical, searchable questions you all know. After all, whatever question you might type into Google’s search bar, chances are it’s already been asked before multiple times, even the weird ones that you see in memes (“I hate it when Hitler steals my Nutella” anyone?) or the depressingly sad ones (“Why am I alone?”).

Frustrating because in a niche community whenever someone does display this lack of patience, it sticks out like a sore thumb and it feels like it’s happening disproportionately often. In reality it isn’t. It’s just that three people asking the same question over three weeks on a platform of 13 thousand members feels like much more than on a platform of 1.3 million. That’s 0.02% and 0.0002% of the platform’s user population respectively and in smaller communities like lolita there’s simply no room to hide.

Curating your perfect wardrobe takes effort to plan and time
to execute.

What annoys lolitas with more experience under their belt about the impatience of newbies is that many of them remember their own beginnings and know how much easier it is to join the fashion in 2018 than it was in 2008. What’s more, they also know that they didn’t create their wardrobes overnight. Posts such as “I can’t wait to wear the fashion” and “OMG, I want SO many dresses, but can’t afford them, how do you guys do it?!” and “I know I don’t have a full coord yet, I just couldn’t wait to wear out this dress” and “I want this print for the next tea party, but it’s no longer in stock, where can I get it?” etc. all fail to acknowledge the time commitment that all lolitas have put in at some point. This is not fast fashion, so a new release will take months to be produced (possibly years once you account for the designing time). Very few of us are rich and our collections were built over years of careful spending and tracking down second hand sales, as well as anxious checking of tracking updates because even EMS postage isn’t Amazon Prime’s next day delivery. We all tried on the clothes as soon as we received them, but we don’t usually go out in them unless we can put together at least a simple, cohesive coord.

And most importantly – the time we couldn’t spend on wearing or buying the fashion we dedicated to finding out more about it, to learning and trying to start off as we mean to go on. Or at least not far from it.

The fashion isn't going anywhere, whatever clickbait articles
might tell you. Slow down, appreciate where you are now and
enjoy the journey.

Dear lolita newbies! Patience is a virtue. Moreover, lolita fashion is about quality, which costs both time and money. We want you to be able to enjoy the fashion and be a part of it – learning to curb your enthusiasm a little in order to wait will be a valuable skill. While you wait to accumulate enough savings, while you wait for your order to arrive, while you search for complimenting pieces for your coord, while you research more about the fashion so that you can be better sooner.

Dear experienced lolitas! We are not excluded from displaying patience. As frustrating as it may be to see a person after person ask the same basic question – you are not obliged to answer. Unless you are a mod/admin/mentor of that community, you can literally scroll past and ignore it. Unless you know that you can answer that question patiently and be helpful, instead of sounding frustrated and sarky, just move on. This will be kinder both for the newbie and for your own mental health.

Remember all: patience is a virtue.