Half Year in Coords + Casual Outfits

I believe this started out as a bandwagon on Japanese Twitter, which then spread to Instagram. Lolitas all over were sharing the coordinates they’ve worn in the first half of this year, a great way to showcase either the diversity or consistency of your style. It’s not something that I anticipated participating in, but which I jumped at nonetheless. Here I’d like to expand somewhat on the picture collages that I have shared on my Instagram.

Coords from January to February.

Coords from February til April.

Coords from April til June.

I decided to arrange the pictures in chronological order. Whilst it may have been more aesthetically pleasing to sort them somehow, I felt that this way was: a) easier (I’m lazy and like I said, didn’t expect to be doing that); and b) more representative of how I wear lolita. I do wear a variety of substyles and a variety of colours, some of my outfits are planned in advance while some happen mostly due to some outside factors such as weather. Despite having a certain look that I go for – tricolour with retro touches – what I wear is a little bit all over the place and my outfits from the first half of 2019 reflect that.

While I didn’t need this bandwagon to realise that, it does emphasize that I wear blue the most. Of the 24 coords pictures here, 10 use a blue main piece – 11 if we count Diner Doll as more of a sax than mint. Despite being my favourite colour, red main pieces only feature 4 times, while the various shades of white/cream – 5 times. The rest are green, which I do love and will probably get more of as time goes by, and my black outlier. I guess this does speak somewhat of consistency in my wardrobe, as well as indicate my bias for blue. Although if anything, these collages show how my collection has grown in solids and patterns, as there are about as many outfits with those as there are with prints (and actually, depending on how you define print and pattern, there may be a few more of the latter).

However, probably the biggest things that I’ve taken from this mini-review are that lolita has become a very big and important part of my life and identity – and related to this, that I have more pieces that I wear in half a year. What’s pictured there is roughly half of my collection, including dresses that are currently in the post. Whilst I do wear lolita fashion more often and not exclusively to meets these days, I wouldn’t consider myself a daily lolita. And given that there are other styles that I like, I probably won’t ever wear exclusively lolita. Having said this, whilst I am transitioning towards wearing frills more casually and for less ‘special’ occasions (to work, to the cinema, just going about my day), and whilst I am finally moving out so that I will have more storage space, I feel that I should become more selective about what I keep. The problem with that is that I genuinely love everything that I own, each piece for different reasons. So maybe instead I should focus on figuring out ways of wearing them out more so that they do all get to see the light of day more often?

Thanks to my dress spreadsheet, I do wear my pieces more and more equally than I would have without it. So I guess the best thing to do is to see how the second half of 2019 plays out and make some decisions based on that. Sooner or later I probably will get round to getting rid of more pieces, as I figure out that I wear them less or that I avoid wearing them. Until then it gives me time to procrastinate and hold on to what I currently have before I need to make a decision on this.

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And speaking of wearing things out, last week I’ve managed to wear some cute things that didn’t make it onto the collage. They were more casual outfits, both with no special occasion in mind, so putting these in a separate post would be a bit overzealous, hence I’m tagging them along here.

| Violet Fane Charming Town skirt | Axes Femme blouse | Innocent World Wendy OTKs | Peppermint Fox brooch | offbrand brooch, flower clip and shoes |

Detail shot.

The lighting in that corridor is just perfect for selfies.

First is a simple, soft coord with Violet Fane’s Charming Town skirt. I have actually worn this piece several times, every time in an even more casual rendition than this, they simply never got photographed. Taking pictures of my more casual outfits, as well as dressing up a bit more to work are some of the things that I’d like to get better at, so I took advantage of strike day at work, dressed up and took some pictures. It’s so much easier when there’s hardly anyone in and you’re not worried about who might see you prancing about in front of a camera precariously perched on a windowsill with the timer on. While it may have been just a tad too warm for OTKs, the blouse is made out of a lightweight fabric, so I wasn’t actually overheating. Since all the colours on the skirt are quite dusty shades, I went with a lighter colour palette to avoid having to match anything. I guess this outfit sort of ended up a bit more otome-kei than lolita, partly due to the skirt shape and partly because of how I coordinated it, but that’s hard to avoid as casual classic lolita and otome-kei do overlap a lot.

| Innocent World Strawberry Tart Lace OP | Cutie Creator hat | Angelic Pretty Wrapping Cherry socks | Bodyline shoes | vintage necklace | handmade bracelet |

Seriously, how can KFC have such great lighting too? (Though granted, I have forgot to turn my mild filter off lol)

Ignore how busted these heels look, focus on the cuteness of these socks. Theyr'e my favourites right now!

And then on Friday I decided to dress up whilst the weather was warm enough for this OP. As cute as it is, it’s probably my most summery piece and I haven’t had the chance to try wearing it outside of summer yet, despite some ideas from the 1 Dress 4 Looks post. The look I put together in the last reassessment post was so cute (and already there), that I basically wore that with a few tweaks. Those socks are genuinely my new favourite, they are super cute and playful, and only whilst wearing them did I really notice the gingham ribbon bows on the sides, which matched the dress even better. That day was my boyfriend’s birthday, though he didn’t actually want to do much. In the end all we did was get KFC for lunch and then went to the cinema in the evening to see Spiderman: Far from Home (which I recommend and if you’re into that, bear in mind that there are two post-credit scenes). And it was very lucky that I wore this when I did because the weather turned cold and rainy literally the following day!

Hopefully as time goes on there will be more casual outfits being posted here. I will be in my current work up until the end of this month, although the academic year finishes this week. Whatever quieter days I can catch, I will try to wear something nicer and, more importantly, document it. Let’s see how that goes, eh?