April Coords Roundup

You know the drill, it’s the last blog post day of the month, so I do a rundown of all the lolita coords I wore.

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Coord 1: Easter All Frills Baking

| Lady Sloth Winter Spices skirt | Axes Femme top | Innocent World Lauretta OTKs | Hush Puppies boots | Haruhi Clover headbow | Once Upon a Cookie Treat Jelly Cookie necklace | Twinkle Kitty Boutique rings | Claire’s earrings |

Keeping things sweet for baking.

And now all I can think of is jammy dodgers...

The day consisted of considerably more than just filming the latest All Frills Baking, but that was the main excuse for why I dressed up the day before Easter Sunday itself, with a to-do list as long as my arm. And while the irony of wearing a print called Winter Spices in spring for a spring holiday is not entirely lost on me, since it’s practically a baking print, how could I not?

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Coord 2: Easter Itself

| BtSSB Polonaise Brillante ~ Ideas of a Maiden ~ Apron JSK | Babysong Lolita blouse | Angelic Pretty Salon de The Rose OTKs | offbrand shoes | Kaneko headdress | Mademoiselle Boutique necklace | Dentelles brooch | offbrand brooch | handmade bracelets |

You know what's the worst? I love how these curls came out, but a month later I can't remember how I did them!

Going for a broad nature theme with my brooches.

And then, of course, we come to Easter itself. A version of this coord from the corresponding 1 Dress 4 Looks post seemed perfectly appropriate, I merely updated it a bit in fanciness to match the occasion. Because heck, I paid good money for this amazing headdress and will be damned if I don’t wear it whenever I can simply because it makes me feel happy and pretty. Whilst my plans for the day were similar to last year, i.e. relax, eat good food and spend as much time offline as possible, last year I was significantly better at that last part. Though I didn’t slip into mindless social media scrolling, which is the most important thing I aimed to avoid with that goal.

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Coord 3: Noir

| Haenuli Just One Bite JSK | Infanta blouse | Baroque Repose of Queen tights | offbrand shoes, hair clips, earrings, bracelet and ring | Puvithel Crystal Heart necklace | Voodoodolly ring |

Really proud of the hair improvisation there.

This colourway of the Crystal Heart necklace is simply magical, I am so happy that I got it!

Having protected the curls from Easter Sunday, it would’ve been criminal not to take advantage. I do enjoy wearing this print in a glam way, it just feels right. The whole coord was also put together in a way to complement this necklace. It made me realise what a fool I was for not ordering at least the earrings to match, because this really isn’t a common colour combination, but that’s a mistake I’ll have to live with. And since I ended up dressing up quite so much, it was imperative to take advantage of the look and the time off, so I filmed a video. Though given my late start to the day, by the time I’d managed to get ready, take some photos and then record the video, it was late enough for me to need to start making dinner, so whilst the outfit still counts as worn, it wasn’t on for particularly long.

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Coord 4 & 5: Twinning with @bumble_tree

| Innocent World Revival Sweet Teddybear JSK | Innocent World bolero | Cutie Creator hat | handmade necklace (not by me) | offbrand socks, shoes and bracelets |

The rare toothy smile selfie that came out nice to my taste.

Bringing sweets with me and on me to that picnic.

| Innocent World Revival Sweet Teddybear JSK | BtSSB blouse | offbrand tights and shoes | Cutie Creator hat | Twinkle Kitty Boutique ring |

You know, I really tried to do the grumpy oldschool face for this, but my resting face just doesn't have enough attitude. So sticking to what I know works.

As much as oldschool is not my thing, I can't help but appreciate this blouse.

Ok, these technically weren’t worn beyond taking the photos, but they’re too cute to not include them. Especially since in the past I shared all my other twinning coordinates too. When @bumble_tree got this dress, we immediately got to planning some twinning outfits and having ended up with two ideas, decided to do both. This is the most elaborate photo editing I’ve ever done, which probably compensates for how similar the outfits are. But what matters is that we had loads of fun doing this!

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Coord 6: Quick Casual

| Violet Fane Charming Town skirt | AatP Poison de l’amour OTKs | Laura Ashley shoes | Tea and Paintwater brooch | handmade pink bracelets | everything else is offbrand |

I genuinely am comfortable being fringeless, but it's nice to have the option for when I feel like it.

It's wild how much I love this tiny jam jar brooch.

I’ve somehow gotten to almost the middle of the month without wearing frills much and it’s actually been eating me up. So I braved creative tiredness and quite literally threw this together the night before to wear for working from home. Comfy? Yes. Cute? Certainly. Happy with the outcome? 100%. It’s amazing how much clothes affect our mood and until I find the will and energy to overhaul my style outside of lolita, these moments of “it’s been too long since I wore frills last and it’s Not Good For Me” will be quite a regular thing. Though hopefully the nice, warm weather will also return soon, that would help with picking what to wear a bit more.

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Coord 7: Trattoria di Zoom

| Angelic Pretty Crystal Dream Carnival Tiered JSK | MuFish tights | Twinkle Kitty Boutique ring | everything else is offbrand |

Feeling like a star, literally and figuratively.

As is this pegasus, very clearly snubbing the rest of the world out.

Or Diana Rigg in Bond, but make it lolita. The outfit is incredibly simple, basic even, but the hair and makeup elevate it to something pretty fun. This is my first ever attempt at a 60s bubble hairstyle and considering all the corners I cut, this isn’t a bad attempt. If I ever manage to get a proper curling iron, it would probably become a lot easier. And I’d like to make it happen because it’s a really cute hairstyle, albeit pretty time intensive with all the teasing. But practice makes perfect and it was worth the effort because I had a dinner night that evening with @lena.golita, which laughingly got called Trattoria di Zoom. Just because you can’t go out to eat in a restaurant doesn’t mean that you can’t make dinner fancy.

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Coord 8: Pink Cossack

| Dangerous Nude Gobelin bloomers | Innocent World Wendy OTKs | Laura Ashley shoes | vintage hat and blouse | Amadea Kingdom The Adventurer D20 and D4 brooches |

Boystyle Paulina is still figuring out how to selfie.

I have a review of these coming up soon, so stay tuned.

I’ve been thinking of different ways that I could wear these bloomers in. For the first time in a while I actually played around the night before with various bits until I landed on this combination. I’ve not done that for a working from home outfit in… I can’t even remember how long. The pinks worked really well with these bloomers, I’m very pleased with that. The hat was mostly because I felt like without it the outfit was just missing something and while a wig or different hair styling probably would’ve solved that, my levels of willingness to put the effort in were low. And since the hat made me think of the whole outfit as quite Cossack - all the better! There’s hardly ever a bad time to look like a Cossack and I have been on a somewhat Slavic binge (which I plan to channel into another outfit at some point in the future).

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Coord 9: Will It Casual Lolita?

| Angelic Pretty Fantasy Theater Gilet JSK | Dream V cardigan | Angelic Pretty Odekake Ribbon OTKs | Hush Puppies boots | Cutie Creator headbow | offbrand necklaces | Axes Femme bow brooch | Wonderbox Designs rosette | Jane Marple ring |

Did I really just use this pearl collar necklace the second time this year? Well, I guess I did.

Speaking of things that never got worn, this particular necklace is one of them!

I know that I can wear this JSK in pretty OTT ways with almost every colour imaginable, but the big question is: will it casual lolita? And I think the answer is yes. Although I realise that this isn’t really casual, just pretty toned down with the muted colour palette. I stand by my verdict and by this outfit.

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Coord 10: Busy Saturday

| AatP Sheherazade JSK I | L’Esprit de la Noblesse Le Nuage blouse | AatP Poison de l’amour OTKs | offbrand shoes, rose clips and earrings | Dreamy Bows headband | Enchantlic Enchantilly necklace |

Another curl salvage hairstyle, this is becoming a habit.

My years of reading Roli's blog have culminated in my stealing her hair clips on shoes trick.

The actual tenth coord of the month was the next AYWi30C one, so you’ll see that one on Tuesday. This was from the day after that, when I ended up going from one Zoom thing to another (though admittedly one of them I was in my pyjamas for). Since the last one was a lolita meetup on the Discord server I joined this month (check me out for figuring out Discord enough to do that!), where the theme was spring, and the other one was a writing webinar workshop, wearing Sheherazade was my ‘themed for writing’ element, while wearing it with pinks and flowers was my ‘themed for spring’ one. I do love how this particular shade of pink works with this dress, pink and red look great together and these shades particularly so. I imagine that I might reach for this blouse and JSK combination in the future again, see how else I can jazz it up.

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Coord 11: Working Not From Home

| Innocent World Georges Rose JSK | everything else is offbrand |

Snapping photos super quickly after getting back home and taking advantage of the 'I just walked for half an hour' natural blush before it fades completely.

Florals get a bad rep sometimes, but to me they're super elegant and this one is an excellent proof of that.

During the last week of April I was due to work from the office rather than from home. It wasn’t particularly fun, in fact it was boring as hell and even physically painful as I managed to give myself muscle pain from my usual walk to and from work, as if I didn’t know how to walk. So to cheer myself up I wore something very casual to the office. Not much to say about the coord itself, my goal was to be as unassuming as possible, which Innocent World is perfect for. Though I do wish that the weather that day was a touch nicer. One of the buildings on the campus I work at has a so called living wall now, which is basically a vertical garden, and it would’ve made for a gorgeous photo backdrop. But it was too windy to bother.

Like, how cool would outfit pictures look against this? I will have to grow a bit bolder so that I can stop giving a toss about what people will think and just bring my tripod and take photos against this when full-time office working resumes.

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Considering that the vast majority of my creative energy in April went to Camp NaNo (btw, I did manage to finish writing the novel, yay!), this isn’t a bad run of outfits. Although I won’t lie, Bilbo Baggins’ quote about feeling like butter scraped over too much bread is very much appropriate here. I do feel very accomplished for having managed so much for myself, but I’m also feeling the price I paid to achieve it. Thankfully the UK is starting a long weekend today which is one day longer for me thanks to having to use up my holiday. And while I will likely learn nothing from what I just said and will still end up busying myself with creative pursuits, I also intend to rest plenty in between that - maybe limit myself to just one creative thing a day.

Disneybounding Coord 2

The first Disneybounding post was about an outfit that was pretty much all there already, just needed putting together. Every other idea that I have requires various sorts and levels of crafting, so I should get my arse into gear more. And thankfully doing these posts helps me do precisely that, starting with this look.

The Character

It feels odd to say that out of the three o.g. Disney princesses (Snow White, Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty) Aurora is my favourite. Why? Because while I know the stories, I haven’t actually watched Cinderella or Snow White. Not the Disney animated ones at least. Yeah, I know, don’t at me. Sleeping Beauty, on the other hand, I’ve seen multiple times in my life, I had that on a well-loved VHS. It’s actually been a long, long time since I’ve seen it last, so maybe it’s time for a refresh? See how the film stands up to nostalgia and a much more grown up me.

Because yes, I’m also very aware of how Sleeping Beauty is problematic in 2021 given that she hardly has any spoken lines at all and pretty literally could’ve been replaced with a lamp without the film losing much. It’s a sad state of affairs, a glimpse into societal perception of women as incredibly passive, both as far as the XVIIth century Charles Perrault fairy tale and the 1959 Disney animated classic versions go. Snow White and Cinderella both have loads of remakes and empowering updates in the various retellings, whereas Sleeping Beauty gets left behind. The closest we’ve had to that was in Maleficent (the first one, I haven’t seen the second one so I can’t comment), and even then it’s not much since she’s a side character and her existence is framed in the context of Maleficent’s character development rather than her own.

Nonetheless, as far as the o.g. princesses go, she is my favourite, even if only by virtue of pretty aesthetics and being the only one I have actual childhood memories of. It would be a shame to not do at least one proper princess Disneybounding coord, so here it is.

The Outfit

| Lady Sloth Look at My Dreamy Sky OP | Sosic Shop shoes | Tutuanna socks | handmade hair clip and bracelets | Gravelvet choker | Madillustration brooch |

I know, starting off controversial with the choice of blue rather than pink. Well, Disney gave me the option to choose and since I’m fairly sure the official merch has Aurora in pink only because they’ve put Cinderella in blue instead of her original white, I’m going to pick the blue. Especially since I’m coming at this from a practical angle too: this is for a trip away, not for being at home. Which means I’ll have to pack and won’t be able to take everything. Reusing pieces I already plan on taking will be a great way to save some suitcase space (necessary to stuff it with souvenirs and other shopping later), as well as a fun way of squeezing as much versatility out of what I bring with me as possible. And with its cloud print, this dress does remind me of that final scene of the film where Aurora and Philip dance into the skies and credits.

I finished this off literally on the same day as I took the photos, including sewing on the actual clips to the back. So she is fully sunctional.

Remember back in like 2017 when sleepy-kei was all the rage and eye mask canotiers and pillow tote bags were everywhere? Hi, this is me, boarding that train four years late. Truth be told, I’ve wanted to do some sort of sleepy-kei look back then too, just not enough to make it actually happen. But now that I made the eye mask, there’s nothing stopping me from doing a fancier version of sleepy-kei lolita in the future. I actually bought two satin pillows, with the intention of turning one into a tote bag, but I may need to hold off on that idea. So for now I have this hair clip, entirely hand sewn and embroidered by yours truly over the course of two uninteresting meetings and about two episodes of various shows.

This is one of my favourite brooches and I'm so glad that I got it when I had the chance.

To go with the eye mask - the sassiest pillow brooch ever. It wouldn’t be sleepy-kei without it and hopefully it makes up for the lack of a pillow tote bag. As much as I’d love to include more sleep-related accessories, this is where I’m drawing the line. Partly because I’m not sure how much use I’d have for more, and partly because I ran out of ideas. If it’s something that I could possibly make, then I’d happily do so though.

A bit of white to break up all the blues.

And the bit that I forgot in the previous coord.

The other accessories are mostly space fillers. This time I did remember the bracelets, which would also work with the previous coord. And the choker is here to bring a bit more balance for the white bits. For a moment, when deciding on what necklace to go with, I thought that there were some rose motifs in Sleeping Beauty, but I think I may have gotten that confused with another film. Though if you want to be very pedantic, then Aurora grew up as Briar Rose, so I guess this could be a nod to that and make me appear more clever than I actually was at the time of putting the look together.

At least they are cute enough for a princess.

The other socks would also work, but I wanted to change things up a little.

Just like the previous outfit, I’m relying on the same pair of shoes and some ankle socks. And just like the previous one, should it turn out to be too cold to warrant such light layers, this would be easily remedied by adding a bolero/blouse and swapping the ankle socks for tights. Although now that I think about it - white lace tights would’ve been a more comfortable choice, but I do have these Baroque Secret Garden tights that kind of look like flowers growing on the walls of a castle that would’ve been so much more aesthetic. I’ll have to ponder that further, since an extra pair of tights isn’t going to take up all of my suitcase space.

The Park

Of course, a classic Disney princess can only go to one place: Magic Kingdom. It’s the one with an actual castle (even if it is Cinderella’s rather than Sleeping Beauty’s) and plenty of princessy things around. Whilst it seems that Aurora herself is based in Epcot rather than Magic Kingdom, I have other plans for Epcot and would rather have a princessy day at the most princessy of the parks.

I mean, you gotta take the princess to at least a castle, right?
Photo by Wally Gobetz.

Moreover, since the outfit itself is a touch more done-up, picking a more chill park to wear it to makes perfect sense. Whilst there are some rides that I’d probably queue up for, Magic Kingdom is more about somewhere to be and vibe with that Disney spirit, indulge in being stupidly aesthetic and just have a good day. So it doesn’t matter if I have practical shoes or a practical bag, this could be my chill day to just be pretty around the park.

Summary

The things to remember are:

• Aurora coord to wear around Magic Kingdom
• Use the same warm layers as the Pegasus coord, possibly the same change of shoes too if necessary.
• Think about what hairstyle to go with this hair accessory, a dry run may be necessary.
• Are there any other sleepy-kei-appropriate accessories that I could add (and ideally make)?

Musings on J-Fashion Blogs with Bibliotheca

Even though it may not always seem like it, there are good things coming out of this extended period of social isolation that we’re going through. Whilst IRL interactions and opportunities for socialising have gone dramatically down, many communities joined forces online to bring us closer together that way. Bay Area Kei, who to date have organised seven large virtual J-fashion events with an eight one on the way, are one of the key figures in fostering this community spirit.

That is why when they created Bibliotheca, a space dedicated to promoting J-fashion bloggers and providing them with a community of their own, I was very excited. I cannot stress this enough how honoured I am to have been accepted as an affiliated blogger amongst so many other fine writers, whose opinions and points of view I value and respect. It would’ve been a terrible faux pas on my part to not engage with the monthly theme Bibliotheca sets up and while introductions after five years of active blogging here would be somewhat odd, there is never a bad time to ponder blogging at large through a lens of lolita/J-fashion blogging. So let’s talk about that, shall we?

@bread.first.search, who is both one of the affiliated Bibliotheca bloggers and a member of the Bay Area Kei team, has very kindly put together a list of questions that we could answer in our posts. All of which made me realise that up until that point I have been massively overthinking the monthly theme. However, it quickly became clear that not all of this overthinking was down to just the way my brain works. For all the tendency to think too much and overcomplicate what could happily remain simple, the contrast between what I thought was expected and the picture painted by the prompt questions reflect my very thoughts on the state of J-fashion blogging and wider media today.

For a bit of personal context, I have been blogging in some way or another since around the age of 12, back when it was new and trendy, and everyone wanted in. To my utter dismay, the Wayback Machine still has the very first blog that I seriously invested myself in, in all its head-achingly glitter gif-y glory (no, I’m not subjecting your eyes to that). Besides anything before that, the only time in my life when I wasn’t blogging at all was roughly 2 years across 2014 and 2015 when I focused on finishing my degree. But by the end of 2015 it literally felt like I had a hole in my chest, like something important was missing from my life and I wanted to blog again - and doing so about lolita fashion filled that void.

The whole beauty of blogging, both back then and now, is that you can talk about anything in the world that you want. Before the rise of visual and audiovisual social media platforms, text dominated the internet through blogs and forums. That is where we found communities of like-minded people, entertained ourselves, often made friends (some of whom may still be big parts of our lives). This is also what I like about blogging to this day. The freedom to write about anything at all means that every blog is different and an insight into the individual who creates it. What they choose to write about, how they approach that topic, how they embellish their corner of the internet, the way they interact with the people who comment on it - all of this says a lot about a person.

Whether it's the layout of your Instagram feed or that of your blog, these are digital spaces that we curate in ways that we find pleasing. And that says a lot about us already, as people and as creators.

As far as this relates to J-fashion, although I wasn’t actively wearing lolita in the original heyday of lolita blogs, it seems to me that early blogging and early J-fashion blogging share that same personal aspect. When I first heard of blogs in general, they were explained to me as online diaries and I think many of us treated them quite like so. They were about us, our thoughts, lives, things that somehow mattered to us. With fashion it was about what we wore, what we bought, what we wished for, what we were excited for, and eventually, as communities centred around those fashions grew, about the people we met who share our passion.

This personal aspect of blogging never really left, but the comparably greater accessibility of platforms like Instagram and later YouTube certainly pushed the written word aside. Fashion is visual and people were more interested in seeing what we were wearing than reading about the why, the where, and the how. With time we got used to listening more than we were used to reading, so videos took over as the long form of choice, until blogging started to seem like a bit of an “elder millennial” thing to do.

At the same time, over this time, the lolita fashion community has lost its biggest piece of printed media: the Gothic and Lolita Bible magazine, which went out of print in 2017. Even though for the non-Japanese speakers this was still more of a picture book to flick through, with the help of volunteer translators and/or constantly improving translator apps people were able to access the articles too. Various other magazines have come and gone, trying to fill the void left by the GLB, with Girlism coming the closest thanks to the popularity of lolita fashion in China - but the Western community, by now unignorable in numbers, didn’t want to be left out.

There's something about written word that lends legitimacy to our fashion in ways that video or photographic content doesn't.

Though it still took until the onset of the pandemic for the Western community to realise that. Until 2020 we’ve been too preoccupied with organising events, but once there were no events to go to, what else could one do? Moreover, by that point the most hardcore of lolita fashion veterans were in it for 20+ years and they weren’t interested in another Lolita 101 or looking at coord pictures that they were getting via Instagram anyway. And so blogging has made a comeback - with an upgrade. Amidst all the social changes that 2020 triggered, people in the J-fashion community have found themselves engaging with in-depth long form content. Virtual events were filled with panels and presentations that are positively academic in nature rather than merely entertaining, expanding our knowledge and challenging our views. But events only come round every so often, which led the way for blogs to once again fill up our free time.

Some of the blogs that I personally look up to these days continue to offer posts that are crucial, analytical, educational, well researched, challenging. I will still just as happily read about what someone wore and what they did while they wore it, neither will I scoff at a review or a crafting tutorial. Yet I find that it’s the more meaningful posts that stay with me. Lucy May’s writing on R. R. Memorandum’s blog never fails to stop me in my tracks to think about the topic, despite the fact that most of it is about oldschool lolita which I’m not necessarily keen on. Kawaii Riot shows me the side of J-fashion that as a white woman I’ve been privileged to choose to whether I even notice and teaches me how to do better and be better, so that everyone can enjoy this fashion and its community safely. Recently I’ve been loving thoughtful pieces by Bunny at Your Bunny Valentine where she looks at our fashion and its community through a lens of intersectionality backed with knowledge from areas that I often have little knowledge of like art history. All of this on top of a slow rise of digital and printed media created by bottom-up by members of our own community, like The Kei Club or JBTK zines, which have given us a balance of the GLB flavour with engaging reads that matter to us as the Western J-fashion wearers ourselves.

Over time of seeing pieces like this be promoted, shared and discussed - and very rightfully so, as they deserve it - it’s no wonder that in my head I have bigged up the contribution that I needed to submit for Bibliotheca’s first round of monthly theme posts. Times have changed and while each blog out there still carries a piece of its creator in every published word, the audience that we write for has changed. The advent of one type of blogging doesn’t necessarily mean the demise of another and I doubt that the space for the reviews, the coordinate posts, the event reports, the fun and lighthearted content that most lolita blogs have started out with will ever disappear. At the same time, the effects of the last year or so, with so many more written pieces that require active engagement and not just passive reading, will continue to influence blogging for quite some time to come. It’s very likely that blogging will never regain the popularity it enjoyed in the early days of J-fashion establishing itself outside of Japan - the popularity of platforms like Instagram, YouTube and TikTok is far too big for that to happen. But I’m confident that it will continue to enrich the available content for people to enjoy in ways that go beyond hedonistic pleasures, fostering communities that are stronger, bound together not only by a common interest, but also by virtue of shared values on what it is to be into J-fashion in the 2020s.

1 Dress 4 Looks Take 47

You know, I’ve taken the pictures for this post - and it’s not that I’m unhappy with them… but for the longest time I pondered whether I’ve tried a bit too hard to avoid my usual templates. There’s nothing wrong with templates, but the thing with them is that I already know that they work. And the thing with these posts is that they’re a fun space to explore what else is possible. So I present to you the 1 Dress 4 Looks: Dream Dress Done Differently edition. Because I already know what fancy things Meta’s Gold Braid Tuck Pinafore JSK can do with golds and whites - but what else can it do?

Look 1: Red Cross Nurse

| Infanta Swan Lake blouse | MuFish tights | offbrand shoes | handmade hat and armband | Enchanted Dream Wear necklace |

She’s on the fancier side, as far as nurses go, but the simple pleats felt to me like they would lend themselves to a look like this. Since nurses rarely get a rest, flat shoes and comfortable tights are a must. Though I couldn’t resist adding the necklace, both so that the elegant braid doesn’t get too out of place in the overall look and… well, sorry to be a bit grim, but sometimes a nurse won’t be able to help. She is more of a wartime nurse than peacetime one, shall we say, and at least blood doesn’t show up on red as much.

Look 2: Larme Gal

| the entire look is offbrand except for Angelic Pretty tights, Rose Marie Seoir choker and Axes Femme earrings |

It’s been a hot minute since I’ve worn something more lolita x larme and I started to miss that vibe. Whilst this coord would read more larme with black fishnet tights, those do not photograph well at all on flatlays, plus I wanted to carry the stripes through the coord a bit more. When worn I probably would go for the fishnets, but at least this way I can sort of see that the rest of the look would work.

Look 3: Summer Retro

| Lady Sloth chiffon crop top | Angellic Pretty Wrapping Cherry ankle socks | Bodyline shoes | Cutie Craze Cafe ring | everything else is offbrand |

Ok, stay with me, this one will require a touch of imagination. Because like most retro looks, it’s not much of a retro look without the hair and makeup. So picture this with a 1960s bubble flip hair and 1960s makeup (probably more Brigitte Bardot than Twiggy, but maybe I could manage something in between), and hopefully it makes a bit more sense. The crop top would also be worn off shoulder, which I tried to show, but it’s impossible without a mannequin. I’m convinced that this could work and I am dying to wear this the second it turns vaguely summery - which, with me living in the UK and it being April now, should give me enough time to practice doing bubble flip hair.

Look 4: Stepford Wife

| Axes Femme cardigan | Baroque Secret Garden tights | offbrand shoes, necklace, flower clips and rings | Innocent World Pearskin Dot Lace headbow | vintage brooch and gloves |

We all know this lady, if not personally then from the media. She lives in the suburbs, living the life of a rich housewife whose husband is at work more than at home. She’s always smiling, but under that smile she is judging everyone and sniffing for every tiny piece of gossip in her neighbourhood. She will charm people at the Sunday church bake sale, before telling some alternative teenager that they will go to hell and that their mother should be ashamed of them. This is the sort of energy that was channelled into this outfit - and again, it all started with how classy those pleats are.


Do I regret not putting down something more conventionally lolita into this post? Hm, no, I don’t think so. On the day I had enough ideas, either more typical for myself or ones that I’ve sort of done before, and none of them excited me enough to bother putting them into a flatlay and photographing them. Will I wear any of these four? The middle two appeal to me the most right now, so there’s a chance. And that is exactly what these posts are all about, isn’t it?