Reassessment Post 2026.01

It’s been a very interesting first quarter of the year, coloured quite heavily by the no buy. Let’s not talk about how successful that no buy was… Oh wait. That’s a big point of the post.

New additions

This is the first real test of that low buy of mine that’s my 2026 goal. And on paper, it doesn’t look too great on the main piece front.

• 1 JSK (classic in pink*)
• 1 classic capelet
• 2 pair of legwear (1 classic in pink*, 1 classic in green)
• 1 pair of shoes (sweet in black)
• and 3 sets of accessories (1 classic headpiece in pink*, 2 sweet hair clips in gold)

You can click to enlarge, but this is one of the clearest pictures of a quarterly haul I ever got.

Hear me out! The JSK and headdress were a set and technically I bought that before finalising the rules of my low buy. I know that this sounds like excuses, but I hand on heart would’ve bought it before 2025 ended if I wasn’t so torn on the colourway. The capelet is the real point against my sticking to the low buy because that was purchased long after the rules were in place and it’s entirely an item outside of any of my lists, bought to satisfy the needs of one event coord. My saving grace is that it was on sale for a mere tenner and that since establishing the low buy rules, some of my travel plans have changed. This hasn’t exactly given me more money through the girl math of not having to save as much, but certainly eased the pressure a little bit. The rest were a good balance of gifted things and less one-coord-only buys that I hope to make more use of, so let’s hope that works out.

Possible new looks

Well, of course, there was the capelet coord, that’s what I bought it for. I’ll have to find reasons to coord it again so that it doesn’t just wither away as a one-coord-only purchase. Everything else sort of has to wait its turn because they’re not quite items that I’d lean towards as immediately. Kind of ironic that it’s the two black items from my haul that got worn.

From March 2026.

From February 2026.

From February 2026.

Need and Replace list progress

No progress has been recorded here. Whilst I know that Me Likes Tea did a big preorder on overskirts, ultimately the price (and the lack of anything resembling gold) put me off from getting even one to get the wine one. Similarly, although I know that I could have gone antiquing or to certain indie brands for some of the bits on these lists, I really tried hard to stick to the no buy (and ended up buying other random shit, don’t judge, please). So the fewer little bits I bought, even if they were something that I was allowed to purchase, the less the door opened to other temptations.

Replace list

Need list

Current wishlist

The same goes for the wishlist items. There was one moment that was both a jumpscare and that gave me some hope when the exact cut of the BtSSB Antoinette Bouquet JSK that I’m after popped up, but in the wrong colourway. Hopefully that will open the gates to the correct colourway coming around. My top priority is still very much a pink Millefeuille bolero, though I continue to stalk through the various second hand sales places for everything. That being said, over the last three months I certainly felt the absence of more solids in my wardrobe and have heard the siren call of Physical Drop just that little bit more loudly.

Wishlist - main pieces

Wishlist - non-main pieces

New Year’s goals: progress summary

You know what? This may be the most measurable set of goals that I’ve had in a while, maybe even since I started doing these posts.

1. Did I adhere to my wish/need/replace list more strictly? That depends on how you look at it. On the one hand, I wasn’t buying much in terms of clothes. (Let’s ignore other spending for the sake of this blog.) That part was great. On the other hand, out of the two purchases I made, both weren’t strictly a part of any list. Which is a 100% fail rate. So yeah. Not ideal. But it certainly could’ve been much worse (and I know because I started a visual list of everything I nearly bought, which at some point will become a blog post).
2. Have I gotten back into meet organising? Managed to kick the year off strong with Hat Meet right back in January, so that’s one out of my minimum of four down. I really wanted to do a pancake meet too, but it was disgusting how packed my February was, bleurgh.
3. Wear Every Lolita-Specific Pair of Legwear Challenge progress? That’s 22 out of 78 worn in the first three months of the year, which is just under a third. What I noticed was that especially on WFH days, I tended to seek out more comfort, which usually meant tights over OTKs. So far that’s nothing to worry about just yet, but I definitely could do with going through my legwear a bit more. And probably should before the weather gets to the point where both OTKs and tights are uncomfortable to wear.

My wish at this point is that I can keep things roughly the same over the next three months. Yes, that doesn’t make for a very interesting post to read in July if it’s pretty much the same except that more socks got worn, but it’d be exceptionally good for my wallet. The seasonal wardrobe swap is happening today, which will give me those fake feelings of novelty as pieces come out of storage. Maybe I can sell a couple of bits whilst I’m at it to give myself a little fun fund for something new in my wardrobe because I’m really craving a more meaningful change within my available options.