[LBC] Pros & Cons: Keeping To One Style VS Multiple Styles

May 1, 2020 / lolitaland / 6 Comments

This week’s prompt is “Pros & Cons: Keeping To One Style VS Multiple Styles” … and this prompt really speaks to me.

I’ve pondered this question many times, even before I started building my Lolita fashion wardrobe. I’m sure other Lolitas have pondered this as well. I currently have multiple styles and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I’ll share my personal Lolita wardrobe story first, and then I’ll share a list of Pros and Cons.

Before I even started in the fashion, circa 2008 to 2011, I really wanted to start off in a single style: Gothic Lolita. When I was growing up, I hated the color pink and didn’t really like Sweet Lolita for all its pastels. I loved the Classic Lolita style since I’ve always been a fan of historic clothing, but the prices always seemed much too high. The first piece I ever acquired was a black Bodyline jumperskirt (although it was more punk than gothic). Before that, I only had offbrand things I found at thrift stores, or skirts that my mom and I worked on sewing together.

In 2012, when I started building my Lolita wardrobe, I took a surprising turn: Sweet Lolita! The reason was simple: budget. At the time, I stalked EGL Comm Sales on Livejournal religiously, on the hunt for secondhand deals. For some reason, and I’m not sure why, there were no affordable options for gothic styles that appealed to me. However, I did find a lot of cute Sweet Lolita items that were cheap. As an adult, the color pink didn’t bother me so much anymore. Part of it was probably due to my time reading the Gothic Lolita Bibles and KERA magazines, and starting to like pastel colors as well.

As you can see from my coord to my first-ever lolita meetup in January 2013, I am wearing (gasp!) some pink! I can’t recall the name of the skirt, but it’s from BTSSB. The blouse is just a basic white button-down shirt, and the bolero was a vintage item from a hospice shop. The large bow was hand-sewn, and the two smaller bows were from Forever 21 (and I still use those little bows all the time for coords!).

So, I went down the route of primarily Sweet Lolita, which was a total surprise! The goal was never to stick to one style forever though. I wanted to wear multiple styles. This is a desire I have not just for Lolita fashion, but for my wardrobe outside of Lolita too. I love fashion and being creative with outfits, but I also have different preferences for what to wear during certain times.

Eventually, I started acquiring Gothic Lolita pieces, and my wardrobe was split between the two styles. Below, you can see some of my coords from 2013 and 2014.

From 2015 to 2016, I acquired more Japanese brand pieces (and shifted from primarily shopping on LiveJournal to shopping on Facebook and MBOK for secondhand items). I also collected more basics like blouses, socks/tights, and accessories, and I started collecting a few classic pieces.

In today’s wardrobe, I have a wide variety of styles, and it can be overwhelming sometimes… but I have no regrets. I am not a lifestyle Lolita, but I do see myself as a collector Lolita. I love collecting different pieces! I don’t have much space, so it’s a struggle in a small apartment, but I make it work (even if it means stuffing clothing into vacuum seal bags or stuffing them into plastic bins and duffle bags…). Someday, I hope to have a proper closet where I can store my Lolita collection in one place. In my last LBC post, I shared my top tips for managing a wardrobe.

Now, for the PROS and CONS of Multiple Styles~!

PROS:

Variety of styles to choose from
- Do you want to go goth today? Or channel your inner Victorian lady? Or are you feeling sickeningly sweet and want to be all ice cream sundaes and whipped cream?
Unleash your creative side
- When you have multiple styles, you can also mix some styles together! Do you want to be gothic but lean into classic and look like a Victorian lady in mourning? How about combining some Decora with your Sweet Lolita? Or let’s create some fun Punk / Gothic vibes?

CONS:

Space
- Space? What space? Unless you can afford a larger apartment or to live in a house, you’re not going to have much space with your collection of multiple styles.
Time
- Especially when you’re new, building your wardrobe to accommodate multiple styles will take lots of time, and lots of saving money. Check out my Lolita on a Budget posts here for posts with advice pertaining to being a Lolita on a budget.

If you prefer keeping to one style, I’d love to hear the pros and cons in your experience in the comments.

Check out the other blog posts for the Lolita Blog Carnival!

The Bloody Tea Party // Cupcakes and Unicorns // Rose Sanctuary

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[LBC] Top Tips For Managing Your Wardrobe

April 24, 2020April 24, 2020 / lolitaland / 3 Comments

I think it’s fine to tag Loliita Blog Carnival as “LBC” again in the blog post titles, right? I’ve been participating in Lolita Blog Carnival more regularly lately!

This week’s prompt is “Top Tips For Managing Your Wardrobe.” To be honest, I need to implement a better way to manage my wardrobe, but it’s really tough when you’re living in a tiny (and cockroach-infested) NYC apartment. The closet I have has a broken door (it’s off the hinges and doesn’t close properly), so I try not to hang any of my lolita dresses in there. I store my lolita clothing mostly in a suitcase, and I also have a plastic container where I store more clothing item that does not fit in my storage suitcase. As for lolita accessories, I clean and recycle containers for hair accessories and jewelry (moon box tins for hair corsages and bows, laptop box for headbows, etc.), or hat boxes for hats and bonnets.

Recycling containers for hair accessory storage is effective and budget-friendly!

I’ll summarize 5 tips for managing your wardrobe:

Organize by item. Blouses? Put them all in the same container, or put them next to each other in the closet. Socks? Keep them in the same place for easy access.
Get more specific and stay organized. You can organize by color or style. For example, I put all my gothic hair accessories together in the same tin, and all my sweet and deco rings together in the same box. You can also organize legwear by ankle socks, knee-high or over-the-knee socks, and tights/leggings. If you wear certain items more than others, put them in a more easily accessible place so you’re not digging through too much to find things you wear regularly.
Designate a spot for loliable items or items that you also use for other styles. I have a duffel bag where I store my punk items, and another bag where I store my gyaru items. I also use some of these items for lolita coords, but I keep them separate since my biggest collection of alternative fashion is lolita, and it’s easier to keep those items separate. And when I’m planning coords and want to incorporate punk or gyaru, it’s easy for me to find what I need in these spaces.
Keep inventory. I know a lot of Lolitas who make a yearly wardrobe post, or have an album where they keep photos of all their items. I haven’t done either of these yet, but I do have a written list of items I keep track of. This is a great way to hold yourself accountable to what items you have and if you want to sell items, you can also refer to this list. During the beginning of my time in the fashion, I wasn’t good about keeping a list and I regret this since it was difficult for me to backtrack and add items to the list. I currently only keep track of main pieces, but it would also be helpful to keep track of accessories.
Separate items you are selling from the rest. If you have items for sale, separate them from the rest of your wardrobe so you can organize what you’re selling and easily find them when you need to ship them out.

Check out the other blog posts for the Lolita Blog Carnival!

Roli’s Ramblings // The Bloody Tea Party

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Lolita Fashion on Taobao (Part 3): 11/11 Edition!

November 10, 2019 / lolitaland / 2 Comments

Have you heard of 11/11? 11/11 is Singles’ Day and is a huge shopping festival with lots of sales, discounts, lucky bags, etc. You can shop the sales at Taobao, Tmall, AliExpress.com, and some other stores and websites participate as well.

Even though I could care less about Black Friday sales… I love browsing and shopping during 11/11! Sometimes, I spend hours just online window shopping. And when the budget allows for it, snagging some great deals during 11/11 is the best!

Some of the Taobao stores display their 11/11 sales more obviously than other. When you’re on certain pages, you may be able to see a promo for the 11/11 like the following for Bobon21:

Bobon21 is a shop with gyaru, larme, etc. styles and some pieces can be loliable!

On Empty Wardrobe, you can see where the promotion is outlined under the second little red box under the price, where you see 11/11-11/11:

The promotion above is for every 200 spent, you can get 20 discounted – and there’s no cap.

At Confession Ballon, you can even buy 1 blouse and get the second blouse free:

On some shops, like Rotate Ballet, you can see the 11/11 sale banner bright and clear:

I’ve had my eye on the brand Yolanda for a while, and it looks like they have a bunch of 11/11 discounted items too:

I’ve never purchased anything from the above shops before, so I can’t vouch for quality, but they have great ratings from Taobao shoppers from what I’ve seen in customer reviews and photos on the site. If you’ve purchased from any of these stores, definitely share your thoughts! And of course, share any other 11/11 deals that you find.

To make it easier to shop and browse, I also recommend the Google Chrome extension that automatically translates webpages. This only works on text though, so text within images are a no-go.

For search keywords, check out Part 1 of my guide.

For shops I’ve purchased from in the past, check out Part 2 of my guide.

Happy Shopping!