Month: August 2020

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10 Tips for Surviving the Summer Heat in Lolita Fashion for Beginners

It’s a bit late in the summer for this post but as August is often the hottest month of the year where I live, I don’t think it is too late. Here’s a list of tips I have found that help me in the summer in lolita fashion

1.) Use your natural hair

Wigs are very fashionable in lolita fashion especially for OTT sweet coords, however all that extra hair can add a lot more heat to your head. This could be a great time to experiment with using your own hair and learning new hairstyles. If you must wear a wig, I recommend using a mesh wig cap and experimenting with shorter styles like a bob or a wig with shorter clip in ponytails to keep excess hair off your neck and excess bulk

2.) Use more natural makeup looks and a good setting spray

This can help prevent a heavy caked on feeling when your makeup starts to melt off your face. A good heavy duty setting spray can also help keep your makeup in place and from smudging when it starts to melt. Plus it’s harder to smudge if you have less on, colors closer to your skin tone are less noticeable when they start to smudge or fade.

3.) Trade a fluffy petticoat for a hoop skirt

I bought a short hoop skirt designed for lolita fashion this summer and it is one of the best purchases I have made. It has kept wearing lolita an option for many more days throughout this summer and helps keep the fabric off your legs just as much as a petticoat.

4.) Short frilly socks!

I’m usually a fan of these anyways but shorter socks or very light tights will help keep your legs from roasting! Knee highs vary in material but I always find I feel much hotter when they are on instead of shorter socks in the summer

5.) Short sleeve cotton blouses or chiffon blouses

I sadly don’t have the pleasure of owning on of those cute frilly chiffon stretch blouses yet but I imagine they are also an option that can help you beat the heat. Right now I own 3 short sleeve bodyline cotton blouses and they are my go to for the summer.

6.) Drink Water

This is just a general life tip but it is even more important wearing lolita although there are ways to stay cooler it is inherently going to be more hot than if you were to wear a crop top and shorts. Make sure not to get dehydrated and drink a bit more water than you normally would

7.) Wear more coords with skirts and blouses

This helps minimize the layers on different parts of your body, it only does this by a little bit but I have found that it does help. Alternatively you could try a blouseless coord, although I myself have not been so brave

8.) Wear an Undershirt

This one seems to contradict the top but this is more to save the integrity of your clothing. It’s a true fact that when it gets hot people tend to sweat and this could spell trouble for any of your light colored clothing. The undershirt will help absorb the sweat and keep there from being any embarrassing sweat stains

9.) Keep accessories to a minimum

Obviously a good lolita coord will require some basic accessories but in trying to beat the heat less is more. The less items you have on your body the less ways your body heat gets trapped

10.) Stay Safe

These are a few of my own tips but you should know your own limits. Lolita is not worth getting heat exhaustion or a heat stroke. You can always wear a coord for a few hours and change. If it truly is too hot that day, take a flatlay pic and look forward to the next day you’re able to wear it safely.

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Closet of Frills, Harsh or Helpful?

Hi!!! I’m back from my hiatus, I’m not dead I swear. This pandemic and graduation and general growing up has largely kept me away from this blog as well as the allure of keeping up on the other socials. It brings me a lot of joy to see that people were coming to this blog anyways. Thank you guys for being patient and I’ll try to be more on top of it in the future.

I have had very mixed feelings about Closet of Frills in the past, it has often seemed like a place where people would post and get coords ripped apart and was just asking to get put on Behind the Bows or CGL on 4chan. However, I’ve also come to the conclusion that it can be a really helpful resource for improving one’s coords and seeing lots of lolita fashion content on your feed.

I remember when I first started posting on closet of frills, the results were not the greatest. I got a lot more concrit than I had anticipated and had a bit of a hit to my confidence. I hadn’t realized how much of a beginner I still was in the eyes of many. It was hard to hear, and I also got quite a few comments that just weren’t very helpful. I got the famous, that’s not lolita comment but with no explanation. I had a post taken down because it wasn’t lolita enough and it had felt like I had gotten pretty torn into on another post. Both hurt, but I kept posting anyway in the hopes there would be something that people would like. It didn’t exactly happen but my thoughts on CoF changed when I posted an attempt at a halloween coord which looking back on it was pretty bad. However it was the first post I feel I received a significant amount of constructive criticism on, people were showing me reference photos of it done well in the comments answering my questions and giving me brand reccommendations for the aesthtic I was going for. It felt absolutely magical, then it clicked for me, the point of concrit isn’t to make you feel bad it was to help you improve and although this may be something that would just seem obvious and although I knew it logically it hadn’t fully settled that way in my head or in my heart.

I find that that kind of concrit genuinely helped me grow as a lolita. My style before I started posting had honestly stagnated and I had a bad habit of only buying main pieces and having the rest of the coord be an afterthought, my experience posting to Closet of Frills has helped me think about the style in a more holistic way which is great! I now actually consider more of the pieces and have spent a lot more time focused on finding the basics that can make what I already have more versatile, for example these silver tea parties!! Metallics match a lot of things and I like shiny things so it was a worthy investment, I’ll be able to wear them with nearly everything I have.

However, I have thought about my early posts which were admittedly, not great, and how it was super discouraging the way that some people chose to respond to my posts. I know it can be exasperating to see new lolitas making the same mistakes over and over again but I truly believe no one makes it out of their ita phase all by themselves. Kind encouragement and correction are the best in my opinion, and technically yes these people didn’t know me so they don’t technically owe me anything but I always think that it is better to be kind if you can. I appreciate all of the people who took the time to educate me on how to improve my coords and emphasized the importance of it. I am still learning till this day.

Closet of Frills in my opinion is ultimately a helpful resource and a fun place to look at coords but I do think people, especially those who have been in the fashion a long time or have little patience can have a tendency to get a bit harsh. Even when it’s something you might need to hear. I will continue posting and enjoying the conversations I can have with people about coords and seeing how I can improve and watching others improve too. In the end, I really like Closet of Frills.