Luna By The Lake With Cake

5 Video Games that Give of Lolita Fashion Energy

5.) Child of Light

I haven’t actually finished it but it is such a beautiful game and it’s fairy tale theme lends itself well to inspiring a lot of the same motifs and energy that lolita fashion gives off. Also you can play multiplayer with a mouse!

4.) Pokemon

Your comm is full of fairytale girls and ghost type trainers. It’s just a fact of life. I swear the DS and then the switch are the official gaming consoles of lolitas.

3.) Neko Atsume

This games time I’m fairly sure has passed but it was super cute and cat prints are always bloodbath releases

2.) Animal Crossing

Every person in my comm either has this game or wants this game, also you can wear lolita fashion in the game!!

1.) Love Nikki

This is the most intricate and plot heavy dress up game I have ever seen and I love it to pieces, I am again late to the party but it is so fun! Also you can collect lolita dresses in game.

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Moving Out, Moving On

Tonight, I am moving into my very first apartment. I have been bringing my stuff over for the past couple days but it isn’t the same as actually spending my first night there. This is a goal I had for myself since the beginning of my senior year of college. I wanted to say that I moved out of my parents place Sept 1st, I wanted to show that I was going to be a successful adult and I wanted my parents to be proud of me. Especially since earlier on in the year I decided that I was no longer going to go to graduate school right away. If ever. I am excited but there’s a lot I didn’t expect, and with that there’s also this genuine feeling of grief.

I expected my fiance would be coming with me earlier in the year. I’ve known for a while now that he wasn’t ready yet and that is 100% okay. I want him to be able to take the time to work on himself and I didn’t want to rush him. However, that changed the picture I had in my head last September when I set this goal for myself. I never expected that my first apartment I would be living alone. Earlier in quarantine one of my best friends said she’d love to be my roommate and that still stands true but in the current economy it just wasn’t realistic for her skill set. So, now I move out to go live alone. I won’t be able to have any pets either. I have never before in my life lived by myself, some of it is super exciting like being able to choose to have a whole room I can dedicate to my Youtube/Tiktok/Instagram content and being able to decorate in a way that I will love. (I have ordered so much pink stuff and fanart) It’s also very scary though, I haven’t talked about it a lot online but I do have some mental health challenges, mainly ADHD and an undiagnosed blob of anxiety and feeling outside of reality when things get really stressful and being by myself, I don’t know how my brain will respond to that honestly.

Although it’s scary I do genuinely think I was ready to go though, this next step has been pushing me to make healthy changes already. I called to meet with my primary care provider for the first time in years and I’m actively looking for a therapist again. I’ve also been way more careful with my money and there is genuine joy in getting to provide a nice place for my siblings to go from time to time. I think one of the hardest things about moving for me is that I have grown very close to my 4 younger siblings that live with me and that my home has 7 other people that live there! I have been surrounded with a pretty big family for the past 11 years after my oldest younger sister that lives with me (let’s call her Usagi cause she looks just like Sailor Moon) was born. Before Usagi was born I was pretty much an only child since my family was split and my other sister lived with my other parent. Ever since then I’ve always felt like I had a solid role in my house as an older sister and being that oldest sister has always been a key part of my identity in ways I didn’t realize. Of course moving doesn’t mean that I won’t be their older sister, heck I picked out my current car in order to make sure I could fit them all in it so I could bring my little siblings to my new apartment to play D&D. I guess it’s just overwhelming to realize that it will just be my and my thoughts way more of the time. I don’t know if that’s a good or bad thing. I guess I will just have to find out.

I also feel like there is this sense of grief for childhood. I never really felt like a kid, I don’t know if anyone does really. Looking back on it, I don’t remember anything before the age of nine and a lot of my childhood is characterized by a sense of guilt of not being able to be everywhere at the same time since I was in a split family and loved all of my parents. There was a ton of great stuff too, I remember getting spoiled with books from my dad and showing off how fast I could read things and going on family trips. It’s a bittersweet mix of memories and now I am an adult. Legally you become an adult at 18 or 21 depending on where you live but me having my own place, car, phone, health insurance and life makes it really feel like childhood is truly over. I’m also in a place my parents really didn’t get to be, which makes me feel proud of us all. I just have no blueprint on where you go from here. The more I look around it seems no one does and that scares me. Although I can seem like quite the spontaneous person I like to know what the expectations are, and there just isn’t any to be had. Or not any that I like. It’s exciting and terrifying to know you can carve your own path and I guess I’m just afraid of wasting it. What if I botch it? I only get to exist in this life, in this time, with these people one time. I’m terrified that I will waste this or mess it up. Then I wonder if you live genuinely can you ever actually waste your time? So I suppose there is only one thing I can do is to live my life as true to myself as I can and being the best person I can be. I have to trust that my God and Goddess will take care of the rest.

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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.

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The Special Attachment to Lolita Fashion Items

I am for the first time ever as a Lolita selling some of my clothes. I am going to be moving out of my family’s home soon and as I went through all of my things I realized that it was time to let go of not just my normal things but to also go through my lolita fashion. It was more emotional than I was expecting, almost every item that didn’t make the cut has a story connected to it. Lolita Fashion has been a core part of my life for the past 5 years and although I am still learning a lot about it everything in my wardrobe on some level has a deep meaning to me.

For many individuals outside of the fashion it could be hard to understand why one would be so attached to their clothing. Although many people have sentimental items of clothing I believe that Lolita Fashion engenders a special kind of attachment to the clothing that people purchase. For many Lolitas buying the clothes is more than just buying a dress. It can feel like achieving a sense of identity and community and finally feeling like yourself. It’s a special something about these clothes that has made people fall in love. In a way selling my lolita fashion items feels like a breakup. An acknowledgement that it’s time to move on from things, and that’s hard. Clothing that has never fit is finally leaving my closet, to make space for my life to be more organized and my wardrobe more optimized, but the memories baked into all of the seams of the clothing I’ll be selling will be hard to say goodbye to.

I love clothes so I go through my clothing fairly often I would say and although I do have sentimental value with a lot of my clothes nothing really compared to the feeling of going through my wardrobe finally. I said goodbye to my first Angelic Pretty item, it never fit but I was so happy to receive it, I said goodbye to a dress I got in a lot from a very kind member of my comm, I said goodbye to my first attempt at a casual coord. However as I went through this, my more rational senses came to me and I knew that saying goodbye to the items themselves doesn’t mean saying goodbye to all of the early memories of lolita fashion. Those are a part of me now, and I had a blast doing all of those things and even if one day I decide to leave the fashion all together (which I doubt will ever happen) I have every wonderful experience that being in this community has given me

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10 Unique Things I Learned to do because of Lolita Fashion

This fashion has inspired me to do so much with my life that I wouldn’t have done otherwise.

1.) Blog

If it weren’t for lolita fashion this blog wouldn’t exist!

2.) Sew

This one is a combo effort of both my interest in cosplay and lolita fashion, however the very first major sewing project I did was a questionable lolita dress

3.) Make Jewelry

I made some cute strawberry charms just last week!

4.) Care for my clothing

I’ve always been a bit of a chaos being but getting into a fashion that I loved has helped me value and care for things more than I did younger.

5.) Organize

I have discovered that I desire to have my space match the aesthetic more and being messy isn’t very lolita-like in my mind. It’s also just way more pleasant.

6.) Needle Tatting

I just learned how to do this yesterday and it is really fun, it’s still pretty rough though

7.) Embroidery

I have yet to apply this to any clothing making but I hope to in the future

8.) Baking

This is just an adorable hobby and I have been having a blast adding beginner foraging to it

9.) Makeup

I straight up looked like a clown in makeup before I started this fashion bless you all for teaching me

10.) Basic Hairstyling

I can now cut my hair confidently and do a whole range of hairstyles.

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Gaps in My Wardrobe I Need to Fill

I have been in Lolita for a few years now, but I am still learning a lot and my wardrobe has grown rather slowly from the restrictions of being a student both in high school and college. I also have a tendency to impulse buy random things that catch my eye. I’m attracted to the idea of minimalism but I love the aesthetics of elegance and opulence and I am often torn. I watched a really helpful video by the Stitchess about making a wardrobe table and it has been monumentally helpful in guiding some of my purchases. I did impulse buy a couple things recently but I am quite proud to say that it all fits in my table!

	Mint	Purple	Sax	Pink	Black	White	Red	Beige	Navy
OP					Qi Fanplusfriend/Haenuli Phantom		2 Fanplusfriend	Cheval de Bois
JSK		Secret Hospital	Bodyline Cat Piano/Swan dress	Bodyline
Blouse				Strawberry Witch(Just Bought)	Bodyline	Bodyline
Socks									BtSSB
Shoes				Offbrand + Angelic Pretty Wedges	Witch Heels	Covergirl Heels
Tights						Plain Offbrand
Bows				Angelic Pretty
Skirt	AP Gelato			Love Nadia (Just Bought)	F+F Underskirt				F+F Doctor Who

It’s not fancy but it’s helped!

As you can see, I really need some socks. So I now know that looking at this chart that if I want to be able to coord more with my current pieces, I should focus on some socks and shoes and that I’m doing well on filling in my blouses! I’m trying the keep it 1-2 items per category.

I find that this system gives some focus to what was feeling like an increasingly cluttered wardrobe as I love all 3 of the main substyles of lolita fashion. In the future I also want to make a separate accessories table but I need to organize and since all jewelry could technically go with lolita fashion it’s going to be a longer process. Ialso don’t know if it makes more sense to organize by theme or color

On my immediate wardrobe workhorse wishlist in order of priority

Socks!!!! I need so many more socks
Shoes
More petticoats
Accessories that match more coord themes
Things that I can work into more work wardrobe

By using this in the future I hope that I can maximize the usefulness of my wardrobe in the future and keep improving my coords! I’m also trying to use up my scrap pile to make some items to fill out this table. I want to practice my sewing skills and minimize spending and trips out. I look forward to sharing those

I have really enjoyed using this system to organize my purchases and my wardrobe and I highly recommend it!

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Lolita Room Makeover

In being sent home from college suddenly, I found myself thrust into my childhood bedroom and pretty much everything about it felt wrong. So I took it upon myself to do something I have wanted to do for a long time. I completely “lolified” my room, although I love wearing sweet and gothic classic aesthetics have been starting to really appeal to me! So I took it and ran with it and gave my room a classic x sweet makeover. I didn’t think to take some before pictures unfortunately but I’m delighted to show what it looks like now!

I used a lot of wrapping paper and double sided tape for the walls as I was asked not to paint them! It’s not perfect but the results make me really happy. Have any of you decorated your rooms with the lolita aesthetic in mind? How’d you do it?

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How Lolita Fashion Makes Me a Better Big Sister

I have 5 younger siblings, I come from a split family so one of them is 19 and we share a mother, but the other 4 are all under 11 years old. I feel as if Lolita Fashion makes me more able to connect with them and I think that’s special. I wonder if anyone else in the community has much younger siblings and feel better able to connect. I still love to sing and read fairytales so whenever someone wants their sister to read them the entirety of Hans Christian Anderson’s Snow Queen over the course of a few nights I’m the one there. Today we had a Princess Day as I have been loosely trying the lolita lifestyle challenge.

Cute sandwich I made for Princess Day. My sisters had Dolphins with a heart

It was so much fun! We played cards, sang songs and dressed up. My 5 year old little sister has been excited about this day since it had been planned about a month ago. Last night she excitedly exclaimed to my parents that today would be Princess Day and picked out a poofy pink dress to match mine. I am so grateful in these moments and especially in this current situation to have something that brings so much light into my life that I can also share with my siblings. My 10 year old sister was curious about the fashions itself and I got to show her what Decora and Fairy Kei are. She absolutely loved looking at both and it brought me joy that I could share something with her. Comfier clothes are more her scene and she thought Decora looked especially neat.

This aesthetic encourages me to bring a lot more adventure into my life and since I still live at home for the time being it means I get to bring more adventure into their lives as well. I appreciate having siblings that are so much younger than me. It gives me excuses to play faeries and superheroes and this brings me so much joy. We live in a rather rural area which means we can go outside and have no contact with other people which I am also extremely grateful for. We had a tea party by the brook a mile away from my house with orange cookies I made. It was absolutely delightful

In what ways has being in the Lolita Fashion community unexpectedly made your life better?

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What is a Lolita?

There’s an exceedingly simply answer to this question. It’s an individual who wears lolita fashion, but to those of us who hold our frills deep inside our hearts and consider ourselves to be lifestyle lolitas this question may be a lot more complex and hold different answers for each of us. I know it does for me. Ever since I was little I dreamed of being a lost princess and of fairytales. I romanticized everything and in the poetry I wrote people were transformed into royalty, flowers and gemstones. Everything was fantasy and fantastical to me long before I ever discovered what Lolita Fashion was. Sadly, no people from a tiny forgotten country came to inform me that I was in fact a princess. So when I saw Lolita Fashion in it’s most derivative form searching for a prom dress my junior year of high school. Something clicked. I ended down a rabbit hole of blogs and youtube channels with Parfaitdoll and FYeahLolita showing me the way. These resources aren’t nearly as active now as they were then but I still hold both of these blogs close to my heart. I watched Deerstalker Pictures and Pixielocks when she was still a Lolita herself. I still love watching PrincessPeachie even though she has largely traded her frills for the more comfortable fairy kei. This was a world that I immersed myself in and learned so much about and fell in love with.

The clothes themselves were beautiful and sparked joy in my heart but what was even more important to me then what the clothes looked like was what they meant. It was a way to assert my independence in a way that felt comfortable. I felt like myself when I wore them. It said to the world that I am feminine and I am strong and I control the image I have for myself. The frills spoke of the strength of the heroines in my fairytales and that that strength is inside of me as well. It showed me that I have the ability to achieve my goals in a way that makes sense for my life and in a way that isn’t defined by the others who are around me. At 22 years old, I still want to be a Princess as defined by virtue not birthright. I want to be kind, organized, responsible, and beautiful. There are so many beautiful bright princesses in the Lolita community that I adore and look up to. There are girls in my own comm that I admire with all my heart and the sense of community I have been blessed with in this fashion is incredible. I have so many wonderful women that I can turn to in a time of crisis or visit their animal crossing islands. It’s a group of individuals outside of my day to day interactions and that kind of connection has been truly precious to me.

There is also a magical and mundane aspect to me as well. Due to being in this community I have learned so many life skills I wouldn’t have learned without it. I learned more about sewing, cooking and baking. Things that should be basic life skills but don’t seem to come up very often. I learned more about music, poetry, other languages, how to budget, and how to write about my own experiences all because of this wonderful aesthetic that I am so delighted that I get to live in.

I think as time goes on what a Lolita is to me changes but at its core it remains similar. To be a Lolita is to be a modern day princess with all of the strength and courage that that implies. It’s to be able to stand on your own two feet and do what you love. Its being kind to others and taking care of your life while not sacrificing what makes you happy. It’s something that I truly love that in this lifetime I get to be.