Letter to My Future Self | 365 Lifestyle Lolita Challenge

I used a website called futureme.org so that I’ll remember to read it! It emails this to the future but here is my letter

Dear FutureMe,
Where are we at right now? I finally learned not to have expectations on how my life will go this year, about every 4 years I seem to change my mind on what I want to be when I grow up, but now that I’ve grown up it feels a bit like a silly question. I don’t think anyone’s ever “grown up” and that’s exciting and terrifying. Like at the moment my fiancé and I think we’ll want to wait until our 30s to have kids but maybe we won’t. Maybe I’ll be a social worker still or maybe I won’t. I just hope I’m happy and connected to people who love me. This is the first year I’ve felt this safe despite the pandemic going on right now. I finally opened up to all of my mental health stuff in therapy and boy it’s been terrifying and exhausting but I hope that it’ll all be worth it for future me and the people I have yet to meet. It’s been odd having to contend with how truly hurt I’ve been and realizing that I hurt other people in ways I didn’t mean to when I was young. Are we still connected with college friends? Did we ever reconnect with high school ones? What new people have we met? Where are we at with therapy? Are we still in therapy? I have so many questions and yet I know I’ll find out in due time. I wish you well

Sincerely,
Past me

Learn a New Easy Hairstyle | 365 Lifestyle Lolita Challenge

So I decided to try one of the hairstyles in the video below!! It seemed a good cross of some of my interests!

Please excuse the giant pile of Xmas presents at my parents house behind me

I decided to try to do the heart buns!! They’re a bit messy since my hair is shorter but I think it’s cute!

Dealing with Mental Health and Shopping in the J-Fashion Scene

Like many Lolitas I struggle with both overspending and mental health issues, it’s often a common theme in jokes in the community and I have talked about it before on my channel and in this blog but due to a recent bout of extreme overspending I thought it was due time I talk about it again.

I don’t want to be a hypocrite, I’ve talked about financial responsibility and Lolita fashion many times on my platforms and I always say I want to do better and I have overall gotten better but I’m still not where I want to be yet and sometimes that makes me feel fake when I want to have these discussions. Also my improvement can feel agonizingly slow or minute, the biggest example is that my last spending binge was on blouses not dresses and that genuinely felt like a win for me even though it caused me to be late on paying my car payment.

Admitting that so publicly feels embarrassing but in a space where overspending is normalized and sometimes I feel like it’s glamorized too, I think it’s important we talk about these things in a serious way from time to time. It’s okay to joke around to cope but I feel like there is a serious lack of looking at the actual consequences of overspending in this community which for many of us is linked to mental health issues.

My overspending happened when I had to take a break from going to therapy until my new health insurance benefits kick in, and although I was debating whether the hard work in counseling was worth starting again this recent spending binge answered it for me.

There’s nothing wrong with impulse buying a dress that you can actually afford from time to time but when it starts to seriously impact your life you need to take a step back and ask why you are actually doing this. It’s hard and uncomfortable and trust me I’d rather find a new way to transform into a frilly cupcake than to examine deep seated emotional issues (I’m writing this article just as much for me as for you) if you can afford it, I highly reccommend getting professional help and if you aren’t in a place where you can reaching out to a friend who won’t judge you but won’t let you bullshit them.

For this month I’m going to try not to buy any new items, I thought about trying a 6 month spending freeze but I think baby steps will suit me better. Once I start therapy again I’ll definitely be talking to my therapist about ways to avoid this

Jfashion is meant to be fun and a distraction but it’s escapism can easily crash back to reality if it starts to affect your financial health. Take care of yourselves. Have a wonderful night.

Trying Out Wearing a Binder with Lolita Fashion

I got my first binder this week!! I was way more excited about than I realized I would be! I accidentally wore it for a bit longer than a beginner user of a binder probably should. I loved what it did for my silhouette in Lolita fashion. Due to my bust which is now 43” and a 36I, I often have trouble getting the bottom heavy silhouette and can make it the most attention grabbing part of my outfit even when I don’t want it to be. Here’s an example of one of the outfits I wore recently with my binder

My binder doesn’t make my chest flat by any means but it did make my blouse fit better and not have that annoying gap. I think my current one may be slightly big since I took the advice and erred on ordering a bigger size for safety’s sake. I hope the smaller one I have in the mail will work well for cosplay.

I got the GC2B tank binder and it was surprisingly comfortable, I’m also really happy I took the advice of going to a commercial safe binder instead of trying a diy method which would have been very unsafe.

Wearing this binder made it feel like I could make my body less of the focus and the clothing more of the main attraction, I will say to be safe since my first time wearing it I liked it so much I accidentally wore it a little longer than I should have.

Happy New Year!!!! | 365 Lifestyle Lolita Challenge

I want to write more on this blog this year! Far too many of my favorite blogs I read when I first joined lolita fashion have been disappearing and I feel traditional blogging is an important part of our subcultures history.

One of these blogs is what I am pulling from for many of my posts this year! I plan on participating in the 365 Lifestyle Lolita Challenge from Lace a la mode!

Without further ado!!! My goal for my wardrobe this year is to get some leg wear!! I have pretty well filled out getting blouses and shoes this year however I am still lacking quite a bit in the leg wear department. I have recently acquired cream and white knee socks but at the moment it is all that is workable in my wardrobe. I have a bad tendency of losing socks

I also want to get better at caring for my clothes overall, it’s something that I struggle a lot with. Hopefully that will make it so I lose less of my socks going forward, I use to have a pretty full collection of ankle socks before I lost the majority of them.

Doing Vlogmas!

I have been extremely busy this month! I’ve been doing Vlogmas on my YouTube channel and have yet to miss a day! I’m really proud of keeping on top of it. I also just started a new job. It’s my first time doing overnights so I’m a little nervous. It’ll be good though.

Vlogmas has helped keep me occupied my first holiday season living on my own. It’s been a bizarre year. I was absolutely delighted when I saw that there was a vaccine being distributed earlier today. I know it’ll still be awhile before things can go back to normal but it feels like hope on the horizon

I’ve been keeping holiday spirits up decorating around the house and calling family and friends. I’m happy that I don’t usually feel alone. In some ways I feel more connected than ever and I am so grateful for that.

I had a little bit of a hard time with my life transition and stress ordered a lot of blouses. At least I got wardrobe staples this time ^^’

One of the coords I made!

Leaning on Nostalgia to Get Through this Year

After finishing watching a long slew of Princess Peachie videos, videos from when Pixielocks still wore Lolita Fashion, and reading ParfaitDoll through the wayback machine. I realized that I have been really embracing the 2010 sweet aesthetics that I adored when I first discovered Lolita Fashion on the internet when I was a teenager. I think clinging on to things that gave me comfort before can be helpful, especially when I had to catch myself looking at triggering content for two days before I realized I was doing it. Nostalgia seems the much healthier alternative, the bright colors and familiarity just warms my heart and emulating the idols who helped me get through some of the hardest times in my life in my existing memory has brought me more peace that I could have realized. I love seeing people embrace the things they love and I should be more careful not to deny myself of that.

In the past week I am delighted that I have finally figured out the perfect way to do heatless curls for my high pigtails, although I should get one of those classic twin tail wigs at some point. I also want to create more moodboards and allow myself to really dive into living the lolita lifestyle more. I had been really burned out from work and living in a pandemic but going wild and saying you know what a lace headdress and false lashes are okay for work if it’s a saturday has helped me remain excited about life when things seem really bleak. Lolita has always been this way for me but I think it’s exaggerated with everything going on.

Here’s the coord I wore to work today!

Clothing Care Advice from Someone who struggles to care for their closet

I have ADHD something I’m pretty open about on my social media but this is something that makes caring for my Lolita clothes pretty difficult from time to time and I wanted to share practical advice for making your life easier when you are taking care of your Lolita fashion clothes

1.) Have two laundry baskets, one for clothes that can go through the washer no problem and one for handwash only clothing that way you don’t accidentally ruin petticoats or brand

2.) Don’t be afraid of the washer for more sturdy pieces, but when in doubt line dry.

3.) On that note, have a place where you can easily hang things to dry, I’m blessed to have a porch with a clothesline but if you don’t have that invest in a drying rack that you can set next to a sunny window

4.) Get a clothing steamer, mini iron and ironing board and be sure to store it near your wardrobe so you will actually use it

5.) Pick one day of the week to accomplish hand washing tasks and stick to it that way your brand doesn’t sit in a ball for weeks on end

6.) Don’t be afraid to go professional with more tricky pieces