There’s nothing wrong with being a solo Lolita, but comms and therefore meet ups have been a pretty integral part of our community for quite some time! Many comms seem to develop a default “meet planner” and it’s good to be able to help them out, or become that planner! The more meets you help plan, the more meets there will be.
1.) Look at what there is to do in your area for your comm! There may be lots of tourist traps, restaurants, parks, recurring festivals museums, etc. One of my favorite parts of being a Lolita is getting to do and see all of the local things I would otherwise not be very likely to do in my area.
2.) Consider the mean budget of your comm, does your comm typically do extravagant meets or potlucks? If you mostly do potlucks, there is nothing wrong with having a more extravagant meet more aimed at the members with larger budgets but now that you will have smaller attendance and possibly make some members feel left out. I find that it gets easier to balance this as time goes on. Especially if you make sure to plan a range of meets. If you’re comm does do more extravagant meets, there may be some members who are very relieved if you do schedule something like a potluck! Nothing wrong with either kind of meet.
3.) Choose what you’d like to do based on the prior information! Other things you might want to consider is any accessibility issues your comm may have. It’s not uncommon for there to be a few members with disabilities in a Lolita comm and they will greatly appreciate it if you consider them in your planning.
4.) propose the meet to the group! Also, propose some dates, and be sure to set a date once a majority or consensus is reached. If you don’t the meet is liable to never happen. If you have the ability to help with transportation, offer a hand to those who live near you! It helps keep the meets alive. Double checking logistics also helps keep any last minute snafu’s from occurring. Always double check dates and if you need reservations.
5.) Have fun at the meet! Take pictures, talk with friends and enjoy whatever activity is at hand.
If you live in a temperate climate like myself, what the actual weather may be might be roulette. Checking the weather ahead of time will help keep you from being shivering cold, or boiling hot. My area can be anywhere from 35 to 70 degrees in what is traditionally thought of spring.
2.) Beware of Mud
Mud can be everywhere. Mud is deceptively hard to get out of things. Don’t fall in the mud. I lost an old dogi to that. I highly reccommend having a change of shoes. Tea parties are for inside this time of year.
3.) Lots of Layers
The weather mentioned in the first point??? Can change during the day if you have a climate like mine. Cute coordinated layers can be a life saver. I love cardigans this time of year.
4.) Experiment with different motifs! Think of ways to use other seasonal items
I have a lot of red for my winter wardrobe! Red works well with berries, berries are often thought of for summer coords, but I think they work equally well for spring. You can also use pieces from Christmas sets as smaller accessories if colors match and the print isn’t too obviously christmassy. I also enjoy adding florals in order to make Coords more “springy” regardless of what is actually on the print.
5.) Rain Gear
I do not yet have this, but cute rain gear would be a great addition! I’ve seen waterproof parasol’s before and one would be a perfect addition to protect your doors. Cute outerwear has become increasingly more accessible, so keeping an eye out for pieces that work with your wardrobe would be a good idea. (I need to take my own advice here)
Maybe? I think so. It’s always been a bit of a topic of discussion in the Lolita community whether you see yourself being a Lolita forever. When I started there were a lot more lifestyle lolita creators around and there was a lot of passionate declarations that they would wear lolita to their graves but as time as gone on. I’ve seen many of them grow out of the fashion into more toned down more wearable soft feminine fashions, and there’s nothing wrong with that. With the shift to treating Lolita fashion as a fashion you can take on and off in more recent years I feel as if I’ve seen it have more staying power for people. I feel as if the lifestyle lolita idea was suffocating for some people and it felt suffocating once peoples interests and hobbies changed and I think that’s a bit sad. There is no need to be a lifestyle lolita to wear lolita fashion and I feel as if once upon a time those two things were expected to go together and you couldn’t just wear the clothing on its own, or at least there was some sort of internal pressure that people felt. With Lolita fashion being such an extravagant fashion there has definitely been “part-time” lolitas for a long time.
I personally consider myself a lifestyle lolita but I make sure that I don’t force myself to be anything I’m not. It just makes me genuinely happy to try to live my life to a “lolita fashion ideal” that I have defined for myself. I try to do and wear things that bring me joy and bring kindness into the world. I don’t know if I’m always successful but I try. As far as the clothing itself, I think it suits me very well! I look best in lolita in my opinion and it’s something I can’t imagine ever giving up. I haves spent years collecting my wardrobe and developing my style and I genuinely feel like I just now barely finally got the hang of it and are happy with my coords more often than not. That took me over 6 years to fully get! I imagine that I’ll develop and grow even more as the years go on in this fashion and there are infinite possibilities and avenues for me to explore. For example I have hardly touched classic lolita in my time wearing egl so if I ever get bored there is always something new to develop and explore. I feel like lolita fashion exists almost as a skill based hobby where you can infinitely reach towards a perfection you will ultimately never be able to achieve and that is so exciting for me! Two of my hobbies outside of lolita are karate and ballet and they are the two sports I never quit. (I played a lot of sports when I was a kid) Once I get a sense that I have “completed” something I will often get bored and leave. I compare lolita fashion to ballet and karate due to them having in common what I believe is the spirit of reaching for that unachievable ideal. I think for many people this is an exhausting notion that can wear them out and that is entirely understandable, but I love it. It means I can cherish these activities forever and will never tire of them because they will never be completed.
Once upon a time I did wonder if I would quit lolita fashion after becoming a mother, I don’t have children yet and they are about a decade away in my life plan at the moment but I do want them some day. I thought about the practicality of the dresses chasing after little children and babies and when they are little it is quite possible I’ll take a break. However, I have seen so many lolitas on social media that have become mothers recently and it hasn’t hindered them at all. Also, how exciting will it be to get to share something I love with my children, I want my children to know me well when they’re all grown and lolita fashion has been a big part of my life for a good chunk of my life at this point and if I’m still in it when they’re born will be the majority of my life. I fell in love with the fashion from afar at 16, and starting wearing it in earnest at 18 and am about to turn 25 soon. I want my children to grow up having known who I was as a person and I think stopping what I love wouldn’t help with that. It’ll be fun for them to have unique stories and for me to have reasons to go out and get to be just me from time to time as well.
And then once they’re all grown and off, how fun will it be to be an eccentric middle aged woman then an eccentric old woman. Since lolita clothes are made to fit a variety of sizes with shirring panels and waist ties I may get to keep a lot of my wardrobe for the majority of my life. I have pieces in my closet that fit me at 135lbs and at 210lbs and how awesome will it be to tell a young person that I have had a dress for 40 years and maybe show them a picture of myself wearing it 20 years ago. I would love to host tea parties for my grandchildren (if I have them, who knows what my children will decide) and pull out cute china sets and bake cookies for them all dressed up. Maybe I will be able to pass down clothing I no longer care for to any of my young relatives who are interested and tell them stories about all the fun things I got to do with the friends in my comm. I am so excited to get to grow and change throughout my life
And then there’s now, my local lolita fashion comm has really helped me fight off that common loneliness from when you graduate school. Since my friendships with them were never based on seeing them in classes or living with them in dorms they didn’t fade. We have meets regularly so I am able to go out with a friend at least once a month and I feel so blessed to have them. Some of my best friends are from my lolita comm and they make me so happy. The clothing itself has brought me so much joy but the community I think has become even more important to me as time has gone on. The lolita fashion community is unique in how active we are and how much we value going to do things together, I talk to people in other hobby groups in my area and they describe having a harder time getting to do things or making friends with the people they are in groups with.
Lolita Fashion is so special to me, and I can’t imagine ever giving it up, but I will never force myself to keep wearing something if I don’t love it anymore. The egl community has given me so much to do, introduced me to fun hobbies and lifelong friends. So for now, in my heart of hearts, I truly believe I’ll wear it forever.
Happy Belated ILD! I was mostly focused on editing this week’s YouTube video of my get ready with me so I was delayed in my blog post! My comm went out to an amazing Italian place for lunch and had an amazing time, it had been awhile since we had a sit down meet and I missed them a lot from the last time we talked. However I talked so much I was the last to finish my food! Which hardly ever happens since I usually have a bad habit of inhaling my meals sometimes. The company was just too good.
I really love how my makeup and curls came out! It’s a shame I didn’t take coord shots before the meet though since the wind pretty much destroyed my curls for the outdoor coord shots
I ordered the big Italian omelet which was absolutely delicious! It was a huge fluffy omelet on top of hash browns and a baguette which you can’t see in this photo. It has sausage, pepper, onion, mushroom, tomato and mozerella with pesto sauce on top! It was so good
The lighting in the restaurant was amazing but it was way too crowded for us to have taken coord shots inside. It was so cute and cozy in there!
It’s a bit windswept but I really loved my coord for the day
Hello everyone!! I hope you are all doing well! This month’s theme for Bibliotheca is Food! Back in college I went to library near my school and they were having a 50 cent book sale and in that book sale I found this adorable book called ‘Tis Tea Time, for this month I originally wanted to make one of these recipes but with the holidays didn’t have time although I hope to make and review these in the future! I searched to see if this book was in publication anywhere but it genuinely seems it may have been specific to this Western Women’s Herb society you will see mentioned throughout the recipes!
The book itself is absolutely adorable! There are some sections on the history of tea but some of it is not quite accurate, so I didn’t include it. Also I wanted to focus on the recipes in the book since this month’s theme is food!
I think it’s cute that the sweets come first in this recipe book even though the book itself acknowledges you should always serve savories first.
Desserts!
Savories!!
I love all the little cute illustrations through this book.
Whoever curated the recipes for this book was a huge fan of cream cheese, which is fine by me. I love cream cheese.
Alternative Drinks
I am very happy to share this with you! Hopefully it gives you some inspiration if you choose to host a tea party! Maybe I’ll start a video series or some livestreams on my youtube channel trying these out at some point. They look delicious! If you try any of these let me know how it goes!
Drink some water, eat good food, get some rest, I hope you have a wonderful day!
This is the simplest! Just take hair from the side of your face, twist it then pin behind your ear, I like wearing it when I have earrings I want people to notice
Half Up Twin Tails
Pull your hair back from your temple as if you were going to put your hair half up, then divide into two, use your brush to smooth out and get your tails as high as you want them, clip on accessories once your done!
Gyaru Poof
I got this hairstyle from the Gyaru community it takes no time at all and looks adorable, grab all the hair from the front of of your face pull it up and then twist and clip! Be sure to push it forward a little bit before you clip it so it makes the poof
Twist Crown
Start on one side of your part and twist adding a little bit more hair each time you twist, it’s important to keep sections as small as you can for structural integrity with the shorter hair, do this all the way around your head and tuck the end behind the beginning of the twist at the top of your head. Then attack with Bobby pins until you feel secure.
I have a lot of breakage in my hair due to swimming in chlorine and just now starting protective measures for that. Since mine had lots of flyaways, I sort of hid it with a flower crown and bow and I think it looks really pretty!
Hopefully this inspires you to try some hairstyles of your own!
I really love how elegant and practical her coords are while still capturing the sweetlolita spirit! She posts pretty frequently on instagram.
2.) Princess Peachie
She was the first egl youtuber I watched and I still love to go back and visit her content. It’s still very influential to my more OTT styles.
3.) Momoko
I honestly don’t think there is a sweet lifestyle lolita who isn’t influenced by Momoko at least a little. I take a lot of inspiration from her on how to coord my more solid pieces without prints.
4.) Admittedly Anime
Long before I knew what lolita fashion was I was exposed to the aesthetics of it through anime, and it quite honestly still influences my style, I know lots of lolitas like to distance the style from that but for me it is still heavily influenced by anime aesthetics.
For me the meaning behind lolita fashion is the ability to express myself however I want and participate in a community of like minded people who love the same things that I do. It’s a great way to experience life and adds a touch of whimsy and escapism that a lot of people seem to lack in their adult lives. I have finally settled in with a 9-5 job in my early 20s and I love everything about the stability it brings. However it can sometimes be hard to romanticize such a mundane life. For me lolita fashion allows me to continue to live out my dreams of being a long lost princess I had as a little girl all grown up. It also allows me to connect with other members of the community in a really fun way.
For Others
I collected some statements from around the web and got a direct quote answering the above question
“♥What is Lolita?♥ Lolita is a very hard style to define, but in my opinion what really defines it is it’s childlike innocence and old-fashioned elegance. It’s distinctive style is most obviously from the Victorian and Rococo eras, but you will see a lot of influence from the Edwardian period and even some 40s and 50s American clothing styles – any time period in which fashion was elegant and beautiful. The bell-shaped skirt provides the typical silhouette, but it is neither what makes something lolita nor is it required of all lolitas. There is no one item of clothing or a color or trim that embodies all that is lolita – it is a unique aesthetic that’s hard to perfect. To some there’s a lifestyle attached – not only wearing the clothes as often as possible but also taking part in lolita activities and following a certain code of etiquette – but to others it is merely a clothing style. Lolita can be an escape from the mundane, or an attempt to return to a more innocent time in life. It’s something a little bit different to everyone, but what lolitas have in common is a shared desire to wear really awesome clothes.” – Lolita Fashion Handbook, 2006
« Lolita fashion for me is the ability to be the real me. When I am wearing full OTT sweet I feel like this is my true form. I am 39 now and I hope I keep this feel for many more years. » FluffyKawaiiJo – 2021 Email Correspondence
“I am quite a colorful person. I have a wide range of interests and various ways that I express myself. Lolita Fashion has been a part of my identity for quite some time, but I have not thought about how integral lolita fashion is in my life until now! To say lolita fashion is just an aspect of my life would be a bit of an understatement. Lolita fashion is a huge part of my life. Much of my spare time involves lolita fashion in some capacity. In addition to this blog and my YouTube channel, many of my other activities center around lolita. I draw it, dress my dolls in it, and create my own jewelry and charm pieces to compliment my wardrobe. When I have a few free minutes, I often check on the latest items being sold on ClosetChild, LaceMarket and brand name online Lolita shops. My most used smartphone application in addition to Twitter and YouTube is Amino, as I am very involved with multiple lolita groups there!” MagicalGirlMe – 2017
Being a lolita or wearing ouji, is it part of your identity? “Yeah, it really can be. I found that there are some people in my community who are genderfluid as well… They are dressing how they identify, and some people even may identify as male, but they dress in the feminine style of lolita. We all accept them no matter what. We’re all a family, we’re all here to help each other out. We’re not here to bitch at each other and brag to each other, we’re here as friends.
I lived in Burlington, Ontario from when I was like one to when I was 18. When I moved out of my parents’ place, I said like, “Screw it, you guys aren’t respecting who I am and how I want to present myself.” So I went over to Toronto, and I’ve been here for like a year and a bit… It’s been the most thrilling experience to be here. You get to be a part of different communities, and you find your family in Toronto. That’s the best part.” – Alex, Vice Interview 2017
Cassie Dai: “I first got into Lolita fashion around eighth and ninth grade. Although I’ve been exposed to the culture when I was in China, I didn’t look into it. What made it my passion now is because two large Lolita fashion companies, Angelic Pretty and BABY, the Stars Shine Bright all have stores in San Francisco. There are other Angelic Pretty stores in America, but the San Francisco BABY is the only one that is still open. So every time I went to Japantown in San Francisco, I had more contact with the culture and eventually fell in love with it.
Lolita culture is a subculture that originated in Japan around the 70s. I really enjoy getting to know other cultures, mainly the subcultures because I’m not a huge fan of mainstream pop culture. It is also a way for me to cope with Bipolar Disorder. If I’m depressed, I can dress myself up and treat myself well. It makes me feel better about myself.” Cassie Dai. 2020 The Wildcat Tribune
“For me, lolita is about the culture. The friends you can make who you would never have met. This fashion acts as an ice-breaker, a common interest to tie together complete strangers. I will cherish forever the relationships I’ve made because of lolita” – Vanilla Bear, 2016
“Lolita fashion is a youth street style originating from Japan that draws on Victorian-era children’s clothing, Rococo aesthetics, and Western Punk and Gothic subculture. It is worn by teenage girls and women of a wide range of ages, and through the flow of related media and clothing aided by the Internet, Lolita style has become a global phenomenon. Wearers of the style are known as Lolitas, and local, national, and global communities can be found around the world outside Japan from North American to Europe. This study is a cross-cultural comparison of Lolita fashion wearers in Japan and North America, examining how differences in constructions of place and space; conceptualizations about girlhood and womanhood; perceptions of beauty and aesthetics; and formation of social groups and actor-networks have bearing on how an individual experiences the fashion. This work deconstructs Lolita style by using Japanese cultural concepts like shōjo (‘girl’ as a genderless being), otome (maiden), kawaii (cuteness) to explore the underlying framework that informs Japanese Lolita’s use of the fashion as a form of subversive rebellion, creating personal spaces to celebrate their individuality and revive the affects and memories of girlhood that are distanced from gendered social expectations. English-speakers, not having the same social and cultural knowledge, attempt to recontexualize Lolita fashion along the lines of feminism, sisterhood, personal style, and escape from the ‘modern’ to give meaning and purpose to their involvement with the fashion. Lolita fashion allows wearers to travel in between the lines of becoming-girl and becoming-women by offering a way to access girl-feeling and its associated happiness object” – The abstract of a study by An Nguyen.
Nguyen, An, “Maiden’s Fashion As Eternal Becomings: Victorian Maidens and Sugar Sweet Cuties Donning Japanese Street Fashion in Japan and North America” (2012). Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository. 1042. https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd/1042
Back when I played hockey there was an infamously cold rink we would play at sometimes and my mom always got me these motion activated heat packs. They were usually pretty thin and if you knew you were going to be outside for a meetups you could put those packs into your boots and pockets pretty comfortably
2.) Fingerless Gloves
This is less about keeping warm and more about what’s practical for a Lolita meetup, lolitas love pictures and most devices nowadays need to have the pads of your fingers touch the screen to work. This way you won’t be having to take your gloves on and off when you’re helping out your friends with their pictures
3.) Fuzzy Bloomers
I think they’re adorable for loungewear and it’s good to get all the layers you can get to stay warm outside! Where I live right now it’s in the single digits (Fahrenheit) I think those paired with fleece lined tights or leggings and you’ll be all set
4.) Carry a Warm Drink or Soup With You
If you have a thermos it will double as a warmer for your hands and warm you up inside. If it’s not too inconvenient for your meet I think it would be a great way to be able to keep ensuring the cold.
Even though it’s February I am still getting my goals prepared for the year! For me personally I feel like my goals I really kicked off when I get into February since I take January to recover from the holidays
1.) To finally get through my repairs pile
2.) To make it to Paradiso and have a really fun time
3.) To decorate and organize my wardrobe
4.) For the world to settle enough to have regular meetups again
5.) To sell everything I feel I’ve outgrown or doesn’t match my wardrobe
Luna By The Lake With Cake 