Mermaiding and Sweet Lolita Fashion!
My fiance and I went to the mall today!! I’m happy to say I think I’ve finally filled out all the Kawaii accessories I need for the time being, I absolutely raided the Claire’s and hot topic and my chocolate bar earrings go great with my coord for today!
Needless to say I’ll be taking a month or two off but I now have so many options for my coords! It was such a great experience and I can’t wait for my comm’s virtual tea party!
I am so very happy that nowadays in Lolita fashion alterations are now being considered very acceptable and common place, back when I first started getting into egl it was not nearly as accepted or talked about.
I didn’t see much around that went against it but it certainly wasn’t a suggestion I saw people having and a lot of Kawaii channels on youtube would also have a fitness and weight loss element somewhere on their channel
As I think body positivity has gone more mainstream I think it seeped into Lolita fashion spaces for the better. I altered two of my favorite pieces in my closet the first one was a baby JSK that’s seams burst when I was wearing it. That gave me the courage to finally take it apart and add waist tie panels into the bust. The feeling of having the clothes I feel cutest in also fit me the best is amazing! One of my goals for the month of March is to get through my pile of skirts and dresses that need to be altered so that I can fully enjoy my wardrobe without the constant reminder that these clothes weren’t made for someone like me
I am not plus size by mainstream standards, I fall between a dress size 12-16 depending on the brand, that would put me into what I would consider mid size, but it makes even buying mainstream clothes difficult for me from time to time. When it comes to egl I without a shadow of a doubt would fall into the plus size category. However for years I would squeeze myself into pieces leaving red marks and making my body ache just to feel like I belonged, however every time my weight would inevitably fluctuate and a piece would refuse to zip I would feel an intense shame rise over me as if these clothes were meant to dictate what size I should be, not the other way around.
So when I finally upsized two of my pieces the sheer freedom and love I felt when I put them on was incredible. Due to liking the more solid control of hand stitching I had hand stitched these two pieces and it had felt like I had put love and self acceptance into every stitch. For the longest time I equated my health with size and weight due to my family’s history of diabetes but I realize now that every time I start focusing on my weight I throw health behaviors out the window! It’s still a struggle for me and I know I have a lot more work to do on my body image as time goes forward but I’m hoping by transforming the clothes I love to work for me I can start to have that work be just a little easier
I love doing this on a regular basis! I love just going through the egl tags on Instagram and just finding specific things to love! I always appreciate those who find the little details in their dresses to highlight, I think it’s so sweet and wonderful when lolitas are able to have like a relationship with their dress in how carefully they coord it, one of the girls in my comm is always amazing and has a great attention to detail in all of her coords and it always amazes me! I’m actually pretty lazy as far as lolitas go I think, I wear it daily so I think I only put that amount of effort into it for tea parties and events! I think it’s also great to look at other coords for inspiration and new ways to try things! I love getting inspiration for simple straight hair hairstyles since I have pin straight hair and it takes forever to curl
My favorite brand is Fanplusfriend! I was too tired to put in a full coord today as I was helping my mom move into her new house today, I wore this was a simple black skirt,
FanPlusFriend is the very first Lolita fashion brand I ever bought from!!! I got my TARDIS skirt from there and by the time I saved up enough money they were out of my size, but when I messaged them they made one more skirt for me, sadly I need to get the zipper fixed as it broke due to being well loved.
So I used the very scientific method of googling brand names with the year, I mainly found Angelic Pretty
It’s honestly really interesting to see these dresses! When I first got into Lolita Fashion I wasn’t really interested in the big brands that much, my first Lolita fashion love was FanPlusFriend and it still stands as my favorite brand till this day. I wasn’t super aware of these specific dresses when I joined the fashion
It was also difficult to pinpoint when I joined the fashion but I decided to go with when I got my first piece which was 2015, I joined my local comm in late 2016
I find it interesting that I didn’t actually pay these dresses much mind at the time given the fact almost all of the people I was following at the time we’re really into 2010s sweet and my wardrobe just ended up being quite gothic to start with. I now really enjoy all the sub styles but seem to gravitate towards sweet the most
I struggled with perspective but I think it overall came out pretty darn cute!
For this post I am going to share some of the amazing content creators I have discovered and have been loving recently!
First off is Kimbuucha on YouTube! Her channel is highly underrated she has wonderfully high production value and a charming no nonsense attitude if you have never seen her work I highly recommend you go check her out! I connected with her through both of us doing Vlogmas last year!
Secondly is the Stitchess! She isn’t strictly an egl creator but brings a much needed voice about sustainability and practicality to the Lolita fashion sphere on YouTube along with several videos well researched on the history of a variety of Kawaii subcultures and styles
Next is Sweetie Sprout! She is absolutely adorable and always has her makeup on point and recently put out an extremely helpful tutorial on how to tie bows properly
I also had recently found Pearlie Cute who’s content I enjoy greatly! I appreciate her clearly spoken and well worded video with her own views on the fashion and community
Cupcake Kamisama has also made an incredibly helpful series on her channel where she talks about the more in depth aspects of coording to help take your coords to the next level which I highly reccommend
This is only a handful of the wonderful Lolita fashion YouTubers you can find! What’s awesome is all of the YouTubers I have listed are currently active and worth checking out! Happy Valentine’s!
Looks like I’m playing catch up again! Hopefully I can integrate working on this into my schedule more successfully in the future.
So the book I chose to read again is “Stand Back, Said the Elephant, I am Going to Sneeze” this was a favorite book growing up due to me inheriting my father’s sneeze, given my interests and personality one would think that I would sneeze daintily like a princess. I do not, I sneeze one of the loudest sneezes, it’s like a yell. So my mom A, bought this book when I was little cause it reminded her of my dad and I with our gigantic sneezes, it was delightful reading it again and the illustrations are hilarious it’s so sweet, simple and funny.
I also really badly wanted to be a Zoologist as a kid, I changed my mind when I was older as I wanted to focus on helping humans more which is how I ended up getting into forms of social work. I still have a really special place in my heart for wild animals though
I have been watching “ homemade” Lolita videos almost every day, I love being a part of the Lolita fashion youtube space and have had an incredible time interacting with smaller creators. Right now I am writing this on my phone but a dream of mine for this blog is to have a page that is a master list of Lolita fashion content creators on YouTube. It’s really informative, fun and wonderful to see such a wide range of perspectives on topics in the fashion. I love learning how to better care for my clothes and try to participate in the fashion in a long term way. I really love the Stitchess for her emphasis on avoiding materialism and contributing to being a voice on sustainability in Lolita fashion which is an interesting topic which I have written an earlier post on this blog about! I also love watching Asami Moon because it’s great to see another currently active lifestyle Lolita which seems to be getting rarer these days. This past December I discovered Kimbuucha’s channel which has some of the most beautiful looking footage I have seen, it has great production value and she herself is amazing. This is literally just a handful of the YouTubers I love and watch, this also is just the kick in the butt I need to actually make that page!
Luna By The Lake With Cake 