Taking Classic Lolita to the Next Level. Dare I say, OTT Classic?

When people hear "OTT Classic" there are a lot of mixed reactions, from "OMG that sounds awesome!" to "Impossible! There's no such thing". Personally, I feel that anything, with proper styling, can be made into a nicely put together over-the-top outfit, after all, OTT simply means that a style is a little more excessive than it usually is. To call a style of Lolita "Classic" we are simply implying a general aesthetic, one that typically is styled after elegant times gone by, not that there is some sort of cap to how many accessories you can wear. And after all, many fashions of the past are known for being very opulent and over-the-top in pretty much any sense of the term, so why should Classic Lolita simply mean "those plain Lolita dresses that sort of look like grandma's couch?" Just because Classic Lolita is generally thought of as the more "toned down" Lolita style that doesn't mean that there is a limit to how excessive the style can be, in fact, I think that because Classic Lolita is a bit more toned down that means that it doesn't take much to push it into the realm of over-the-top.


OTT Classic as the next big thing?
"OTT Classic" has been talked about on the sidelines of Lolita for a while now, usually when people are predicting the next big trend in Lolita. I can easily see the next big thing in Lolita being an over-the-top take on Classic Lolita! Classic Lolita has almost always been talked about as being the next big thing, and with people still hopped up on the over-the-top trend that came along a few years ago with Sweet Lolita, it only seems natural that the next must-wear style in Lolita will be just as outrageous.

It might seem a bit of blasphemy to those that love the simplicity of Classic Lolita, but OTT Classic is a style that seems to have everything that OTT Sweet had that made it pretty much sit on top of the Lolita world for the past 4 years. So, what makes are some of the things that make OTT Sweet so beloved that can easily be applied to Classic Lolita?

  • Print overload- One of the things that made OTT Sweet Lolita very popular was the abundance of cute prints coming out for Sweet Lolitas, and the same can be said of OTT Classic. Instead of prints featuring toys and cute animals, an OTT classic enthusiast could have her pick of any of the various Classic prints, from Juliette et Justine's opulent Rococo cupids, to more traditional clusters of huge floral bouquets. One upside to Classic that Sweet Lolita's rarely get the luxury of is the fact that floral prints can typically be bought domestically, either easily and relatively online or through local fabric shops, while finding a good Sweet Lolita print in a fabric store is nearly an impossible task and many Lolita seamstresses have to import fabrics from Japan, at a considerable cost. 
  • Accessory overload- While the OTT Sweet Lolita can load up on hair accessories, wrist cuffs, fuzzy brooches, cute rings, and all sorts of other things they can clip to themselves and their clothes, Classic Lolita has it's own version of accessory overload. Faux rose clips, fancy Victorian-esque jewelry, cameos, and pretty much any other jewelry element that is normally used in Classic Lolita can simply be multiplied and worn like it is in OTT Sweet. Take a cue from the Sweets and add some jewelry and accessories in places they weren't originally intended for, clip a cluster of cameos on a bonnet, pin a necklace fancifully on a bodice bow, or wear brooches in your hair.
  • Mixing in other Jfashion styles- I think that one of the things that made OTT Sweet so popular was it's versatility when it came to outfits outside of Lolita. Many Lolita's are sometimes a bit lost when it comes time to wear something other than Lolita, but OTT Sweet lovers had their pick of a variety of non-Lolita Jfashions to pick from that had a similar aesthetic, such as Decora, Hime, and Pop Kei. These styles could either be worn completely separately from Lolita, or even mixed and matched together to create outfits that were trendy and original. The same can be said of Classic Lolita, since both Mori and Dolly Kei are more and more frequently mixed in with the style and both share a similar aesthetic to Classic Lolita all while having much more relaxed rules.
So what makes a Classic Lolita coordinate OTT?
As I have mentioned, Classic Lolita is generally thought to be a much more toned down and refined Lolita style, so, personally, I feel that anything that is a bit fancier or more decorated than is usually seen in Classic Lolita could be called OTT Classic. This includes things like extra poofy skirts, excessive and opulent jewelry, purses shaped like fancy things, bold prints, extra layers (longer skirts worn under shorter skirts, boleros over blouses, jabots and wristcuffs added to blouses, etc), large bonnets, and non-cotton materials such as silks, chiffons, brocades, velvets, and gobelins. These are all things that, while they are undoubtedly a part of the Lolita fashion and aesthetic, are not often combined all at once in one coordinate, thus adding several of them to one outfit is usually enough to make it a bit more over-the-top than is normally seen in Classic Lolita

Much like with OTT Sweet, it is not just a matter of the dress alone making a coordinate, but rather how that dress is put together with other pieces and accessories. It is a combination of not just a prettily patterned dress, but the addition of accessories as well as hair and makeup styling. A dress with a Victorian wallpaper-esque print paired with a plain cream blouse, cream tights, a matching rectangle headdress and brown mary-janes is undoubtedly Classic Lolita, but pair that same dress with a chiffon blouse with billowing sleeves, a couple extra petticoats, a huge flower covered bonnet, lace tights, Victorian boots, a long lace underskirt, oodles of antiqued gold jewelry, and doll-like flawless makeup job and it just seems like the same dress has become something else completely, not necessarily something better, just something more extreme and definitely over-the-top in terms of elegance.

One of the Lolitas who I think is a perfect example of taking Classic Lolita to the next level is Steph from the blog Moar Lace Please. The following outfits are all from her blog, for more, definitely check out her blog!
  

Styles like this are also featured several times throughout various Gothic & Lolita Bibles, both in street snaps and photoshoots. Please excuse this very sparse sampling of examples from the Bibles! I have recently lost my folder full of every G&LB scan ever in a computer move and am still trying to get it back together!
  

A brief note about the phrase "OTT Classic"
I would like to add, one final time, that I am really just using the phrase "OTT Classic" to describe a style of Classic Lolita that is a little bit fancier and more decorated than Classic Lolita is usually perceived as being. If you think that these styles should only be called regular old Classic Lolita, that is fine. If you prefer to call them Neo-Rococo Phantasmagoria Opulent Antiquated Lolita, that is just fine too. 

I'm not necessarily saying that every time a Classic Lolita dons a bonnet with a few extra roses clipped to it that she is being "OMG a totally over the top wacky princess just like those OTT Sweet Lolitas!" I do not necessarily believe that every deviation from the standard idea of Lolita needs a very specific sub-style name or that things that deviate from the Lolita norm and do not have a very specific community approved sub-style name are all the sudden new and strange and no loner Lolita, but I do believe that, as a blogger, it's a hell of a lot easier to use buzzwords and brief descriptive phrases to describe things. You probably wouldn't have made it this far into this post if, instead of saying "OTT Classic", I said "This style of Classic Lolita, that, while still considered Classic Lolita, has leaning towards poofier petticoats and more accessories than what most people consider Classic Lolita". 

Lolita sub-style names shouldn't limit what can be worn in said sub-style, they just make it a heck of a lot easier to talk about the things we enjoy.

Bodyline's Like Brand Looks

The last time I really wrote about Bodyline was quite a while ago and they have definitely changed since then, and luckily that change has been for the better! For those you you who aren't too familiar with Bodyline, they are a very cheap and easy source for Lolita (dresses costing between $30 and $65) that started off as a costume shop knocking out cheaply made and overpriced Lolita-inspired lace monsters but they soon discovered that there was quite a huge market in selling "real" Lolita clothes for a fraction of the price of brands. True, Bodyline Lolita pieces are also a fraction of the same quality as brand Lolita but they usually look nice and hold up well to wear, and for the price, who's going to complain?

Over the years Lolitas have had many different feelings towards Bodyline. The relationship between Lolitas and our favorite discount dress store is sometimes complicated. They started out the butt of everyone's joke, then they shocked and divided the Lolita community when they released nice quality print replica's of highly sought after brand dresses for $50, then very slowly they started releasing better and better pieces with better and better original prints. I think some of their recent additions are seriously on par with brand, at least as far as design and print goes, and are often even a bit inspired by various brand prints. I have been considering these new Bodyline pieces something like the "Runway looks for less!" features you can often find in mainstream fashion magazines, the ones that show off a runway look and then feature similarly styled look-a-like pieces from department stores for much, much less.

Stripe Balloon Bears is a cute print featuring cute bears all lined up around the hem of the skirt. The print design is a bit reminiscent of Metamorphose's Honey Picnic or one of the many other bear prints that Metamorphose and even Innocent World has put out. Design wise, I think this is a very solid dress, it's a pretty standard OP style with a few extra bows and lace thrown in for good measure, and I'm such a fan of square necklines with the criss-crossing ribbon!

This perfume print is reminiscent of Angelic Pretty's famous Rose Toilette, only instead of a series of pastel colors, it comes in a variety of deeper jewel tones, perfect for the Classic Lolita who flirts with Sweet Lolita (or, if you will, the Sweet-Classic hybrid), which is something I think that the Rose Toilette print could have definitely used. I would actually love to see this in a JSK, because I am not too much of a fan of the OP styling,  it's cute, but it doesn't seem very versatile. Bodyline often releases several different versions of their prints on the English webshop at different times, and this dress just hit the English webshop from the Japanse one, so, who knows, a JSK version could easily be on the horizon. I hope so, because I do really enjoy this print.

This macaron and dessert themed print is undoubtedly cute! The styling of the print is very Angelic Pretty, and even features the desserts AP helped make famous in the Lolita community with  Dreaming Macaron, in fact, the print is a bit reminiscent of it, only featuring a polkadotted background and coming in much bolder colors than the AP print.

Sweet Cream is another adorable and relatively new Bodyline original print. This one, I do not believe, was not meant to pay homage to any particular brand print, but I think it definitely has a Baby the Stars Shine Bright feel to it, especially with the ice cream's neatly lined up along the bottom with the little ribbon swags. Ice cream and ribbon swag border prints are something that always reminds me of BtSSB. This is another piece from Bodyline that I think gets the Lolita JSK design down perfectly, it's simple, but it's elegant and can work well however you want to wear it.

This Bodyline Strawberry print instantly reminded me of the new direction Angelic Pretty has been going in, and even features strawberry slices along the border like in the recent Triple Tart print. I actually like Bodyline's version of the style much better! The print has much more details and gone are the questionable giant gingham blocks.


This Jewelry themed print practically screams Baby the Stars Shine Bright to me! Especially the pink and black colorway! I was instantly reminded of the black and pink colorway of Salon Music, a bit of the styling from Dripping Lace, and even a little bit of Metamorphose's Perfume Bottle print. Needless to say, this is one of the new Bodyline prints that I want to get my hands on most of all, even if it does seem a bit lacking in the poof department.

This waffle and fruit themed print is another print that reminds me of some of Angelic Pretty's more recent prints, the ones where they go a bit Emily Temple Cute. There's no directly similar piece to this dress that I can think of, but it certainly does remind me of something along the lines of AP's French Cafe or even Honey Cake, if simply because of the use of a more breakfasty looking print in a styling that is a bit simpler than most AP prints.

I'm not actually sure if these are supposed to be balloons or lolly pops, but this print reminds me a bit of Candy Treat, only with stripes, because of the use of such bold colors. Angelic Pretty is known more for their soft pastel, sort-of-blend-together-into-a-big-pastel-blob styled prints and Candy Treat was one of the first of their recent prints to start featuring bold pastel colors in a way that Metamorphose is more known for.

Could this print be any more Angelic Pretty in the height of their pastel-explosion-o-rama? From far away it could be anything from Toy Parade to Dreamy Dollhouse or any number of their other cute animal and/or dessert themed prints. It even comes in a lavender colorway, which is a lovely, but infrequently seen color for Sweet Lolita prints.

These are actually just a few of the new prints that Bodyline has come out with in the past few months! There are a bunch more on their webshop and hopefully there are more prints like this on the horizon for them. Now that Angelic Pretty seems to be going in a bolder and almost Otome inspired direction (at least as far as prints go!), Bodyline is a nice alternative for those not yet ready to let go of their love of pastel rainbows. I think any of these dresses would be an excellent way of building a print-based Sweet Lolita wardrobe on a budget or even for those of us who enjoy Sweet Lolita, but not really enough to fight girls for the newest Angelic Pretty release, who are looking to add a few creative Sweet Lolita prints to our wardrobe.

Personally, I hope to pick up a few of these! I have a very limited number of Sweet Lolita main pieces in pastel colors (I think I have exactly 2 pink skirts and 1 pink JSK I'm in the process of selling!) and at between $37 and $62 dollars a piece, these Bodyline pieces are the perfect way to add a little more color to my wardrobe for cheap!

Your Lolita World: Starting a Local Lolita Community


This Saturday I had the chance to hit up a local convention and get together with some of the local Lolitas that I haven't seen in a few months and catch up as well as getting a chance to meet some Lolitas I have never seen before. Even though I'm sometimes the hermit of my local Lolita community I really do love my local Lolita scene, it's full of fun people who like to do fun things while dressed fabulously, I really do regret that I cannot make every single meetup and casual get together in frills that our small state happens to have!

I do realize that not everyone is lucky enough to live in an area that has a large and friendly Lolita scene, but I do feel that there are enough Lolitas out there that pretty much no matter where you live there is at least someone else familiar with the fashion near you, sometimes it just takes a little hunting!

So, how do you find local Lolitas?
The Western Lolita scene mostly revolves around the internet, since we Lolitas are few and far between in the real world. EGL on Livejournal is one of the biggest English speaking Lolita communities on the internet, and you can find many offshoot communities on Livejournal, including communities for Local areas. So if you're looking for a place where Lolitas in your area might congregate online, scan the list of other communities to see if your area has a group of it's own. There are also a few Lolita forums sprinkled throughout the internet such as Dressed to a Tea and the My Asian Fashion forums.

Suggestions to liven up a dead community
So, you found you already have a local online community for Lolitas in your area, but, to your dismay, no one has bothered posting in it for the better half of a year (or more!). Don't despair, this doesn't necessarily mean that all the Lolitas in your area have just vanished off the face of the earth, it might easily be that they don't all know about this community or that everyone else is sitting around watching the dead community thinking the same thing as you, just waiting for someone to say something. So, what can you do to help bring some life into a dead Lolita community?
  • Post! A pretty simple solution is to make a quick intro post, a quick "Hey! How is everyone, I'm new here, anyone else from my area/any plans?", if anyone is lurking, they will most likely let you know they are there with a comment or two.
  • Post some more! Maybe your intro post brought out a few lurkers, but it still hangs there at the top of the community for almost a month and no one else is bothering to say anything. If that is the case, try posting a little more, but don't go crazy. Post cute local Lolita finds, suggest a good movie, ask what they think about something in the world of Lolita, whatever really gets people talking to each other, which is really the important part.
  • Recruit others. If the community is a bit dead, try to find people to join it! If you have a couple friends who are also interested in Lolita, ask them to join the community so it is a bit more active to people passing by who might be checking it out. If you don't know anyone who is willing, maybe people don't know about the community! With the permission of the mods of whatever larger Lolita community you happen to be a part of (be it EGL or a forum) make a post letting people know that you're a Lolita from wherever it is you are from and point everyone else who might be from your area in the community's direction.
  • Move to Facebook or another place more of you frequent. Our states Livejournal community was a pretty desolate place for a while, sure, we had meetups, but a big chunk of our locals weren't very active on Livejournal any more so meetup news traveled more by word of mouth. But, one day we decided to move our community over to Facebook and, like magic, the community seemed like it was instantly revived.Our old LJ community was averaging a handful of posts a year, but now there are always new posts happening on the Facebook community, group orders, possible meetups, silly things people find online, and it's especially nice to sometimes pop onto Facebook and see a little local Lolita community chat window flashing away! If most of you are on a different social networking site, or even a different online journal, consider switching to that one instead of Facebook, whatever is more convenient for your group. Be sure to put a notification about it on your old Livejournal community after the switch, since many Lolitas use Livejournal for community purposes, they will probably stumble across your old community first and wonder where everyone went!
  • Host a meetup. Once you found yourself a group of local Lolitas, even if it's only a very small group, consider hosting a meetup to meet everyone in person! 
Finding Lolitas at conventions
If you frequent anime conventions, you'll find that one of the easiest places to meet new Lolitas is at local (or non-local, if you like to travel!) conventions. Pretty much all you have to do is keep your eyes open and you're bound to come across one or another. If you're a bit shy about going up to strangers and saying hi just because you're wearing the same kind of clothes as them, consider going in Lolita if you weren't already, and they will easily come to you! An easy way of letting people know "Hey, you're a Lolita, I'm a Lolita, let's be friends!" is to whip up a batch of calling cards (I happen to love mini moo cards! They're such a unique size and shape!) with your Livejournal, Twitter, Blogger, or even Tumblr username so people can get in touch with you. Simply slip them a small cute card when you meet them or when you say goodbye.

Anime conventions often have Lolita panels or even hosted tea parties which act as a great way of getting a group of Lolitas to all gather in one place. If the convention you plan on going to lacks either of these, consider making a post on the convention forums asking if any Lolitas will be attending and host a very small, casual get-together at a convenient time and place inside the convention center. Something as simple as "Hey! Let's all meet at the couches near the cafe at 3 on Saturday!" is usually all it takes to host a small and casual meetup at an anime convention.

Some quick Lolita meetup tips and ideas.
Hosting a Lolita meetup on your own can be a big task, sometimes trying to get a group of Lolitas in the same place is as difficult as trying to herd cats. Your best bet would be to ask around your local community and see what it is they are all interested in doing, try to take their opinions into consideration. A local group that is mostly vegetarians and vegans probably isn't going to be interested in a meet at a steak house, locals who aren't fabulously wealthy probably aren't going to be able to go on a week long Disney cruise, and a group of Lolitas who are fancy ladies probably aren't going to want to go to a meetup that involves moshing at a concert. Try to find a meetup location that is either in a centralized area or is easily reached by public transportation. For example, myself and several other Lolitas in my state find it easier to take a train all the way to New York City for events than it would be attend a meetup that is geographically closer in my own state that happens to be in the middle of nowhere.

There are a lot of different places to host a Lolita meeup, all meetups don't have to happen at a fancy tea house or some other "traditionally" Lolita location. Consider any place you like to spend time at as a possible meetup location, it can be anything from a gallery or museum to dinner and a movie to a picnic in a park. You should also try to calculate how much any meetup is going to cost, including transportation costs, admission, food, and extra spending money, and let everyone who is interested in attending how much the meetup could potentially cost beforehand. No one likes to get somewhere to find out that they don't have enough money to afford it! If you're looking for meetups that are a bit on the cheap, that don't involve living near amazingly fun and interesting places, consider one of the following ideas:

  • An evening in- If you're very familiar with your local Lolitas, and you have enough room at home, why not invite them over for an evening of movies. You don't have to just watch Kamikazi Girls all night either! If your locals are more into cheesy 80's horror or sci-fi alien conquest movies, there's nothing stopping you from watching whatever it is you all want to watch! 
  • Lolita craft-a-thon- I love Lolita crafts, and crafting with a group of other Lolitas, preferably making cute Lolita accessories, is pretty much my idea meetup! This can either be done at someone's house, or if the weather is nice, and your crafts don't require power outlets, a nice park bench somewhere. Pack up a bunch of cute craft supplies and encourage everyone coming to donate a few of their own craft supplies, pool them together, and spend the day making accessories to match your outfits.
  • A themed dress photoshoot meetup- Many times all it takes to get a group of Lolitas to gather somewhere is the promise of getting lots of pretty pictures taken. Find an area with a nice backdrop, such as a park or fancy tourist building and ask everyone dress up following a theme such as favorite fairy tales, children's book characters, everyone wearing a different color of the rainbow, or whatever would make a great picture. A fancy camera or a budding photographer friend is a plus to these kinds of meetups, but is hardly necessary.
For a bit more of an in-depth how-to on how to host, and even attend, Lolita meetups, check out these two posts, this one on EGL (it's an old post but it's still very relevant!) and this one on Lolita Fashion. They both contain great information on everything from meetup ideas to what to wear! If you feel as if you are very shy and might be uncomfortable at a meetup, but you're very interested in going to one, check out this post by Her Curious Elegance with tips for the shy Lolita.

Keeping the community strong
Even though I was terribly shy when I first started going to Lolita meetups, I found a few of my best friends by not letting shyness get in my way and just going to the local meetups, why else would it be called a meetup if you weren't there to meet new people? It's not called a Lolita stand-around-and-stare-at-each-other. One of the most important parts of building a strong Lolita community is keeping up with everyone and forming genuine friendships, not just saying "Bye, see you at next year's Lolita meet!" and going on with your life. If you have a somewhat active online community, join in with the conversation between meetups, talk to people on instant messenger, and just generally be friendly with them. Of course, if you don't click with the people in your local group, for whatever reason, you don't have to force it. But if you do attend a Lolita meetup in your area or two and decide that these are your kind of people, there is no reason that they have to be people you only see a couple times a year at meetups.

Your local Lolita community might not be perfect, you don't have to be best friends with everyone in a petticoat who sits down to have tea with you, but so what? Even if the only thing in common you have with some people is you happen to wear the same fluffy undergarments and buy your socks from the same brand I still think that's something special, even if just because we Lolitas are such a rare breed. After all these years I still get excited when someone else even knows what Lolita is, not to mention has the guts to wear it. At the convention I went to over the weekend Christina of Ramble Rori hosted a Lolita panel and said something to this effect, about how excited she is to meet other Lolitas too, Lolitas of any experience or dedication level. "Oh my God, yes! You know what this is all about too!"and I really feel the exact same way, like meeting another Lolita is like finding someone else who is in the know about this wonderful, sometimes secret or misunderstood, world or frills and elegance, and fabulousness.

Metamorphose Temps de Fille Old School Lolita Elegance

Sometime last week I was on Twitter, tweeting about some older Metamorphose pieces that I loved when a couple other Lolitas joined in and we exchanged a few tweets about how elegant the older Meta pieces used to be. Metamorphose used to be my number one favorite brand, but a lot of their releases in recent years have sort of made me ask myself "Wait, why do I love them so much?" Not that their newer pieces aren't often lovely, they are simply quite a bit different from the older pieces that I fell in love with, and it seems like they changed so gradually that it was hard to notice when I started to fall out of love with them.

Older Metamorphose pieces, and I'm talking early to mid 2000's, even late 90's in some cases, have such an air of Victorian elegance that their newer pieces usually don't have. The lush floral prints, bonnets, great big bell sleeves, rich velvets, stark black and whites, and excessive use of lace were my ideal Lolita for years, and honestly, still is, even if it is a bit outdated.

I usually like to use GLB scans and "official" brand photoshoots and ads for examples, but instead, here are some of my favorite real life coordinates based around older Metamorphose pieces. These are all from Flickr, so credit goes to the photographers and models in each of the photos, click on the thumbnails to get to the original photo!
  
  
 



What makes older Meta pieces so special, to me at least?
Floral prints- I am a big fan of floral prints, if you couldn't tell! Even the grandma's-sofa-and-curtains-matching-set sort of florals make my heart flutter. I think a big part of it has to do with the nostalgia factor for me, since a lot of Lolita dresses when I first got into the style were made with floral fabrics, seeing just about anything in a pretty floral print instantly reminds of of the elegance of Lolita.
Bold colors- While nowadays Meta is fond of using bold colors in their custom prints, before the days that nearly every release was a print, Meta often used bold color solid pieces, as seen above in the jewel toned velvet dresses and richly colored floral prints. Rarely does Meta ever come out with a dress in a soft baby pastel!
Lots of lace- Older Meta pieces were known for having tons of lace, many of them were even made with complete lace overlays! But more often, they happened to have lots of lace details, either criss-crossing around a skirt or an extra wide ruffle of it about mid-skirt or even on hems. Believe it or not, much of lace Meta used back then was actually raschel lace, not all raschel lace is created equal!
Detail overload- I've talked about this a bit in my older post, Angelically Sweet, but I am sort of a sucker for detail overloaded Lolita dresses. Not necessarily accessory and print overload, but dresses that contain rows and rows of lace ruffles, extra wide bell sleeves, bows at every corner, and pin tucks all over the lace. Even a plain colored cotton dress gets kicked up to a sort of insane level of decadence when all of these are added to one dress.
Simplicity- I know, I just said I loved the overloaded details in the point above this! But on the opposite end of the Old School Meta scale is a much simpler elegance. Relatively plain jumper skirts with a bit of elegant embroidery, pleated minimum-poof skirts, and  even simply styled hair and accessorizing.
Old School headwear- Big floppy bonnets and extra ruffly headdresses were seen a lot in older Meta coordinates, and while they took a bit of working to look right, they really do look stunning.

With the apparent decline in OTT Sweet and rising interest in Classic Lolita I can easily see styles like this coming back in an updated version, maybe details will be a bit more refined, the lace won't be so ruffly, the headdresses and bonnets will be neater, and the colors might be a bit more muted. I think that this sort of elegance, whether it comes directly from Metamorphose or elsewhere, is just the sort of thing to add a little bit of both Classic and Old School flair to a wardrobe. It's a style that really helped define Lolita for a lot of people, not just for myself, and I think it still can still hold itself up to today's trends!

Metamorphose is sort of an in-the-middle brand for some people, it seems like you either love them, hate them, or tend to forget about them completely. So, what do you think of these older Metamorphose pieces? Do you think styles like this, extra wide raschel lace ruffles and all, could make a comeback? Or are you pretty happy with it staying in the past?

10 Misconceptions About Lolita


Lolita is often a very misunderstood fashion, a lot of different people think a lot of different things about it, not all of which are anywhere close to true! I am sure anyone who has worn the fashion a fair amount in public, or even someone who simply loves to do the occasional Google search for "Lolita" has heard any number of these applied to themselves and the fashion they enjoy so much. The following misconceptions are ones that I have often heard, either told directly to me, or talked about in forums where people didn't think Lolitas were listening! Of course, not everyone outside of the Lolita fashion feels this way, but these are just some of the more negative or generalizing misconceptions that some people seem to have about Lolita fashion, as well as a little bit of musing, and a little bit of ranting, about why people feel this way about Lolita.


1) It's named "Lolita", which is also the title of a fictional book about a sexually promiscuous young girl, so that must mean that people who wear Lolita are doing it because they want to attract pedophiles! 
Probably the #1 misconception about the Lolita fashion is that we must all be pedo-bait simply because of our name. Hearing things like this always sort of makes me shake my head in disbelief, even though I had been hearing a very similar complaint before I even discovered Lolita, the good old "Goth?! You're so stupid, don't you know that Goth means a style of architecture/was a tribe of invaders? How can you wear architecture/invaders!?" Honestly, the disbelief comes from the fact that I find it hard to believe that people who say things like this have ever even read the book Lolita, or know anything about classical architecture or Roman history. Am I going to be lectured on the original meaning of "decimate" as well? 

Here's the thing, I know what the book Lolita is about, I have actually read it. I also know that the term was coined years ago in a non-English speaking country that often uses English words in ways that we don't. I also know that sometimes words have multiple meanings and that sometimes, over the years, words change to mean different things. 

Years ago, for whatever reason, the world "Lolita" was coined to describe our fashion. Why? I honestly don't know. Speculation is that "Lolita" got loosely translated to mean a young girl and thus got applied to that group of girls dressing in what looked like young girl's fashion, "Lolita" being a foreign girls name and the fashion often taking inspiration from more Western and less traditional Japanese youth's fashion, the name just clicked. For the record, Lolita looked significantly different in the mid 90's (which is the earliest I have noticed the term "Lolita" used to describe the fashion) ago than it did now, so the current idea of what a Lolita should look like, actually looks very little like whatever it was that made people want to call it Lolita in the first place.


2) Lolitas love anime, they must if they are always dressing up as anime characters!
Believe it or not, Lolitas actually have many different interests. Some love anime, some don't particularly care for it, very few of them are wearing Lolita simply for their love of anime. 

Lolita is not an anime invention, quite the opposite actually, Lolitas are in anime because it was a real-world fashion first. To say that people wear Lolita because it is occasionally featured in anime is the same as saying that people dye their hair unnatural colors just because anime characters frequently have naturally colored hair.


3) Aren't all Lolitas completely obsessed with the fashion to the point that they've built a lifestyle around it? Don't they all wear it constantly while sipping tea on their pink stuffed animal covered bed while listening to classical music?
No, not even close. Again, Lolitas actually have a lot of different interests, just like regular people, no two Lolitas are exactly the same. While some Lolitas choose to wear the fashion as much as they possibly can and live the Lolita Lifestyle, to most Lolitas the fashion is really just that, just a fashion. A fabulous and frilly fashion that they spend hundreds and hundreds of dollars on, but a fashion none the less.



4) I thought Lolitas are supposed to be polite and nice all the time!
This is often the cry of someone who, upon joining an online Lolita community for the first time, somehow manages to get into an argument with someone and is completely shocked to find that *gasp* Lolitas are arguing back and generally not being cupcakes, kittens, and rainbows. Yes, believe it or not, most Lolitas are not in perpetual polite mode, at least not any more than any other regular human being is. 

This fact is often used to shame Lolitas "For a bunch of girls dressed so pretty, you sure acted ugly, tsk tsk." Frankly, this assumption is complete BS. Not only are we Lolitas, but we are also just, more or less, regular people. We're not playing some sort of strict roll-playing game when we slip on a petticoat. You wouldn't shame a Goth for smiling, a Hippy for wearing shoes, or a Punk for engaging in an activity that doesn't involve throwing bricks through windows, so why shame a Lolita the instant they steps outside of the Lolita cliche?


5) Lolita came from Japan, therefore it's only okay when Asians wear the fashion.
I really hate to hear this. I especially hate to hear this from what are, otherwise, perfectly pleasant to be around people. It always sounds so, well, racist. "Oh, well it's okay when those wacky real-life-anime Japanese people wear Lolita, it is just what they do over there, but when normal people wear it, it's just weird!" There is absolutely no reason why non-Japanese cannot wear Lolita. Lolita is, by no means, a traditional Japanese style of dressing, even if it is heavily embedded in their pop-culture, so you can't even make the argument that it is disrespectful towards their culture to wear it (side note: here's an interesting blog article about "borrowing" cultural dress as a fashion statement!). People all around the world, of all different races, wear Lolita fabulously.



6) Most Lolitas don't have the confidence, aren't fashionable enough, or don't have the right kind of looks to wear "normal" clothes, so they wear Lolita to feel pretty, because they can't any other way.
A misconception that many alternative sub-cultures face, not just Lolita. When someone dresses strangely, some people feel that it is because it is the only option for them, for whatever reason. Even if this was true, that Lolita was only worn by people just trying to find a way to feel pretty or special, what would be so wrong with that?

Many of us want to feel special in some way or another, why should someone get to say that there should be a line (at least, within the realm of fashion) that you cannot cross to feel that way? If wearing Sugary Carnival and a hat shaped like a merry-go-round is the only way you can think of that will make you happy, no one really has the right to say "No, that's just too far! Wallow in your misery until you find something socially acceptable that will make you happy."

While Lolita might not be popping up in mainstream fashion magazines, urging everyone to buy the newest Angelic Pretty dress, or how to get that Juliette et Justine look for Bodyline prices, it can still be just as challenging to create unique coordinates in as it is in any currently trendy or even high-end fashion, and it usually takes twice as much guts to rock even the simplest Lolita look with confidence as it does more mainstream fashions. So, to say that a Lolita knows nothing about fashion just because they're not wearing a fashion you're familiar with is just silly, and I'd like to see the fashionista who who sneers at the Lolita try to put together a creative coordinate using a Lolita's wardrobe and not come out looking like a hot mess.

7) Lolitas are people who are trying to relive their early childhood. Either because they were picked on and abused as a child, or they have a sexual fetish for it.
Things like poofy dresses, the color pink, and pigtails are often synonymous with little girls clothes (regardless of the fact that, more and more, it seems like little girls are just dressing up like little grown-ups nowadays!) some people make the assumption that we must, therefore, want to be little girls again. The truth is, most Lolitas are perfectly content with their current age, and the ones that do dress childishly, are just one of many facets of the Lolita fashion.

I really don't know why people often assume that the childishness in the fashion is either the result of a dark and buried past, or a secret fetish, but this is another thing that seems to often be the case with alternative sub-cultures and fashion, that when someone sees someone wearing something strange it's for a strange reason, not simply because the person wearing it happens to like the way it looks.


8) Lolitas love attention and just want people to stare at how strange they look, why else would they wear something like that?
This is another one of those things that makes shake my head in disbelief, the idea that only people who are dressed "strange" want people to look at them. Nearly every fashion trend in casual mainstream fashion seems like it was meant to get people's attention. Walk into any clothing store and you'll find tons of tee shirts either with witty sayings meant to provoke a response from people, blunt proclamations of what you think about yourself, what kind of significant other you're currently on the prowl for, or to loudly proclaim your favorite bands/movies/hobbies; open up any fashion magazine and you'll find it filled with articles about how to make yourself stand out in a crowd in the trendiest way possible. If standing out is such an apparent crime, why aren't more fashion magazines talking about the most inconspicuous shapeless sack dresses to wear this summer and why aren't there more clothing stores devoted to completely utilitarian extra large plain grey sweatpants?

Everyone seems to be obsessed with drawing attention to themselves, but if that attention comes from an out-of-the-ordinary fashion, then it's all the sudden bad attention. Except that, most of the time, those of us who put ourselves out there and dress "weird" are really doing it only for ourselves, not so that others will look at us, but because we truly love the way it looks and feel our best when we're wearing something we completely love. Most of us don't actually love it when strangers yell obscene and stupid things at us, in fact, some people hate that kind of attention so much they are afraid to wear what they love.


9) Only spoiled rich girls can be Lolitas! They must just sit around all day buying clothes online with credit cards mommy and daddy pay for, how else can they have expensive things that require more than a minute to put on? 
Believe it or not, some people actually have jobs. Jobs they use to help fund things they enjoy, like wearing clothes. Life is not spent either working 24/7 or completely devoted to playing dress up. While Lolita does take a bit of dedication, most Lolitas are completely capable of managing their money and their time so that they can fit the clothes into their budget, and the fashion into their lives. Besides, Lolita doesn't really take that long to put on!


10) Lolita fashion is way too strict! There are rules for everything! How can you express yourself at all if you have to remember about a thousand stupid rules about how you're supposed to look?!
I feel like this might be the opinion of someone who thought they might be into Lolita, tried it, and found it too difficult, and now they have quite the bitter outlook on the fashion. While, yes, there are "rules" to Lolita, there are also "rules" to every other possible fashion style out there. After all, you wouldn't say you're a "jeans and tee shirt kind of gal" if you rarely bothered to wear jeans and teeshirts, so really, there are rules to something as simple as that as well. While the guidelines for Lolita are sometimes a little more complicated than other fashions, they are fairly generous and can easily be bent and even broken if you have even a moderate grasp on the fashion.

In regards to expressing yourself while being limited to a certain set of rules, well, the Lolita fashion is not the only way Lolitas express themselves, in fact, most everyone finds other ways besides just their clothes to express themselves. Just because it's hard to work a hoodie announcing your favorite band to the world (see misconception #8) doesn't mean that Lolita is necessarily trying to stifle you underneath a layer of lace, petticoats, and strict rules about skirt length.

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