Taking a Break from EGL + What I've Been Wearing

 So, I have a confession: I haven't worn lolita in over a month. The past few years, I've worn lolita at least twice a week (if not more). It felt so exciting to finally be able to wear the fashion regularly as an adult! 

And then my now-husband got a concussion. 

My husband did indy pro wrestling as a hobby, and he had his first big cage match in July (12 days before our wedding). We both knew there was a risk associated with wrestling, but up until then, he'd never had an accident. 

My best friend and I got dressed up to see our partners wrestle. I coorded my new BtSSB torchon lace socks with some vintage platforms and Dir En Grey bag, and I felt adorable. We even got to check out the new PopMart in our mall! 

 During his match, my husband took a move wrong, got a concussion, and stopped breathing for a minute. When he came to, he couldn't remember who the President was, if we'd been married yet, or what he did that morning. We rushed to the hospital, and sitting in the ER waiting room in my coord, I just felt like an idiot. I was terrified, nauseous, and my petticoat waistband was cutting into my stomach. 

My husband has made a full recovery (and is taking a possibly permanent break from wrestling), but I haven't really felt inspired to wear lolita since then. It's very bittersweet for me; I've been obsessed with EGL for over a decade, and have always felt beautiful and happy when I wear it. Below are some photos of 11-14 year old me wearing some very hodgepodge coords; I was lucky enough to have a supportive family, access to eBay, and a family friend that lived near BtSSB San Francisco. 

When I say lolita has been a lifelong love and interest, I truly mean it, which is why it's really hard for me to suddenly not feel that passion and spark. I'm really hoping it's just a phase that will pass; I still love looking at my wardrobe, making coords and flatlays, and keeping up with brands. I've just had no desire to put a coord on. 

I do, however, have a backlog of coords from the past few months, so I'll go ahead and drop those below. 

I wore this to get dinner and celebrate my 25th birthday. Everything is Moitie save for the blouse, which is Meta. 

This was a casual coord for crafting in the park with my friend! JSK is Cornet, blouse is Meta, socks and necklace are VW, headpiece is Marble, shoes are Docs and watch is Moitie. 

A coord for my best friend's bday brunch. Blouse is Excentrique, bustier is IW, skirt is handmade, jabot is Sheglit, canotier is AtePie, gloves are Moitie, socks are Meta, shoes are Yosuke and bag is Jean Paul Gaultier. 

A coord for a butterfly show date with my husband! It also matched my Blind Guardian LP. OP is Kuno:Noku, arm warmers and canotier are AtePie, jewelry is Moitie and Etsy. 

This is probably my favorite coord of the year. Everything is Moitie save for the AtePie blouse, offbrand tights and Yosuke shoes. I got a half-wig that matches my hair so I can play with length, and I love it! 

Now, for the fun part: if I haven't been wearing lolita, what HAVE I been wearing? 

I've always had a hard time defining and finding my personal style, and while I don't want to intellectualize every part of my life, I think a big part of that comes from my very categorical, compartmentalized way of thinking. I tend to go very hard into one specific thing, and then I inevitably feel constricted and move on to my next source of inspiration. It's taken me a long time to be able to tell my brain that it's actually ok to combine different categories of things, and I think that's when I was able to find my actual "personal style." Though who knows, this could just be another phase of experimentation! 

I like EGL because it's so rigid and rules-based, but I've also enjoyed experimenting with other Japanese-fashion inspiration. One of my friends described these outfits as "shoujo manga protag going to a visual kei show," which is basically all I could ever hope to be. 

I've noticed a big benefit of not wearing lolita is that I feel better about my body. As much as I love the fashion, most Japanese brands having a one size fits all policy isn't great for body image. I fit most brands, provided the piece has shirring of some kind (weirdly, Marble is the only brand that I can fit without shirring, no idea what's going on there) but I'm a Western mid-size with kind of chubby upper arms, so sometimes putting on a blouse and almost hulking out of it is a fact of life. It's nice to not feel restricted or sucked in by my clothes, and to even let my stomach see daylight from time to time haha. It's kind of a relief to get some perspective and realize that even if I feel like a massive monster trying to squeeze into a BtSSB blouse, my body is perfectly normal outside of EGL. 

I still love Japanese fashion in general, but I'm buying a lot more from Axes Femme, Hysteric Glamour, Deorart and Ozz On lately. I don't think I'll ever be fully done with lolita, but I might downsize and list a few things on LaceMarket in the coming months. I don't want to make any snap decisions based on a small slump, but if I decide to wear lolita less overall, I'll probably just keep my Moitie and velvet BtSSB pieces. No sense in letting beautiful clothes sit and collect dust! 

That was a long, rambling post, but I think that's all for now! Thank you for reading my thoughts and feelings, it's always appreciated. 

I met KAMIJO! + The Best EGL Cotton Petticoat Tutorial

 I HATE synthetics. Hate, hate, hate them with a burning passion. So, since my pathetic MAM petticoat has finally cotton ratty enough for me to consider putting it out of its misery, I decided that instead of spending $40+ on a new synthetic petti, I was just going to spend $24 and some elbow grease and sew myself one that WOULDN'T make me miserable in the summer. 

Calling it a cotton petticoat might be a little disingenuous; the base of the garment/every part of it that touches my body is indeed cotton, but I DID use organza ruffles and soft tulle on the outside to give it shape. I decided to do this after looking at the way Sheglit does their petticoats, which is essentially a cotton skirt cover with ruffles, with an organza over layer to smooth things out. 

Sheglit's 2021 Bustle Petticoat 

I didn't take process pictures, because I'm horrible, but I wanted to write out what I did in case anyone else is in the market for making a cotton petticoat! I know I personally had a hard time finding info online. 

The finished petticoat right after sewing/steaming 

To make this, all you need to know how to do is sew a basic elastic-waist gathered skirt, gather ruffles, and do French seams. 

After pre-washing and drying my fabric, I set out measuring the cotton skirt that would be the base for this petticoat. I determined I wanted a length of about 15 inches, and then calculated my hem circumference by doubling my largest measurement (my hips). If you're built a little straighter/narrower through the hip area, you can double your waist measurement, but if you have a butt you typically want to do double your hip measurement for the hem and use your hip as your "waist" to avoid the petticoat clinging. This left me with a hem circumference of 84 inches, and a waist circumference of 42 inches. I divided this again into two panels with a hem measuring 42 inches flat, and a waist measuring 21 inches flat. Connecting those two points with a slightly diagonal 17-inch line (2 inches added for waist and hem allowance) gave me my pattern pieces. 

After cutting these pieces out I French seamed them together, folded and ironed the hem, folded and ironed the waistband, and went back to my machine to sew the hem and waist channels. Then it was time for the fun part (in actuality, the worst part): the ruffles. 

I typically wear Gothic, so I didn't want a cupcake-y petticoat. Knowing this, I started my ruffles just shy of halfway down the skirt to create an A-line adjacent shape. There's one small ruffle measuring about 3 inches wide, and then a large one measuring around 6 inches wide. I French seamed lengths of organza together to make the ruffles, hemmed them with a zigzag stitch and a rolled hem, and then finished the raw top edge with an overlock before gathering and straight stitching them to the outside of the cotton skirt. 

After adding the ruffles, I needed to smooth the shape out so that it doesn't show up as lumps under my dresses. For this, I doubled over about two yards of soft tulle net, gathered it down, and stitched it over top of the ruffles. 

After this step, all that's left it to add your elastic and sew the channels closed! I did three small elastic channels as opposed to one large one, because I personally find that it's more comfortable and distributes the weight better. 

This is what the inside looks like (post-wash, ignore the white fluff from the dryer). All French seamed, and only the cotton touches your body! Even with a synthetic layer on the outside, it is significantly cooler and comfier than synthetic petticoats I've worn. 

And here is what it looks like worn under a dress. It might not be poofy enough for some people's tastes, but it's perfect for what I like!

I didn't want to write about it until I wore it for a bit, and my New York trip to see/meet Kamijo was a perfect pressure test. Happy to report after being shoved in a suitcase, crammed into a concert and the subway, and thrown directly into the washer/dryer, it's held up beautifully! I think the dryer actually made it even springier and fluffier haha. As a bonus, here is the photo op I got with Kamijo, featuring the cute Castlevania edit my best friend Megan did for me. The lighting in our venue was AWFUL, she made it so much cuter! 

I was basically a deer in headlights, totally starstruck 

I really can't believe I met him after like 12+ years of fandom, it's surreal. He was amazing live! Sorry to jumpscare you all by putting this at the end haha, but I will say a cotton petticoat is basically ideal for concerts! Combined with cotton bloomers you can basically avoid butt sweat almost entirely. 

Complicating the Hypothetical

 I'm recently obsessed with Bliss Foster. 

Funnily enough, I accidentally started watching his YouTube channel in tandem with my dear friend Mika, maybe a week after they started watching his content. It's been so fun to discuss his work with someone who ALSO loves fashion and sewing!

Bliss has a million incredible videos, and I highly recommend all of them, but I want to talk about his video on personal style and how his thesis on high fashion can translate to the subcultural fashion I love. 

Breaking this post up with a few of my favorite street snaps, since it's so text-heavy! 

On the outside looking in, I've been told my style looks extremely unique - and in a way, it is. The fact of the matter, though, is that very little about the way I dress is solely unique to me. The way I style things might be a little different from my source material, but I'm always referring to eras and movements that I find inspiring. I'm a Xerox of a Xerox with a pair of funky earrings added on top, and that is 100% ok with me.

In Bliss's video on personal style, he talks about the "shock of recognition" in fashion. "Shock of recognition" refers to the moment when you find a bit of yourself in a piece of art, and deepen your connection to it through feeling seen and understood. In fashion as a medium, this phenomena works differently. Fashion designers build worlds and profiles of hypothetical people, in order to draw in the customers who see a bit of themselves in these hypotheticals. However, with fashion being a wearable medium, Bliss argues that the shock of recognition in fashion comes not from seeing a bit of yourself in the clothing, but from looking in the mirror and seeing a bit of someone else within you. When you wear these clothes, you complicate the hypothetical worldbuilding the designer did simply by being yourself and living life. Fashion is an inherently collaborative medium, and simply wearing your clothing is a way to collaborate with this designer and their world. 

Putting this in the context of lolita and Japanese street fashions is fairly easy, given that every brand is very open about their worldbuilding. Moitie is an abandoned castle decorated with candelabras and dried roses, Baby is a tea party held in an enchanted garden. Juliette et Justine is that terrifying 1960's adaptation of Alice in Wonderland with the taxidermic animals. 

Lolita brands present briefs of their ideal customers: the visual kei bangya who loves vampires, the maiden transported to a modern world, the eccentric Victorian woman - and we connect with certain brands more than others because those briefs speak to us. A lot of this calls to mind the "pure maiden" lifestyle lolita that was mythologized and popularized on LiveJournal in the early 2000's. She was beautiful, composed, drank tea, embroidered, didn't watch TV and always minded her manners. She always wore coordinates perfectly, never laughed too loudly, and projected a mysterious aura. These are all ideas of a person that can help give shape to clothing collections, but who doesn't exist in real life. 

This is where the complication of the hypothetical comes into play. None of us are the hypothetical perfect person for a brand, but these briefs resonate with a small part of us. Brands like Victorian Maiden and Moitie resonate with me because they combine Gothic motifs with whimsy and softness, but I am not a waifish Gothic Victorian with a collection of hair lockets. We complicate the narratives these brands build by wearing their clothes, and that is how you create personal style within established subcultures. Your clothes are unique because you're the one wearing them, not because they are unique to your closet exclusively. Your style is unique because it is on your body, worn with your accessories that you chose, and worn in a way that is comfortable for you.

Clothing as an art form is perfected by interacting with it in life. The art is not finished when the garment is finished, it is finished when the audience wears it into the world. When you buy a piece, whether you're the first owner or the fifth, you are contributing to that garment's shared history. You are now one of the many people who touched it, gave it purpose, and loved it, from the designer to the seamstress to you. You are seeing parts of others reflected back at you, and that's a really important and special thing. Fashion is a collaborative and community-based medium, and I hope it makes you feel less isolated and alone. I hope you can look at these garments and see parts of others within them. I hope you see yourself, too. 

Go out and complicate that hypothetical. 

Wardrobe Board 2025 + EGL Fashion Goals

 Long time no online rambling! 

I've done with this blog what I do with a lot of my writing hobbies, which is to say that I hold myself to a standard that becomes unsustainable for me. Namely, I was trying to hold off on making a new post until I take more outfit photos, but I NEVER remember to photograph my outfits when I'm not with my friends. So, I decided we're just not doing outfit posts regularly lol.

My personal computer broke around November last year, which makes Blogger a little hard to operate. It isn't a platform that's super conducive to a mobile format, which is a feature I enjoy, but makes it a little hard to write posts and format photos when I'm doing it all on my phone. For this reason, I actually decided not to do a "traditional" January EGL wardrobe post this year and instead to do a Pinterest board! If you'd like to see my wardrobe, you can view it here (I have a mixture of stock photos and my own photos). 

The other reason I opted not to do a static wardrobe post is that I've had a few minor stylistic changes within lolita, and I'm moving some things around. I'm wanting to add a few Atelier Pierrot aristo pieces to my closet, as well as some more Gothic pieces, which might necessitate selling a few things. I like the flexibility of being able to add pieces and archive sold pieces, so a Pinterest wardrobe seemed like the way to go. 

All of this is a nice transition into the fun part of this post, which is: my goals for my closet this coming year!

 I am very much in the camp of "lolita is equal parts collector's hobby and fashion," and part of the fun for me is the thrill of the hunt! I love tracking down older pieces and cleaning/mending them. However, my first resolution is actually more about enjoying what I have! 

1. Buy less, coord more 

I am a clotheshorse, and the only thing that keeps me from reaching hoarder levels in our little house is clever storage. I have 15 main pieces (with two more skirts on the way), and while that isn't even close to some people's collections, that is a gargantuan amount of garments to wear regularly. That doesn't even count my "normie" skirts and dresses, either! I have a really impressive and beautiful wardrobe that I am so lucky to own, and I definitely favor certain pieces over others, so I'd like to challenge myself to wear every single piece (and let go of the ones that don't get a ton of wear) before repeating my staple favorites.

2. Purchase basics 

Contradictory to the above, I know. I, as most of us do, tend to favor main pieces over basics when making purchases. That ends this year! I have a short list of basics that my wardrobe could really benefit from, which is: 

• A black full bonnet (I have my eye on a secondhand Moitie one)  
• Stand collar blouse in black  
• A black jabot (ideally the Sheglit Ulysses one) 
• Black lace gloves 
• Black lace arm covers
• A corset finishing belt with actual boning

I've made three purchases this January that do NOT adhere to this list, because I'm incorrigible and they were fantastic prices. I snagged: 

Innocent World Musette Bustier (2011) in Black, $38 

Baby, The Stars Shine Bright Velour Skirt (2006) in Wine, $60 (missing suspender straps) 

 Bodyline Tiered Floral Skirt with Cameo Bow (2010) in Black, $22 (missing bow) 

It's funny how so many of us are now nostalgic for Bodyline! I think we didn't realize how good we had it until they closed, haha. 

The goal is for these pieces to be the last main pieces I purchase for the year, with the exception of specific wishlist items (if one magically pops up). The idea behind buying some of those "basics" listed above is that they'll add even more versatility into my closet, and open up a lot more coordinating options for my current wardrobe. 

3. Wear my clothes more 

As I write this, I am at my desk wearing athletic leggings and my massive striped "around the house" cardigan. I work from home, and I often find that my motivation to get dressed is negatively correlated to how busy we are. As in, as soon as I'm on more than one project at a time, I stop bothering to get dressed in actual clothing. This usually means that the only times I wear "real" clothes is on the weekends, or if I'm meeting a friend after work. It makes me feel schlubby and unmotivated, and makes working from home that much more boring. 

I'd really like to try to establish a good morning routine this year (maybe even hitting the gym in the morning instead of at night, but I don't want to get too ambitious) and at least make an effort to put on real pants every day. I think it'll improve my work productivity, as well as my life in general! 

4. Do more sewing (that isn't just skirts) 

I'm so guilty of making skirts because they're fun, simple, and easy. I've been sewing for about 12 years, so suffice it to say, I've made enough skirts haha. I really enjoyed making some GLB patterns last year, and I'd like to try a few more from my collection. I also want to try to recreate this Victorian Maiden blouse in cotton gauze, because it looks incredibly simple and is (unfortunately) made of polyester. 

5. Spend time with my loved ones

Self-explanatory, I have amazing friends/family/an incredible fiancé,and I love hanging out with them in fun outfits. Looking forward to doing a lot more of that this year! 

Outfits: Fresh (h.NAOTO) Blood

 If you read my last post, you probably saw that I purchased a long h.NAOTO Blood JSK. Well, it arrived! I shipped a few items from my Neokyo storage, because I had some Christmas presents that I wanted to get shipped and wrapped while I wait for the rest of my order to arrive, and I threw this in to the package as well. 

When it arrived, I noticed two things: it looked fairly small, AND... I could finally read the text printed on the side insert under the sheer panel. 

It's erotica. It is quite literally old-timey erotica. 

I'm not upset at it, really just surprised. I also have a reputation for being a little bit of a prude, so I think it's funny that I ended up with the one-of-a-kind atelier pornography dress. My friends and I all got a good laugh out of it, and the semi-sheer fabric over top makes it so that you can't exactly read what it says (so I won't be scandalizing passers-by). Let this be a lesson to you: next time you're purchasing h.NAOTO, make sure to maybe ask the seller for more print photos so you don't get punked by Secret Bodice Ripper Content.

I was also worried it wasn't going to fit, but another surprise: it fits like a glove! I was shocked at how flattering it is, and that the seams weren't pulling. I turned it inside-out to include some construction photos, because the way this garment is put together is really astounding! The seams are all bias taped with a stiff material, so it almost acts like featherweight boning to give the dress structure. Most of the garment is made out of a thick cotton blend, almost like a suiting material, while the printed insert is a layer of very soft cotton, covered by a semi-opaque mesh and inserted like a gore. As you can see, it has an all-in-one facing around the neck and armholes, with a back zipper and two darts (on in the front and one in the back, both at the waist) to give it shape.  

I was so excited to wear this, I actually put together an outfit with it the next day! I almost wanted to "save" it for an occasion, but what good are clothes if you don't wear them? I paired it with an insanely cool vintage blouse I thrifted, my Vivienne Westwood orb necklace (also a recent purchase), vintage Tattoo platform loafers, and my antique opera ring. 

This is one of my favorite outfits I've worn recently, and it sucks that I only got a mirror photo of it! I also think this outfit could have really benefited from a black beret, I'm not quite sure why I didn't wear mine? I'd like to maybe try styling this blouse and dress together again with a different hairstyle or hair accessories, to give it a little more impact. I also have a 1980's black lace blouse with big crazy sleeves that I'm dying to try with this dress! 

I'm hoping to get better about properly photographing my outfits, but it's a hard habit to get into! So, mirror pictures may have to suffice.