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20dollarlolita · 1 year

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Did you know that sometimes, you do something totally normal in the tumblr editor, something that you could accidentally do very easily, and it decides to eat your entire post? It just deleted over an hour of work? Did you know that it does that?

Isn't that swell?

THE RANDOM LOLITA 30 DAY CHALLENGE, DAY 10: 10 THINGS YOU CAN'T LIVE WITHOUT IN LOLITA.

We're doing a challenge from 2011 and we're doing it very slowly. We're actually doing it even slower, because we wrote half of this post, hit ctrl+z, and tumblr just fucking deleted it with no way to get it back. Glorious. 10/10, fucking hate it.

This challenge number was a little weird for me. I've been doing lolita since 2011, and the answers that I would have given in 2011 are probably very different than the ones I'm giving in 2023. Having that framing makes me feel very nostalgic.

Let's get into it. If tumblr eats this again, I will be throwing the entire website out the door.

Number 1) A comfortable petticoat that stays the right shape, and that I don't have to worry about crushing.

Back in my early days, one of the first things that I bought for lolita fashion was a real petticoat. One of the most critical elements of a lolita fashion look is the shape, and having a foundation that gave me the right shape helped things that I was making look a lot more like real lolita.

(Early 2012)

My first ever petticoat, which is under the red dress, was made out of muslin and some walmart tulle. I believe it used this tutorial. While that dress wasn't ever going to look really lolita super well, the petticoat issue sure isn't helping.

These days I have a Wunderwelt petticoat that I got in 2016, and it's so very enjoyable to have a petticoat where the only concern is that it might be too big for a dress. I love how little work it takes to add the proper shape to a coord.

Number 2) Definitely lolita shoes.

When I wear lolita out and about, I've noticed that one of the things that changes stranger's reactions is the shoes. If I've got some distinctly lolita shoes, like RHS, people tend to ask if it's a fashion. If I'm wearing lolitable shoes that could also work in a non-lolita outfit, I get asked what costume I'm wearing.

(Late 2013)

Baby lolita me had a pair of black Mary Jane pumps from Target, and those were my lolita shoes for several months. In my first ever Bodyline order, I got some brown tea parties, and about a year later I bought these pink RHS and white flats.

And that was it. That was what I owned for lolita shoes from 2013 to 2016. Coords were black, brown, pink, white, or else I wore shoes that didn't match. Occasionally I'd go crazy and get some short boots into the mix, but this was my lolita shoe collection.

I have at least four tutorials in this blog about how to fix shoes, because I don't let my shoes die until they're absolutely dead and gone. Those brown tea parties are now painted gold and have been turned into very dangerous roller skates. I had to take a five-ish mile offroad hike in the white ones, which destroyed the bottoms as well as permanently staining the ribbon frill brown. These are, to this day, the only lolita shoes that I've ever thrown away. The other two pairs of shoes I still have.

My closet doesn't look like a BTSSB show room because I have to keep the rubbermaid tub of skulls somewhere, and the closet seems the best place.

In the seven years since I started buying lolita shoes again, I've collected several pairs. A lot of these pairs were in the $5-$30 price range, and none of them have been disposed of. This is just seven years of collecting shoes.

Number 3) Little details that are fast to add to a coord.

So, TJ Maxx sells these little clip on ribbon bows in their baby department, and they're my new favorite fast and easy accessory. They can go in your hair. They can go on your dress. They can go on your shoes. It's wonderful.

I've said a whole lot that making a lolita coord is about adding all the details that you think you should add, and then adding 3-5 more details. It's very easy to underestimate how detailed a handmade lolita piece should be.

Something that I didn't fully appreciate until recently, at least not to the extent that I currently appreciate it, is how much your overall coordinate can benefit from the same thing. If you CAN throw on some little extra bows and bracelets, it generally looks better if you do that.

I have very small wrists (both wrists together cannot hold a 4-week old kitten) and jingling loose bracelets often drive me nuts. I finally found out that stretch bracelets meant for kids will fit on my wrists, won't jinglejangle, and also won't pinch. As a bonus, they're like $1 for a 2-pack, so I went a little bit nuts stocking up on them.

I've got a couple of tutorials on making your own cheap, small details that you can just plop onto as many coords as you'd like.

Number 4) Sewing machine.

(Feb 2011)

My first lolita dress was handmade. Making my own garments and accessories has always been an important part of this fashion for me. I don't have as much to say about this, because it's just so constantly present in everything that I do.

I've learned about lolita fashion by sewing it, and I've learned about sewing by sewing lolita fashion.

(October 2010)

I made my first lolita dress on a pretty basic sewing machine (the precursor to the Janome 3160QDC). I've since sideways-graded to a really basic 80's Singer. Despite having a very fancy embroidery machine, I don't sew on it. My last service said I've done 5 hours of sewing and 170 hours of embroidery on that machine. I know what I need, and I have what I need.

Number 5) Five Below's $5 bike shorts

They're $5. They come in every color.

Your tights falling down? Bike shorts. Your bloomers pretty annoying to wash and so you want to keep them off your skin to avoid having to wash our sweat stains? Your car a little bit funky and you might need to lie down on the ground to change your tire? Bike shorts. Little old lady in a wheelchair might pick up your skirt to see if you're wearing pantaloons? and you're not wearing pantaloons? You're never going to be more glad that you have bike shorts.

When I was new to lolita and like 12 years stupider than I now am, I had smaller petticoats, and always figured that high-coverage tights and standard underoos were modesty enough, with bloomers being necessary for coords with socks. Get a fuller petticoat, and you stop feeling like that. Bike shorts at Target were like $15 a pair, because they're designed to be comfortable to wear when you're riding a bike. I'm not riding a bike. I'm walking through walmart to buy some milk. I'm not going fast because I have 5" of fake wood glued to the bottom of my foot. I don't need your comfort features. I need $5 bike shorts.

These have pockets in them so that you can stash emergency money or a fortune you got from Panda Express in 2020 that says, "Be ready to take an important journey soon," on it.

Yes, the pantaloons thing happened to me, and I actually was wearing bloomers. Yes, the woman pushing the tiny old lady in the wheelchair clearly had never been more embarrassed in her life.

Number 6) Men's undershirts.

Call it a singlet, call it an a-shirt, please don't call it a wifebeater. These things are made of a ribbed knit that stretches to accommodate boobs and curves very well. They're meant to be washed the heck out of. I can't throw my dresses into the washing machine on the crazy hard cycle and throw them in a hot dryer and figure whatever happens happens, but these things are THREE. DOLLARS. EACH. A whole lot of not perfect things can be forgiven when the under shirt is $3.

The neck doesn't work on OPs or some blouses, but they're also three dollars each, so I wear them any time I can. Women's undershirts are $12-18 EACH so I can't just buy 30 of them. If you want some bonus armpit protections, men's t-shirt undershirts are only like $5 each.

Number 7) Oxiclean.

A lot of lolita fashion is about our super fancy, super detailed prints. These are prints that look lovely when you're up close to them, so it's important to not have dingy and dirty and faded prints, especially when you paid good money for that printing. All hail Oxiclean.

I went to go take a picture of the jumbo boxes of oxiclean that I buy, but it looks like someone threw the box on the ground and then went to lie in her bed like nothing bad happened. (She wasn't hurt and I cleaned it up so she couldn't get it on her paws and lick it).

Also yes, my cat has her own little personal heater. It turns off if it's tipped over, so she will turn it off whenever she gets too hot.

Number 8) Parasols.

First of all, it turns out that finding offbrand parasols for lolita is a super cool challenge. They're not very common, so when you do find one, it feels like a big accomplishment.

I love parasols for a lot of reasons. I was going to get coffee with a friend, and someone was acting kind of strangely outside the shop. I liked that I had something in my hands to potentially use to keep that person away from me if they decided to approach me way too quickly. My doctor and I thought for a while that I had a condition where if I went in the sun, my skin attacked my internal organs, so I started carrying umbrellas for that. It's very sunny where I live. Before I lived here, I lived where it was very rainy, and having a nice couple of ruffled RainStoppers was good to have on hand.

(May 2011 | Sept 2013) I've actually collected parasols for longer than I've really been into lolita. Pic on the left was pre-lolita times. I absolutely loved that parasol and took it everywhere that I could. Pic on the right is the earliest picture I could find of my white RainStoppers that I got at Target, which I still have somewhere in my car. Mostly that pic is there because of my cats. Also the pictures just felt like a nice weird little bit of symmetry.

Anyway, when someone's taking a pic of you without asking, you can block it with your parasol. My relationship with parasols in lolita is complicated, because I feel like I shouldn't need to have a weapon with me, but here we are.

Number 9) All the info that baby me chronicled. Everything I've learned and everything that I didn't used to know. I have so much fun looking at my old cringe coords and all of the things I did that I know are wrong now. I really miss the way I fearlessly tried things out and the rate at which I churned out new pieces. There's some pieces that I don't have anymore and I miss those things. I used to have some old school AP socks that I have no clue where they are. Seeing the way I used to have my bedroom set up so that I'd still have space to sew. Looking at the dates on pictures and thinking about what I was doing back then. Most of these pictures are from back when cell phone cameras were awful, and I've had to edit all of them to get better exposure before putting them up. There's memories I have of us all carrying around digital cameras to save things, because cell phones just weren't there yet (also some of us didn't have pix messaging plans and had to pay 25 cents per picture to get them to our computers). I looked at the bottom of my pink RHS the other day and the tread's all the way worn off. That's so interesting to me, that I've worn pink-shoe lolita enough that I completely wore the tread off.

Jan 1, 2014 "Sometimes the best thing ever is to walk into Starbucks and watch a five year old’s eyes go as wide as they can, point at you, and say loudly “Mom, is that a real person?” Sometimes the best part is watching the mom go BEET red."

I remember that event so specifically. It was one of the first times I'd actually worn the head-eating bow in public. It took me several years to warm up to the head-eaters. I remember exactly what the mom and the kid looked like, but also until I read this post, I'd completely forgotten about this whole incident.

Number 10)

This blog, and the people who read it, interact with it, comment on it.

I really cannot explain how amazing this community is to me. I think the first time I saw someone link someone else a tutorial I made was just a couple of years ago. It was so exciting. Every time i meet someone who is afraid to get into lolita fashion due to the expense, and I'm able to tell them that there's a whole COMMUNITY of people who want to do lolita for less, it's amazing. I started this blog because I felt like I could make myself some accessories for not a lot of money, and I just needed the motivation to do it. But now it's so much better than that. I'm still making things for me. I make things I want and things that I'll use and things that I can make. But I'm also making them for other people, who also need the same kind of help. I teach myself new things so that I can answer questions I've been asked. Every time I have to research an answer for someone, that person has helped me grow.

It's just amazing. Thank you.

#20dollarlolita 30daylorlolita challenge #the random lolita

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