#which I think are bodyline?? I've had them like 10+ years so I don't remember exactly lol)

[icewindandboringhorror]

A very lacy sort of outfit, still always trying to find a way to use this shirt in things lol

[20dollarlolita]

Okay, I'm still a little bit nostalgic, so let's go into the first six coord pictures I found on my long trip through my 2011 facebook and tumblr.

This is Alice in the Ribbon Kingdom OP, which was my first main dress piece I bought. Those socks are actually gray, and those shoes are jelly peep-toe flats that were so small that my heels were hanging off the end. This is definitely the earliest coord pic I have because it was from before there was the giant mirror at the end of the hallway that everyone knows me for now.

I think everyone has a picture of their "i bought the dress and had no accessories at all" coord. This was mine. You can't see my hair but I took the neck brooch off the dress and bobby pinned it into my hair.

Coord rating: 4/10, nice dress and nothing else works, please step away from the cat litter box.

I definitely wore this outfit and called it lolita. The picture I posted of it is a dead link but my friend drew Equius in the same outfit I was wearing. That's a handmade skirt and then a t-shirt with Portal and the TARDIS on it, a headbow I strip-quilted with random fabric, and then some navy blue knee socks. I do not remember the conversation that happened to make this picture happen.

Coord rating 6/10: that's not how casual lolita works but A for effort.

This was my first Bodyline dress, and I'd gotten it that day, and hadn't pressed it. Those are some factory creases in there. That blouse is just a normal pointed collar blouse that I think I borrowed from my mom. Once again, we have me pinning the detachable bows into my hair. It took me years to get out of this habit. That dress was also the first lolita piece that I sold, and I wish I could get it again. I wanted a piano lolita dress from the first second I had a piano lolita dress.

Those white socks I later sewed lace to the top of, and they're still in my wardrobe and are frequently used in current coords.

I wore this to my lolita mentor's house because I was going to buy something from her. I don't remember if it was my Shirring Princess OP or if it was a blouse+petticoat+ear muff+socks combo that I later bought, but I know I was going to her house to buy something from her.

Coord rating: unable to rate because I fear the consequence of breaking eye contact with the face I'm making at the camera.

And I know that because this is the Shirring Princess, socks, blouse, petticoat, and earmuff combo that I bought from my mentor. I was so lucky to have someone who was experienced in the fashion available to help me when I was new to this. She also was selling a lot of her stuff because IIRC she was in a bit of a financial pinch. It wasn't really cold enough for earmuffs but I wanted to wear them anyway because I didn't own any hair accessories at all.

Those are my Bodyline tea parties that I've currently painted gold and made into the world's most dangerous quad skates. Those

mental health discussion cw for the rest of this post.

This picture is really weird to me because it's the last picture that I uploaded online before my bipolar diagnosis. I got diagnosed with bipolar following a quite spectacular almost-term of college with an increasingly bad major depressive episode. So I look really weird to myself here, because this was the start of like, days at a time where I wasn't able to be happy and couldn't understand why. I spent this entire winter break thinking that if I could just get back to school then things would feel better, which. They didn't. I know that I bring up my mental health any time that I start talking about early lolita me, but that's because the main reason I fully committed to owning and making lolita is really connected to this major depressive episode.

I remember wearing this exact coord again at school, but I wore the socks over white tights because I had self-harm marks on my legs that I didn't want people to see.

Coord rating 8/10: It's got most of the right things but also it's basically an entire outfit I bought from someone else.

So near the end of that term, I was determined to be a hazard to myself or others and was ejected from housing, which was also its own whole mess (I can tell the story of the head of housing being told to put a 20-year-old girl on suicide watch and her deciding to just leave said girl with a group of people she didn't know and tell them to watch her because head of housing decided to do something else, but we can save that for later).

Anyway, when you're super fucking depressed and your entire life has flipped upside-down and you've been massively cycling because you've got bipolar and someone's put you on SSRIs, sometimes you pick a thing to obsess over. And I picked lolita fashion. A nice lady at my church gave me huge piles of random scrap fabric, and I just started making things. I still have that blouse. It's basically a dickey with sleeves, because I ran out of fabric and decided it wouldn't matter if I only wore it under JSKs. That bodice is just elastic bobbin shirring done super close together, so it doesn't look very mainstream lolita at all. Looking at that skirt, I think I made that skirt out of the very first Scottish Games skirt that my mom made me when I was like 7.

This picture is really weird to me because I had completely forgotten about this dress ever existing until I found it earlier today. This is also one of the first selfies I can find that was in this mirror at the end of the hall. I still take pictures at this mirror.

Coord rating 6/10: not bad for a handmade coord but baby me wasn't really sure what a substyle was. If I'd tried to commit to styling it classic or something, it could probably work. Nice hat.

I've mentioned this before but this picture is a big deal for me because it was taken at my job/"job", which meant I was considered stable enough that I was allowed to drive my truck again. It wasn't really a job as much as my parents church taking pity on me and allowing me to "be the receptionist" on the church secretary's day off. This was the church where as a child I was banned from talking about oreos.

I found that blouse at a thrift store and it was too small but it had a rounded collar, so it was the only black blouse that I had for probably years. I made the skirt based off the Innocent World Juno skirt without me really having an understanding of why that skirt is shaped the way it is. That hair brooch is from the Dollar Tree and I was so excited when I found it because I thought it was the most lolita thing I'd ever seen at the Dollar Tree.

At this point in time, I was making maybe one thing from my sewing stash fabric about every three or four days. The petticoat I was wearing with this was a completely new petticoat that I made out of pink organza. I'd also done a skirt completely covered in rick rack which I do not have a picture of. I was basically making things because if I stopped making things then I'd feel worse than when I was making things.

I had also stopped wearing my BtSSB dress by this point because I had some disordered eating stuff going on and the fact that the zipper was a little bit tight somehow mathed out in my head to be about worth as a human.

Coord rating 7/10: technically checks all the boxes but CAN WE PLEASE BUY SOME LACE

While I was in college at that last term, I found this bodyline blouse at a record store (for some reason??), and the high waist means I could wear it with my weirdly short blouse I made. I owned three blouses at this point: this one, the too-small black one, and the long-sleeved pink one. That was my blouse collection for way too long, because I just never bought blouses. The slouch boots are an interesting addition to this. That headbow was the other Dollar Tree hair brooch that I got the same time I bought the black one.

If you've been following along you're going to notice how bad I used to be about not wearing any jewelry. I'm still pretty light on the jewelry but at least I wear it now.

I assume that the yellow thing there with the green crepe back satin ruffle is somehow related to the purple skirt with the ruffle made of the same green crepeback satin, but I have no idea what's going on with it.

I do remember taking this picture at like 2:30AM. I don't remember why I was taking this picture at like 2:30 AM. I think it's because I'd just cut my bangs and I wanted to do a whole look to show it off? I'm pretty sure this was right about when I started cutting my own bangs and just pretending it was fine however they came out. This is different from how I do it now because now I cut my own bangs and then panic when they are not fine however I tried to cut them.

Coord rating: 6/10 can we please match the shoes and headbow, but yeah I guess it checks all the boxes or something?

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Overall analysis: Okay, so the first thing that past me needed (wardrobe terms, not in terms of psychiatric care) was to actually get way more hair accessories. All of these really show a lack of committment to my hair department. I think at the time, I really didn't know how to coordinate pink hair.

I did the same thing that I currently do, which I need to stop doing, which is buying big pieces like dresses and skirts and then just not having any blouses and headbows and socks. But this habit really, really held me back in my early lolita days.

The biggest thing for me in terms of handmade lolita was that I had a really good petticoat, and that helps make even my less good coordinates and pieces read like they're much better than they are.

That said, I was just dressing in a way that felt better than not getting dressed at all. This last picture wasn't even four months after the initial nadir of the major depressive episode, and I wasn't going to be determined to be able to go back to school for a few months after that. This was basically the only part of my life that I had complete control over and I decided that this was the thing I cared about.

Because of that, it took me a really long time to start focusing on some of the really detailed elements of lolita, making things balanced and pretty. I was basically just throwing anything that I could find together and call lolita.

Anyway, I was talking earlier about how you get good at drawing by doing a lot of sketches and not caring too hard if they're the best thing you'll ever draw? I think that's what I did in my first year of lolita. I just put things together. They weren't good. The vast majority of the pieces up there I either no longer have or no longer wear. But I figured out some stuff. Other stuff took way longer to figure out, but I did get some stuff figured out.

Anyway, to anyone who is feeling like they're not experienced in lolita, here's an entire year of me figuring stuff out. The 2013-2014 collection of lolita fashion that I have is also not great, so we can check that out if we want, too. I'm still figuring things out. I don't think I'll ever not be figuring things out.

Also here's a quick glimpse at how good cell phone cameras used to not be. (I've actually adjusted the white balance in all these, so the original pictures were worse)