Lolita 52 Challenge: How I First Found out About Lolita

Hello everyone! Today I'm doing another Lolita 52 Challenge: How I first found out about Lolita. This is a fun little story for me, so I hope you enjoy it!




 So back when I was around 12 years old, my sister made a new friend who introduced us to the magical world of anime. In addition to anime, she introduced us to this interesting style from Japan called Lolita. She had some Lolita clothes and very quickly my sister and I got interested in the style and wanted to know where to get it. In those days, buying Lolita clothing online from Japan still wasn't much of an option due to prices and finding quality Lolita clothing was very difficult. Indie brands and makers were few and far between and the Gothic & Lolita Bible was just wrapping up its English version run. Our friend introduced us to one of the few Indie Lolita brands in the area, Miss Carlyfornia as well as the now defunct site Sweet Rococo. Miss Carlyfornia made lovely pieces and Sweet Rococo had a wide variety of fabric and notion choices available as well as plenty of different bodice and skirt options, but with no jobs, neither of us could afford to buy Lolita clothing. All we could really do was longingly look through Google image searches and the G&LBs our friend lent us. So with lots of creativity and a bit of help from our parents, my sister and I began to each make our own Lolita outfit. (You heard me right: singular outfit. A full wardrobe was something we never could have afforded back then.) I went for Gothic and my sister went for Sweet (which coincidentally is the opposite of our styles now) and we both ended up with pretty decent outfits considering the fact we were generally broke and spent all our money on Magic: The Gathering cards. Our parents were pretty supportive of our style choice, so they helped us buy pieces or fabric too, which allowed us both to have better outfits than we would have raiding the thrift store. (As an example, chunky shoes were in for Lolita style at the time and I got some really horrible Frankenstein-esque platforms that were way too big for me and did not suit my outfit in the slightest from the thrift store. Thanks to my parents, I got some really cute black Mary Jane style wedge heels with white contrast stitching that worked really well until I grew out of them.)


How were you introduced to Lolita? Do you wear it at all currently, or is a Lolita wardrobe still in your future? Let me know in the comments!


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Gothic & Lolita Kodona Blouse

A while back I got a blouse pattern from Miss Carlyfornia out of a Gothic & Lolita Bible she owns. The blouse was part of a Kodona Lolita (Boy style) ensemble that included a frill, ribbon, and belts for the sleeves of the blouse as well as a pair of shorts. Seeing as how I barely fit extra large Japanese size blouses, I doubted I'd fit the shorts pattern so I only copied the blouse pattern. A little while back I took the time to actually make the blouse that was in the instructions since I'd only used the bodice of the blouse to make a puff sleeved sailor collar blouse. This time I altered the pattern to make it slightly longer as well as making the modifications called for in the pattern to give the blouse tails and enough space in the front to make it a button up blouse. Fortunately the alterations all turned out well and I was able to assemble the pattern fairly easily. My main struggles were with the sleeves, as they were in three different sections and I'd sized the middle section a little off, and the collar, which was a style I'd never done before. The buttons were also a little difficult making sure that they were positioned properly, but the part that brought me the most grief was the button holes. This is mainly because I'd never done button holes on a sewing machine before, but also due to the fact that the pieces for button holes decided to stop working for no evident reason partway through several of the button holes. Overall, the blouse turned out really nicely and it fits very well.

I'm wearing my new blouse with a ribbon at the collar and my loliable skirt in the image above. The blouse also works really nicely with my Gothic Lolita Pinafore by Miss Carlyfornia.

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