Discovering Lolita Fashion

Sometime in 2009 was the first time I ever saw a Gothic Lolita Bible, it was in my Japanese 1 class in highschool. Everyone in the class was supposed to make a presentation about something related to pop culture in Japan and one of my classmates picked Harajuku fashion and in particular, gothic lolita fashion. She flipped a Gothic Lolita Bible under the overhead projector and thumbed through pages and pages of over the top red and pink dresses, huge puffed skirts, frills, all with large loud prints that seemed ridiculous to me at the time

GLB 36 (Spring 2010) I'm pretty sure this was one of the pages she showed in class, it really did stay with me for a long time! Img via lolitahistory.com

My initial reaction was to laugh. Who in their right mind would want to look like that! I was at an age where I thought femininity was weak and stupid so seeing such over the top presentations of it was impossible for me to understand. Although I left that class thinking it was super strange and weird, it was also something I couldn't quite get off my mind, why did people dress like this? What was their motivation? 

Amusingly, the year prior, 2009, I had decided to cosplay Princess Agatha from The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess.

A child!

SOMEHOW even though I saw all those outfits in the GLB and thought they were weird, I didn't really make the connection that Agatha herself was inspired by the very same fashion culture! 

Sometime later in senior year, a friend of mine got their hands on a copy of one of the English version of the Gothic Lolita Bible and thats when things began to change. To understand why it had so much of an effect on me I need to give just a little bit of info about my mom.

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My mom is awesome and loves historical stuff and English stuff. Honestly if she were more into clothing I wouldn't be surprised if she dressed with that in mind too, but she's extremely practical with her clothes, more of a classic lolita at heart. So growing up I was introduced to things like afternoon tea, antique shopping, gardening, art museums, hand sewing, and I was introduced to movies like Little Women, and The Secret Garden. We would take trips to different antique stores in my hometown and beyond, finding the areas with the cutest teacups, pick out ones we loved to take home, and then have afternoon tea using our new treasures. I have such fond memories of doing this with my mom that it singlehandedly put Tea Time Nostalgia on my dream dress wishlist!

Anime North 2019

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So when I opened the English version of GLB and I saw things about antique shopping, how to press flowers, cute ways to have afternoon tea, and entire patterns to sew your own clothes, I felt like I had found something that was apart of me in a way I couldn't even explain.

The next logical step was getting my hands on some dresses! Because I was still learning about the fashion and I had absolutely no spare spending money, I decided I had to make them myself. I had just finished making the Agatha cosplay with my mom and sewing (what I thought were) cool historically inspired steampunk pieces, so I was feeling very confident. The first thing I did was spend a whole afternoon looking at as many images of lolita fashion that I could find on Google images, dropping them into a Microsoft Word document and printing pages and pages of images I liked. Sweet lolita was still a bit too much for me, so I was almost immediately drawn to the gorgeous historically inspired classic lolita style, and more specifically the clean lines and princess seams of Mary Magdalene. I still remember the first time I laid my eyes on Whyteleafe and how it changed my mind on lolita fashion being ridiculous to being head over heels in love with the idea of dressing in frills. 

Being still in highschool, I focused on trying to make things I felt more confident in being able to execute. My first few lolita dresses included a converted Alice in Wonderland costume pattern from Joanns, some of grandmas old fabric with giant plastic pearls sewn on top, old fabric my mom initially used to make some lampshades, and a tablecloth I made into a circle skirt jsk. 😂

I made that ivory blouse I wore with the black skirt as well!

Eventually I even went to my first few meet ups near the end of my senior year in highschool and met a lot of the Central Valley Lolita community. Live Journal was still being used at this point and that's how I met and talked with a lot of them. They were all much older than me but SUPER friendly and if they hadn't been I don't imagine I'd still be into lolita fashion today. 

My interest in lolita fashion continued as I entered college but waned slightly as I focused on my studies. I sewed a few more pieces in college including a replica of Whyteleafe! 

2012 was a different time lol

Another 2012 creation

Finished January 2013

Finished sometime in 2014

2014 was the year I finally decided to go to my first lolita meetup with the new comm near my college. Things were already so different from 2011 when I started, everything had moved to Facebook instead of Livejournal, I was still interested in classic lolita but I was beginning to find sweet lolita more appealing than before, I wanted to make more friends who understood my fascinations with the subculture, and I was finally brave enough to meet more of them. 

I still remember being SO nervous to meet everyone so I worked on figuring out my coord for like a whole week before I'd have to face all those new people.

November 2014, the scariest lolita meetup I've ever been to wearing the heaviest wig imaginable.

Thankfully every single person I talked to that day made me feel welcome and like I belonged. I still distinctly remember who was there and I can't think them enough for being so welcoming, I still know most of them very well and cherish the times I get to see them when I visit San Francisco! 

And the rest is history! Once I knew how cool all the other folks in the SF community were I continued to go to meetups and get to know them better and better. Not only did I find an outlet to share my lolita fashion obsession with but I also made some lifelong friends who I wouldn't give up for anything. Even though I no longer live near them, I still think of them all fondly and jump at any chance to go back and connect with them. If any of them end up reading this I hope you all know I love you so much, thank you! 💖