March Outfits!

March was a busy month! I made quite a few outfits so I feel good about my progress for my goal of wearing everything 😀 The Bay Area Fruit Frenzy theme got myself and Chris out of the house to try some delicious desserts at a new place, and we were able to go to his favorite Hot Pot place for his birthday. I also hosted my first meet in rather a long time which was a little stressful but it seemed like everyone had a good time! I'll be hosting another meet in April at a museum 📚

Adventures in Tub Laundry

There are some things I love about older pieces including the fact that a lot of them are cotton or a poly-cotton blend vs fully polyester which depending on the print I prefer…but that comes with it’s risks as I have discovered recently. Sometimes the print will fade after too many washes, and sometimes the print will bleed! In 2020 I found BtSSB Border Scallop Hem Border Print JSK in black on an auction site for cheap. I had the skirt once upon a time but it was eventually too small for me but I still loved that print in that colorway (I still also have the navy tulle hem version!). When I received it though I realized why it was so inexpensive…the black dye was not colorfast! It was bleeding all into the white and pink parts of the dress in very noticeable spots. I was really disappointed when I saw it. Bleeding dye dresses was a somewhat mythical occurrence to me; I knew someone who knew someone that had a dress that ended up not being colorfast in the rain or wash but I had never experienced it myself. Even though I knew there were lots of people who had revived bleeding dresses in the past I had never had to deal with it and, for fear of ruining the dress further, I folded it and left it in a sad heap on the bottom of my closet. 

February Outfits!

February started off pretty hectic for me as I rushed to try and get my wardrobe post in as quickly as I could even though I was still late! 😓 I wanted to get in a new background and backdrop stand so my photos could look nicer. With sustainability in mind I wanted to buy as little new as possible so I bought a ring light, curtains and a backdrop stand second hand. Unfortunately with buying from people and not companies sometimes things happen and stuff shipped quite late! I didn't get my stand until Feb 15th! I made it work though with an old curtain rod and was able to shoot my wardrobe post. Unfortunately I don't really like the area yet for photos of myself. I think I need to hunt down a rug of some kind so my shoes don't blend into the carpet and I'm still not sure about the lighting situation. Until then I'm going to try experimenting with taking the backdrop outside to cover up the ugly (imo) balcony background I have in lots of my photos. 

Repairing Things You Love

One of the things about making sure I have a wardrobe that I love is that I’m actually much more likely to try to repair or revive something first if it’s an easy fix instead of just tossing it or trying to give it away at a swap meet to someone more handy than me. I’ve resewn about 3 different hems by hand, re-attached a bunch of buttons, and closed tiny holes in favorite tights or cardigans. They aren’t perfect fixes but I love them too much to give them up completely and as most of my stuff is black anyway the thread I use is fairly invisible even if it’s not the best repair job. 

Wardrobe Post Pt. 2: Everything Else!

 Here is everything else other than main pieces! 

Wardrobe Post! Pt. 1: Just the Main Pieces

The documentation yearly of wardrobes has been a tradition since ye olden days when the Lolita community was mostly based in LiveJournal. I’ve done this most years since my first one in 2012 and it’s been really cool always being able to look back at each year to see how my wardrobe has grown, changed and sometimes hardly changed at all! (Link to old LJ posts, my last one was posted on my Instagram) My wardrobe has slowly but steadily grown over the last few years, I’ve been trying to be much more deliberate on what items I’ve bought both new and second-hand and I’m quite happy with my current collection! I also love seeing other people’s collections, especially if they have completely different tastes from me.

For this wardrobe post I thought lots of people only scroll through to see the prints/dresses that people have as they are most recognizable but I still wanted to document everything for my own sake. So I thought I'd split my wardrobe post into two- on with mostly main pieces and one with everything else (blouses, cardigans, headwear, accessories, etc.) I'm also terribly late this year so I actually have re-used some of my photos from last year I still liked for some items. 

So now 10 years after my first go at a wardrobe post: my 2022 wardrobe post!

January Outfits!

First month update for wearing all my things! I didn't have too bad of a start I think, wore lolita less than I wanted to but still managed to dress up 5 times (one casual outfit I did not think to get a picture) but with Omicron spreading especially in the beginning of the month I was a little afraid to go out too much. With almost 90 main pieces, if you count all my otome-style items I generally wear to work I've got a lot more dressing up to do in the coming months!