When it comes to fashion, that is. Don’t do this in terms of like, driving a motor vehicle.
I’m only really writing this cuz our chosen bimonthly Bibliotheca theme is Defiance. This is kind of a sore topic for me, one I don’t like to argue for the same reason I avoid telling people my background is in Linguistics. (Fun fact: a former professor of mine used to tell people instead she was a mortician. If they pressed further, her uncle truly was one, so she could fake it well enough.)
Basically, while most people worth even talking to about this Hot-Button Issue will (begrudgingly, sheepishly, reluctantly) acknowledge that I’m Correct, they still end up Doing the Thing I Don’t Like. And that is, Spreading Rules-Based Propaganda.
“They’re More Just Guidelines, Really”
The Western lolita communities used to be plagued by a Rules Disease. My main experience with this was the EGL Livejournal community, a juggernaut in the 2010s online space, but it played out in other areas, such as the infamous /cgl board of 4chan, as well as in people’s IRL comms.
Fact that dates me: people who hung out on the 4chan Cosplay and Gothic Lolita board nicknamed themselves ‘seagulls’.
I say used to, but it’s obviously still very much a problem. I do believe it’s overall gotten better, but that could just be due to the fact I avoid most general online communities for the fashion nowadays. (I mean, I’m sort of involved in running one. My cup runneth over as it is.) I was never a part of Facebook-based groups such as Rufflechat (and definitely not Behind the Bows), but in large part due to my negative experiences with the Livejournal EGL comm leading me to eschew all large online community spaces for alternative fashion. And this old lady with vestibular issues is very much not on TikTok, which I imagine really lends itself to this sort of thing.
Exactly What Sort of Thing Are We Talking About?
Sometimes it’s innocent enough. More experienced people in the fashion (you would hope) advising newbies who are actively soliciting that advice on the prototypical characteristics of a Standard Lolita Coordinate. But most of the time, it’s Fashion Police. At best, it’s people imposing their personal aesthetic preferences on others, albeit without explicit malice – stuff like “you shouldn’t show your knees” that should be better worded “I personally don’t like to show my knees (and I’m short enough that typical Japanese skirt length allows me to do that most of the time).”
At worst, it’s cyberbullying.
But what specifically is it, an imaginary reader unfamiliar with the fashion asks in my illusory world I use to organize these blog posts. It’s ‘advice’ like “you should always wear a petticoat”, or “you shouldn’t have bare shoulders”, or, my favorite, “you can’t buy items for lolita coordinates at the thrift store.” I remember the last one being uttered by someone on a convention panel aimed at beginning lolitas, immediately followed by someone else on the panel going “Uh what? My entire coord today is thrifted.”
Fun fact: I found a whole Candy Violet (Western indie brand) tartan blazer/skirt set at a rural Goodwill once. Above is where I’d add an example picture, but I’m too lazy to search one up on the Wayback Machine.
Sometimes these maxims are hedged, or explicitly framed as guidelines rather than rules. And sometimes people protest that greenhorns need some sort of structure, ‘scaffolding’ as we might say in the Education field, to guide them, or else they will be hopelessly lost, floating in air.
You’re On Your Own, Kid
This kind of thinking is really…myopic? I guess is the word I want. I feel very confident saying all of us who are comfortable in our expression of the fashion got here through our own experimentation, our own exploration of our likes and dislikes, figuring out what we admire versus what we personally actually want to wear out.
I get it. It’s hard to tell someone who’s struggling to find themself in the fashion that they just have to keep going it alone, that they have to put together outfits that they ultimately won’t be happy with, that they have to build and rebuild a wardrobe that reflects their tastes and not a premade list of ingredients. But the reason there was (and to some extent still is) a whole controversial culture of ‘concrit’ in lolita fashion communities is because so many people were imposing the ideologies of mainstream fashion onto an alternative fashion. Lolita is punk! Punks hate rules!
For the people who would argue that there needs to be some rules, or else, the worse case scenario imagined here is some lolita anarchist wears something that you, and perhaps many other people, wouldn’t really consider to be “a lolita coordinate”. So what! Who cares!?
The Actual Worse Case Scenarios
Every once in a while someone ponders publicly “what happened with casual lolita?”, in the sense that it’s difficult to find shots of Western lolitas in more casual coordinates from say, the 2010s or so. And when I put forth my hypothesis “The EGL Livejournal community strongly discouraged it to the point of driving it out”, I’m often not challenged.
Wearing say, a graphic tee with a lolita skirt was seen as lowly newbie behavior, even though…actual Japanese lolita brands put out graphic tees. Sure, the blank, as we say in the fashion biz, might have been a little spruced up, slightly gathered sleeves, maybe a lace detail. But sometimes it was pretty much just a pink t-shirt with a screenprint on it.
From left: Angelic Pretty Milky Cross T-Shirt (2015), Baby the Stars Shine Bright White Rabbit Printed T-Shirt (2012)
(assuaging the fears of anyone worried there would be no pictures in this post about fashion)
This kind of anti-casual attitude persisted in scandals about street snaps with sneakers, or, as I was reminded recently, going beyond clothing and policing people’s hair length or make-up choices. Once it’s okay to shake your head at someone over what they’re wearing, it’s an easy slip’n’slide to Critiquing Everything.
Deciding to dress just like a brand’s stock photos didn’t necessarily save you either. A while back I recently got mildly into it with a few people who should know better over whether Victorian Maiden’s mermaid skirt releases were ‘lolita’ or not. (For my fellow fashionistas, I believe a Juliette et Justine dress sparked the debate, which…yeah.)
Left to right: Charlotte Mermaid Skirt (2010), Elegant Mermaid Skirt (2010), Holy Rose Mermaid Skirt (2019)
Many of these mermaid skirts were released right around when I was really getting into wearing the fashion (i.e., buying stuff from Japanese fashion brands), and Victorian Maiden was my favorite brand at the time. The completely inane behavior of debating whether or not an established lolita fashion brand’s items are aesthetically ‘lolita’ or not was what drove this classical lolita out of the EGL LJ comm back in the day. My skirt wasn’t going to be cupcake shaped. I wasn’t going to be wearing those popular twintail wigs, or ‘tea party’ shoes. And I likely was bare-faced.
Okay this acne-ridden adult is prolly wearing some foundation, but you get the picture
Me circa early 2010’s outside the San Francisco Japantown location of Baby the Stars Shine Bright, wearing a Juliette et Justine JSK (without a petticoat!!), Mary Magdalene blouse, Antique Beast headdress, and some Jeffrey Campbell boots.
Catch the Gloomy Bear on my shoulder bag.
Satan Bless The Goths
A friend pondered why the San Francisco Bay Area comm seemed to be relatively free of the more intense policing others remembered experiencing in their IRL comms, and I put forth another uncommonly challenged hypothesis: the high concentration of goths in our area. In fact, while I was digging up that coord shot above, I found a couple early group shots of the first few meetups I went to, and reliably at least a third of the twenty-or-so lolitas present were in undeniably gothic looks, if not a good half. And this was during arguably a Golden Age of Sweet, too. (Not posting examples tho cuz, you know. Privacy and all that.)
Not to hate on the sweets, as much as I love the meme “Are the sweets okay?”, but if you look at a list of lolita rules, it’s often quite clearly based on a girl who hangs out in Daikanyama living la dolce vita– ah, but that movie was about sleeping around wasn’t it? Anyways you get my point.
The two genders
Maxicimam ad, Gothic & Lolita Bible 29 (2008), pg 34
People who discover lolita fashion from their participation in another alternative fashion are far more likely to have The Right Attitude about things. They’re not necessarily worried about following a checklist someone came up with. They’re not afraid to experiment (and fail). And they prolly have an established friends group of Fellow Weirdos, whether it’s virtually or IRL.
(Please Tell Other People To) “Wear What You Want”
If you’re reading this post, there’s a good chance you aren’t a newbie to the fashion. You might not be in the fashion at all – my top-performing posts are all my random nonogram game reviews, after all. But if you’re an OG lolita, you don’t need me to tell you that yes, you can go blouseless, and no, a petticoat isn’t a hard requirement.
frillSquid alluded to a lot of these rules in their tongue-in-cheek quiz contribution to the theme, and I funnily enough ended up scoring fairly conservatively due to my adherence to ‘modest dress’. But that’s nothing to do with lolita – I just stopped removing my body hair well over a decade ago, and keeping it covered up at all times reliably prevents strangers from commenting on it.
Anyways, I think most people in my local comms would agree my coordinates are more on the experimental side, and while I’m sure they aren’t to plenty of people’s taste, I get a lot of compliments from lolitas I don’t know. Not just the usual “oh, I like your coord!”, detailed effusive praise like “your coordinates are always so inspirational.” And I barely promote my looks to boot!
I don’t mention this to toot my own horn, but to put forth yet another hypothesis – my coordinates inspire people because I Do What I Want, Including Experiment. I figured out very early on that the aspects of the various Japanese alternative fashions I liked were Hyperfemininity, Extreme Layering, and Maximalism. I also know that I generally prefer what people call “jewel tones” and darker colors to pastels, although I’m not opposed to stuff in the realm of “dusty”. And it’s those principles which govern my OTT outfits – I’m not trying to cross stuff off a checklist someone else made, I’m trying to Cohesively Wear As Many Clothes As Possible
Me wearing a dress over a skirt over a dress over a blouse at Ursa Major 2024. Oh, and a bonnet.
PS: thanks @bon.komera for this photo and the post thumbnail
Different people will come to different conclusions, which is great and wonderful and also the continuous result of a lifelong journey that, frustrating as it may be for everyone involved, a more experienced fashion person can’t really guide them on. It’s a solo endeavor, at its core, unlike the organized religious experience of mainstream fashion. But while it might not be possible to map out a route for the newbies to follow, that’s not really what they need. What they need is a space of fellow same, but different, weirdos cheering them on from the sidelines. That’s even easier to provide than a checklist, and hopefully more and more comms have moved towards that goal.
kelp 