/cgl/ - Cosplay & EGL

Nice bait op
But as a veteran lolita who recently quit three years ago, and who now dresses pretty normie and tomboyish, I'll tell you something.
Lolita is a costume. But this comes from my personal experiences, so dunno about everyone else.

Yeah maybe you aren't dressing as anyone when you put on your frilly dress and wig, but honestly... the whole "lifestyle" lolita and how you have to feel more feminine and somewhat fragile or danity made it feel like a costume for me. My obsession with the rules, the exact aesthetic to accomplish, and how much I wanted to look like the girls in japanese magazines really toyed not only with my own perception of myself but my perception of the world.

Everything I had to get had to be frilly, heart shaped, or mystical. I had to be an ethereal being. I had to drink tea and collect dolls. I made my life a lolita-esque experience. But as I became more this, I was less myself, even if I did like such things at that time. Surely I thought at the time that this was all there was to life, following a pretty jfashion that made me feel happy. But... I felt like I was wearing a costume. A costume of a fairy tale being, or a costume of someone who I wanted to be but really wasn't. It surely made me feel pretty and getting brand was such a rush, and knowing that I was one of the best dressed in my tiny comm felt good. I felt admired even by normies in the street. I saw it as fashion.

And even if you downplay lolita a lot, you still get some stares from normies. You have to wear a casual dress with your own hair and accesories that are not so evidently over the top to get a bit less judged, at least where I live. But the mentality of being a proper lolita was still there for me. I know a lot of lolitas don't fucking care about "feeling proper" but it's not about if you are rude, smoke, drink or whatever in a dress, it is everything else that comes with being a lolita, the cattiness, the OCD color combination, the competitive aspect etc.

>>8957572

>really don't like otome or larme for some reason

Nah, I get what you mean. Neither fashions appeal to me either, nor does gyaru, nanchatte, dollykei, fairy kei or any of the others. Lolita's something I truly love, I'm not going to trendhop into other jfashions just because they're jfashions either.

What I meant was that if you search for terms like "casual lolita otome" you're likely to find some toned down coords where you can almost pass for a very dressy sort of near-normal look. If you're worried about people staring at you it's certainly an option to keep in mind, so your choices aren't limited to only either "dresss like a bum" or "be OTT eye magnet", there's a middle road you can try and explore.

The coords look nicer when you throw in the word otome when you search. I don't know why, searching for casual lolita alone seems to bring up a lot of really weird outfits and replicas.

>>8951957
>Didn't know that you had to be rich to be Lolita. Geez.

You don't 'need' to be rich to be a Lolita. However, Lolita is an expensive luxury fashion. Brand is especially expensive because of the high quality of their clothing.

Idk why you're coming here and expecting everyone to spoonfeed you before you did any sort of research in the first place. I realize you are ESL but you could have, at the very least, searched Lolita fashion and found

>http://www.lolitafashion.org/
>http://egl.livejournal.com/

Which are both good, albeit slightly outdated centers of information. You should have a good base of knowledge from these before you being lurking the /cgl/ Lolita threads.

>>8727929
this is really cute. so is this >>8727855

I really hate the costumey aspect lolita has become. I don't mind it for photo shoots and what not but it genuinely bugs me how much OTT and costume elements are in the fashion now. I really want to see "casual lolita" make a comeback.

>>8406936
Casual shouldn't warrant improvement ideas though. Casual should be obviously well-put-together, just toned down with a cutsew or less poofy/flashy skirt like pic related.

This is going to be a wreck I can already taste it.

How many of you wear Lolita on a daily basis, or as your main fashion outside of work?

I feel like I rarely see the coords that people actually wear on a day-to-day basis anymore, and wondering how many people just treat it as something to wear exclusively to a meetup or convention.

Can we get a thread going for this? Need some inspo for a casual Lolita part of my wardrobe.