Beyond the Pageboy: Retro Hairstyles For Short(ish) Haired Girls

About two weeks ago, the lovely lady who runs Les Fleurs Noires wrote a post about short hair and Lolita. She focused largely on accessorizing with short hair and styles to pair it with. And, in the spirit of sharing short hair style tips for the frilly among us, I thought I’d chip in with some of my favorite hairdo tutorials.

These focus on hair that is between chin length and shoulder length (sorry, pixie cut ladies, but I don't have personal experience with cuts that short and styling them!). It's also going to focus on retro hairstyles because, to be frank, I think retro hairstyles look adorable with Lolita and other frilly fashions.

Ribbon Braid Updo

Confession time: I pretty much lived in this hairstyle about a year ago. My hair had just about hit my shoulders and I knew not what to do with it. I also didn't have time (or money) to go out and get my hair chopped just because it was a little longer than I usually like it. Since then, I've decided that this is going to be my go-to for days when my hair is a touch too long and I just want it out of the way.

Then, I found this tutorial by way of Va Voom Vintage and absolutely loved it.

This hairstyle works well with a ribbon, a scarf, or even a random scrap of lace. One fun variation that looks great with natural kei or dolly kei inspired looks is this one from Megan Maude. With a thinner strip of lace and some smaller flowers, it looks quite nice with Lolita as well.

Tales of Christmas: Lolita Outfits Inspired by Classic Holiday Stories

Christmastime!

I love Christmas. I love giving gifts and spending time with family. I love that it is a great excuse for making foodstuffs for friends and family, whether they celebrate the holiday or not. And, in many cases, I love the stories that go along with it.

So I decided to do a few outfits based on my favorite Christmas stories.

Toy Soldier

This outfit takes inspiration from two of the many things I have loved in my life: nutcrackers and marching band. The shako (the bucket-shaped hat often seen in a marching band setting) is a strange choice with lolita, but it works with the military styling of the outfit as a whole. I chose a shako with a gold eagle both because it reflects the tone of the gold buttons on the vest and because I like a good black and gold shako.

Any plaid skirt would work for this outfit, but I chose to use this Bodyline JSK both because of its inexpensive nature and because of the layering in the skirt. The three tiers break up the line of the skirt and mimic the peplum of the coat often seen on traditional nutcrackers.

I would also say curled hair (or a curly wig if that's your thing) are a must with this outfit to offset the vertical nature of the shako. Give it a bit of volume to balance out the skirt.

Inspiring Series: Shoujo Kakumei Utena (Revolutionary Girl Utena)

Shoujo Kakumei Utena (Revolutionary Girl Utena) is my favorite anime, bar none.

If you haven't seen it, you're totally missing out, and I could talk about the series for hours, but this blog is about fashion and not about fangirling. Most of the time. Sometimes they coincide. Right now is one of those cases, so I hope you will forgive me my fangirling moment.

Inspired Coords Part II: Non-Characters

Continued from last week's post, I have a third media-inspired coord type to show you.

Type 3: A non-character or setting

If you're doing this one, you clearly like a challenge.

This is, simply put, the hardest way you can take inspiration from media. Whether you take your inspiration from a culture or from a setting, you're taking a broader base of impression and trying to distill it into a single outfit. For example, while many people will say that the setting of a book “becomes a character,” you’ve got to admit that it’s hard to translate that setting into human form.

However, it can be done.

My favorite texts for this are works like Palimpsest by Catherynne Valente and Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino. Each of these offers dreamlike descriptions of places, not concrete but very vivid. They give a wealth of images, colors, and textures that can be translated easily to fabrics and jewelry.

Inspired Coords Part I: Characters

I'm back! After doing the play and having the kids ask me to come to their concerts the next week, I'm finally back on the blogging train. And all the costuming I've been doing has given me ideas.

Inspiration for Lolita coords comes from everywhere, but it can sometimes be hard to figure out how to take that inspiration and translate it into a completed coord. And, since I like a good challenge and am hot off the heels of taking a script and making written characters a reality, I'm going to take on media-inspired coords.

I'll be covering three different types of outfit inspiration over the course of two posts:

1. Characters that are already visually represented
2. Characters that are not visually represented
3. Non-characters

The first two will be in this post, and the final type will be given its own post.

Let's get started, shall we?

Outfit of the Day: Happy Halloween!

So, I love Halloween.

This probably comes of no surprise to anybody, given my love of costuming. And this year, they encouraged folks at my office to dress up. Dangerous, that.

Because I wasn't feeling particularly spooky of face this year, and because I wanted very much to wear my new antlers from Mythical Designs, I decided to do a deer-inspired outfit. The main part of the outfit was the face. I used too-dark bronzer (also known as "bronzer" because of how pasty white I am) and cheap white face paint to make my cheeks tan and add some white spots to it. I would have painted my nose black to add some more deer-i-ness to it, but I ran out of time in the morning. What can you do?

Anyway, here's what I looked like from the neck up.

Close Encounters of the Frilled Kind: Well, That's a First!

Breaking hiatus to share a story with you guys.

I wear Lolita almost every Sunday. I attend church, and it gives me a good excuse to wear frills at least one day a week. So today I wore a black and gold skirt, lace top (which didn't match my outfit as well as I should like, but a subpar coordinate was fine by me when we needed to be out the door fast) and black shoes. My cousin, visiting for the weekend, wore the skirt I bought for her along with a lace blouse and earrings shaped like a rainbow-colored layer cake.

And now I'm kind of wishing that my coordinate had been better.

You see, after church we went to a local grocery store to pick up some supplies. As we got to the checkout, the young lady working the register smiled at us.

"I like your outfits!"
"Thanks," I replied.
"Lolita, right? I spotted you two across the store, and I love the prints."

I was floored. I have never had anybody know what I was wearing. Usually, people just call it retro and girly and leave it at that. I've been asked if I was going to a "German cultural festival." I've been asked if I was dressed up for a play. But coming across someone who actually knows what Lolita fashion is? Never.

So, yeah. That made my day and I had to share.