Momoberi.NET // Sara's Blog

Holy crap, it’s Sep­tem­ber.

That’s right, folks. It’s time to hang up your light dresses and cardi­gans and start whip­ping out the muted tones, the heavy fab­rics, and the “Omfg, I’ll die with­out it prints” that actu­ally should have been released in the sum­mer.

Things I’m look­ing for­ward to this fall? Well, for one, my reser­va­tion of Twin­kle Jour­ney series from Meta­mor­phose will finally arrive.   I’m so sick of wait­ing for it. It’s killing me. Haha. Already, the JSK ver­sions and skirt ver­sions have been released. Now, all I am wait­ing on is the OP since that is the ver­sion that I had ordered. So those of you who orderd JSKs and skirts, con­grats. Your awe­some Uni­corn prints will reach you soon. And yeah, I jelly.

This is the ver­sion that I ordered.   I am expecting/hoping for its release by this Sunday.

The only other thing that I have recently pur­chased and am still wait­ing to receive (group order… ) is Angelic Pretty’s Rose Toi­lette in pink. For an older, pop­u­lar print, I man­aged to get it on sale from Closet Child dur­ing their sum­mer event of 30% off.

Only Man­aged to snag the reverse photo but it’s the same on both sides.

Lately, I’ve been look­ing into things I need to stock up on as far as coord basics, but also sea­sonal basics such as coats, boots, stock­ings, bloomers, etc. Many of these, I have none of.  I’m afraid, I must admit that I am extremely lax when it comes to the basics and I tend to focus more on main pieces.   As of this fall, my goal is to aquire:

Neu­tral coat for gen­eral use (x1)

Black boots (x1)

Pink tea par­ties or heels (x1)

Blouses– long sleeve (x2)

Blouses– short sleeved (x2)

Bloomers– white/cream (x2)

I’d also like  to announce that I am pretty much leav­ing sweet lolita all together. With the rare few sweet coords that I am going to do with Rose Toi­lette, I am pretty much mov­ing into Inno­cent World and Baby, The Stars Shine Bright exclu­sively. (Of course, Meta still releases clas­si­cal prints so I will stay with them too.) Nvm. Can’t do it. I keep find­ing myself look­ing at sweet prints and still want­ing them. Dis­re­gard the pre­vi­ous statement.

Any­who, I think it’s about time for me to catch some shut eye before I have to get up and go jog­ging with Richie.

Night night

1 comment September 1st, 2010

As some of you may well know, my gall­blad­der (after 4.5 years of hell) finally became inflamed enough to rup­ture. I was in the mid­dle of orga­niz­ing to get my surgery sched­uled because I couldn’t take the grief and more and it went ahead and jumped the gun.   Most painful expe­ri­ence of my life but I’m home from the hos­pi­tal. I’ve been asleep, mostly due to the painkillers, but I’m awake right now and so I thought I’d let you know that I won’t be post­ing any­thing for a lit­tle bit.  I have to have help to get any­where near the com­puter and I can only be here a bit before the screen makes me sick and my surgery sites get sore again.   Don’t worry, I’m hop­ing to be back at work on Sat­ur­day and com­pletely back to nor­mal by Mon­day. I’m start­ing to be able to walk around some and I can eat solid foods now.

Love you all~  Bai bai til then.

May 20th, 2010

So, it seems as of late that the rules of Lolita are a really pop­u­lar sub­ject and so, I’m gonna jump on the tea-party band­wagon. For those of you who don’t want to read the whole thing, I will include a TL;DR at the bottom.

In gen­eral, the so called rules of Lolita can only be loosely defined. A lot of new ladies assume that there are strict rules to fol­low; “Pet­ti­coats are required”, “knee-length or higher socks and stock­ings need to be worn”, “You can’t act like a nor­mal per­son–” or what­ever they mis­con­strue these rules as.

In real­ity, these rules are more of an eti­quette guide­line rather than a code of ethics. They help you get the gen­eral idea of how to behave and how to build your wardrobe but this should not turn into a strict adher­ence of  “Lolita law”. If you don’t wanna drink tea, order cof­fee. Not all Lolita enjoy tea. In fact, many do not. Sweets and cakes aren’t the dietary sta­ple of Lolita, while many of us enjoy it, it’s fat­ten­ing and tire­some to just eat sweets. I know a lot of us enjoy a good crisp salad over cake any day.

So how does some­one become obsessed with rules?

To answer that, many new-comers are obsessed with non-conformist con­for­mity. The assump­tion that we all dress alike, look alike, and behave alike is stuck in their minds. The “hand­books” and “guide­books” set out to help Lolita are turned into The 10 Com­mand­ments for some girls. I’m not say­ing that it’s wrong to fol­low the rules by the book, but so many of these rule-abiders look down their noses at Lolita who express them­selves beyond these rules.  Any­ways, these are just there to help you build your Lolita sil­hou­ette. Lolita comes in so many dif­fer­ent shapes, sizes, col­ors, races, ages and so on. It’s hard to pin it down to just a few set things.

Gen­res such as Sweet, Goth, Ero, Punk, Steam, Guro, etc are just main-frame  foun­da­tions for you to build with! They give you a gen­eral idea, and from there you can run with it. Like, for sweet, gen­er­ally you see cupcake-puff dresses with loads of cute acces­sories. But you don’t have to bulk up those lit­tle hair good­ies. A brightly pat­terned dress, cute purse and some match­ing shoes pass you along just fine. If the co-ord is bright and fun, it can pass as sweet. You don’t have to look like you rolled around in a bak­ery all day katamari-ing sweets into your hair and cloth­ing.

How do I break away from this or help oth­ers break away?

The first step in break­ing away is to real­ize that you’re not actu­ally break­ing any rules. There are a few stan­dards for qual­ity, and style types but any­thing beyond that isn’t a rule! If you think a cake on your head will go with your Sweet Car­ni­val print, then go ahead and do it. Ven­ture out with your out­fits; go above and beyond “the norm” of Lolita.  Main­tain your Lolita sil­hou­ette but, always remem­ber that Lolita is about cre­ativ­ity and expres­sive free­dom. Use this to your advan­tage when coor­di­nat­ing your out­fits. That cherry red skirt will most def. go with that cot­ton candy pink muf­fler and shoes. Mix and match!, people!

If you feel like you’re not “lady-like” enough, that’s fine. So long as you’re not doing rude things such as yelling at ran­dom peo­ple dur­ing meet-ups or in gen­eral, it shouldn’t mat­ter if you are a lit­tle louder than the other girls. You’re still a part of their group, and there­fore, still Lolita in every­one else’s eyes. If you’re not, you may want to seek a more accept­ing and mature group to meet-up with.

In all, rules are meant to be bro­ken and fol­lowed. We can­not judge one another for being exploratory or being our­selves. That’s what makes Lolita so unique; we’ve moved away from tra­di­tional, and totally mono­chrome fash­ion  for self-expression of many dif­fer­ent things. (Like those who strive for beauty through more mod­esty, OTT cute­ness can still be seri­ous and pro­fes­sional, Jeans and shirts just aren’t for me, etc!) For what­ever rea­son you wear Lolita, fol­low the guide­lines, but you don’t have to fol­low the rules.  Be your­self, and who you think Lolita allows you to rep­re­sent. The Lolita-police do not exist and those who insist they are prob­a­bly should recon­sider themselves.

You have that Princess Code on your site though!!

Yes, I do. I thought it was a fun meme and so I posted what I thought princesses and Lolita should do. This doesn’t make it a rule! It’s just things I like to see. Mostly, if you notice, it’s just about mind­ing your man­ners. Peo­ple these days tend to be ill-mannered to the point of not even say­ing thank you for hav­ing a door held open for them. The “code” I have writ­ten should apply to all peo­ple, not just Lolita, if you ask me. Because to me, man­ners are extremely impor­tant. We devel­oped them for a rea­son, so we aught to use them.

tl;dr : Essen­tially, Lolita is too unique to have strict rules. Guide­lines are what these should be taken as. Gen­eral eti­quette and man­ner­isms should be fol­lowed, but don’t be a prim lit­tle princess if that’s just not who you are. Be Y O U R S E L F.

Add comment April 24th, 2010

I was brows­ing EGL on Live­jour­nal today and I kept com­ing across entries about harass­ment in pub­lic. People’s reac­tions to lolita in pos­i­tive, neg­a­tive and neu­tral lights.  It appears that because of the monot­o­nous way of style-life in the United States, see­ing some­thing so queer snaps peo­ple back to an all too strange real­ity; Other sub­cul­tures do exist! It’s like until they’ve seen a Lolita the whole world is just shades of grey. How can any­one have such blind­ers? They see really crazy stuff on the Run­ways and think it’s great, but when a Lolita pops up in her cute, or clas­si­cally sophis­ti­cated garb, chock full of ele­gance down to her toes, it’s sud­denly bizarre!

I, myself, have had expe­ri­ences with this and it’s always dif­fi­cult to main­tain com­po­sure in cer­tain sit­u­a­tions. Espe­cially, the neg­a­tive exam­ples. I’ve had peo­ple ask to touch my dress, or they’ll reach out at my hair to see if it’s real or not. Other than with friends and Richard, I am not a touchy-feely per­son so peo­ple who invade my space are typ­i­cally screamed at or yelled at. I almost have a pho­bia of strangers touch­ing me, even brush­ing against me. I get flus­tered, hot and sud­denly anx­ious which in turn makes me angry and snappy. Not super appro­pri­ate for a lolita to have such a pub­lic reaction.

I’ve also received rude com­ments such as,

“Hey, look! It’s Mary Poppins.”

“Oooh look! An anime girl!”

“WTF are you wearing!?”

“It’s not Hal­loween yet!”

“Oh, I love your COSTUME”

I real­ize that these peo­ple are just uncom­fort­able see­ing some­thing so out of the ordi­nary, but their out­ra­geous reac­tions make it hard for a lady not to get her pet­ti­coats ruf­fled beyond mea­sure. It’s uncalled for and flat out rude. One of these days, some­one is going to throw some­thing or say some­thing to a troupe of loli­tas and it’s going to trig­ger a hard­core para­sol beat-down. Some­times, all I wanna say is,

” ($%#@ YOU!!) ”

Then there’s the pos­i­tive and neu­tral side of the lace. Lit­tle girls, and older gen­er­a­tions seem to appre­ci­ate the mod­esty and intri­cacy of the out­fits. I’ve had lit­tle girls at the JVP and mall point at me excit­edly and telling their par­ents that they see a princess, and older gen­tle­men have tipped their hats to me just walk­ing down the street.  The lit­tle old ladies just like the idea of good old fash­ioned cir­cle skirts and blouses. It’s very empow­er­ing and nice to know that some peo­ple still appre­ci­ate mod­esty and a good liv­ing fairy­tale. Fem­i­nin­ity comes in more than one pack­age, and I think peo­ple for­get this. Lace, ruf­fles and bows don’t make Lolita any less of peo­ple than jeans and a t-shirt do to the aver­age gals. We’re not pre­tend­ing to be lit­tle girls, we don’t over-sexualize our­selves and we cer­tainly don’t do it for the atten­tion. We’re just reg­u­lar girls, with reg­u­lar ideals, dreams and aspi­ra­tions. We just are “behind on the times” fashion-wise and pre­fer it that way.

7 comments March 21st, 2010

As per the chal­lenge from Vic­to­ria Suzanne I’m writ­ing my own lolita check list!!

Loves stuffed ani­mals and prob­a­bly has a plethora of them on her bed

Has a neck­lace and ear­ring pair for every coor­di­nate and outfit.

Thinks cakes, stuffed ani­mals and head-eating bows are a won­drous idea and no where near out of the ordi­nary for hair-wear.

Col­lects and dis­plays purses, socks or cute knick­knacks even if they have no real use.

Dis­plays at least one or two dresses at a time, either on dress forms or on hang­ers against the wall to dis­play full detail and bell of the gown.

Has attempted (failed or suc­ceeded) to make her own dresses or accessories.

Owns more purses, totes and shoul­der bags than she really needs.

Always drinks a vari­ant of tea or milk-tea

Loves fruity blends, espe­cially berry vari­eties. Rasp­ber­ries, straw­ber­ries and cher­ries being her favorites.

Owns at least one San­rio prod­uct, or San-X product.

Inex­plic­a­bly loves Rilakkuma.

Puts more straps on her phone than really needed.

Owns more than one color of a sin­gle style of shoe

Has a small dog or a cat.

Is con­stantly scour­ing the web, mag­a­zines, com­mu­ni­ties and mooks for tid­bits on new styles and upcom­ing releases or events.

Spends more than an hour and a half on her hair (or wig) and make alone.

con­stantly adds bows, frills or lace to things she thinks should have them.

Will cus­tom deco her phone, shoes, nails and any­thing that CAN be deco’d.

Styles her hair to look like bows, bouf­fants or any­thing that is large, curly and can hold lots of pins and clips!

This is all I could come up with. It’s pretty darned close since I see these things a lot when I study fel­low loli­tas. I for one, do a lot of these things. Espe­cially the bits about hair acces­sories, hair­styles, and own­ing more purses than I hon­estly need or will ever use (My epic CHER wall? はーはーは)

Any­who, I finally have a day off and my legs are killing me! I have started to do push-ups (stand­ing push-ups against the table) at work every 15 min­utes or so and then on my breaks and lunch, I will walk up & down the stairs behind my work until I have to go back inside. I feel like I got hit with a ton of bricks every­time I move, but I don’t wanna stop. If I do, I tend to get lazy.

I’m also get­ting into this finicky habit of, if I went to work look­ing like crap, I come home and totally doll up even though I’m not going to go any­where!! It just makes me feel bet­ter, えぇへーへーへ. Tonight is no excep­tion, so I took some self-absorbed pho­tos. Enjoy~

10 comments March 19th, 2010