Beginner Lolita: Volume 1

Hello, my dear readers!

As I told you in my last post, I am beginning to build up a lolita wardrobe. I discovered the fashion some years ago in about 9th or 10th grade, when I returned from a trip to Paris finding I was only one floor below an Angelic Pretty Shop in LaFayette. Before my first trip to London I bought a gothic lolita dress second hand from my saved pocket money, but... well, the neckline was too low and it's a bit short, so it doesn't look very good on me although I did like wearing it *haha* I never had the money to buy any more clothes though, so I learned a lot by reading every website I could find. I read the Lolita Handbook, various tutorials and articles on LiveJournal, Blogs, everything. Since I started university with Japanese Stuies, I came in touch with pop culture even more and I so wanted to dress up in this wonderful style.
Now that I have a job to afford paying for a vacation on my own, I saw it as a chance to try it. I ordered four dresses from Bodyline... but it's not as simple as that. It took me about two weeks to decide. Why?
Well, here are my choosing points, or,

The Beginner "Lolita-on-a-budget"s Wardrobe Choice Checklist

This is for my choice of dresses/lolita pieces and does not cover staple pieces at the moment.

• What kind of base colour do I want to use? Some things are staples of a wardrobe, so you need to combine. Always. For example, I love my comfortable black shoes and I have a lot of black tights, alongside to black jewellery/hair accessories. So why bother to buy a whole new set of this stuff if I can use it as foundation for my lolita wardrobe? So I stuck to black.

When choosing the clothes on a website 

• Which designs do I like? Is the price acceptable? I opened all dresses with prices within my budget (For Bodyline, I did not want to buy a dress for more than 40€) and wich looked nice in the tumbnail picture. Looking at them in detail I eliminated some which did not suit my taste.
• Are the dresses available in my size and in the colour scheme I like? Sadly, this too eliminates a lot of dresses and skirts. You still can find loads of sweet lolita stuff on Bodyline, I have the feeling that dresses are never really sold out in the pink hues, but if you are looking for sax blue or mint or even black, sometimes you just have bad luck. 
• Does it go with black/my base colour? Well, this is important if you can only afford three to four pieces in that one order. Wich dress is the most versatile? Of course you can buy matching purse and shoes and socks later, but in the beginning, every dress should at least look good with the one pair of shoes I have. This narrowed down my choice to about six or seven pieces. 
• How bad do I want it? Will I like it for some time? Sometimes you just want that dress because the print is so nice. But will you like the print on you? Or might heart-shaped waffles topped with whipped cream and cherries (completely made up XD) just look weird on you? I stuck for rather plain pieces with no print or a classy flower print, suitable for both elegant dark and cute and romantic styles, with nice details. The only dress that was out of the line was the adorable blue one with the cat-and-birdcage print. I just fell in love with it. And hey, it goes with black!
• Total cost and customs. You have to keep that in mind. In Germany, if you order for more than about 120€ in total you have to not only pay VAT but also a customs fee - so I forced myself to stay beneath this price. It's better for my bank account, too *haha* I deleted some dresses - and then my order was ready!

The skirt on the right is bought second hand. The dresses are my choice and I am very happy - all of them fit, the black one is very elegant and toned down, the blue one rather casual, the red JSK for when I feel like dressing up a bit and the mint one is just so adorable and cute!
So these are the first 'real' pieces of my lolita wardrobe and my personal starting point into the fashion. Now I have to combine them to make nice outfits! It's learning by doing, isn't it?

Thank you for reading ♥

Romantic Winter in Venice

Early this year I had a short trip to rome, two days in Venice and a few hours in Amsterdam. Venice, the half-island with water roads and the colorful carnival, has a very romantic feeling even if you only hear the name of the city. Surprising though, that you can find there is an actual city of Venice which is much like the smaller cities around my home town and does not seem very romantic at all!
But a short bus or train ride away, you pass a long bridge to the island, walking over a bridge you see all the tourist boats, bus-like ships and the gondola... so pretty. Old houses and narrow, gloomy paths between them give a mysterious feeling, and the cool yet not cold air is so nice and fresh in January.

Some dreamy photographs under the cut ♥ Enjoy if you like!

Lolita Vacation coming up!

Hello, my dear readers!

Tomorrow I will go on vacation. I prepared since April for this and I am so happy! I will go to Berlin and from there a friend and I will fly to London. LONDON ♥ I love this city so much. The last time I went there was about four years ago, it was a school trip. This time we decided to make it a Lolita Holiday!

So what exactly is the plan?
Well, we will be walking around London in our lolita dresses. We searched the web for the last months to build up a basic wardrobe, ordering from Bodyline and Kleiderkreisel (a german second hand website). Now these dresses are going to accompany me:

I won't wear the blue one in London, though. This is for having cake in Berlin. As a beginner Lolita, I had a bit of trouble choosing the dresses which I wanted to order - but that will be the subject of another post.

While I am away enjoying my fairytale-time I will leave some scheduled posts for you ;) The next will be a short one about my trip to Venice this January with some pictures I took!

Have a nice time and thank you for reading ♥ I'll be back by the end of the month!