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 ♥