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Saturday 6 October 2012

3 Lolita Outfits for $300

Recently a fancy new blogging thing called The Lolita Blog Carnival started up - I found out via Caro-chan of Fyeahlolita. The group is based on facebook and they decide on topics then on Friday the participating bloggers all post up their thoughts on the matter. The inaugural topic was to design one or more off the shelf lolita coordinates for $100. Though I'm not a member of the group, nor an active lolita as yet, I thought it was a really interesting topic and thought I would give it my own spin.

I tend to like doing my shopping all in one place, so I decided to create three looks using items from three websites: Bodyline, Etsy and eBay. However, I didn't include postage in the totals and you must forgive my somewhat shoddy Photoshop jobs - low resolution editing and I are not on friendly terms.

Bodyline

When you think cheap lolita, you think Bodyline. Or maybe taobao, but I haven't ventured there yet so I'm going to stick with what I know. So naturally it was my go-to site for this challenge.



Because I have a thing for this Alice print, I decided to run with the skirt version - mostly because it's cheaper than the JSK. After grabbing shoes, socks and blouse I couldn't accessorise without going over the limit. However, though it's under the blouse in my picture  the skirt actually comes with a detachable bow which could easily be made into a headbow if one used the few remaining dollars to buy a cheap headband and some glue. As the file was too small to photoshop easily, I sourced the headbow in the picture here.



Total: $94

Etsy

When browsing Etsy I wasn't sure if there would be shoes within the budget, so that's what I started with. There were a surprising amount of adorable flats! When I saw these ones I figured it would be easy enough to put together a more casual sailor lolita outfit but I found after shoes, skirt and t-shirt there was little budget for accessories  Plain white tights would have left enough for a headbow, but the octopus socks were such a great touch I couldn't not include them!


However, the lack of accessories for a sailor inspired outfit can be easily rectified - some navy ribbon, brass buttons and something to hot glue them to and you have instant hair clips, necklace pendant or a brooch. Easy!


Total $102

eBay

This outfit was probably the simplest to put together. The hard part was choosing a cheap but nice dress - I'm fairly sure this one is actually Infanta, so it should be quite nice. After finding the ridiculously cheap shoes I thought I'd accesorise in a dark red to bring a bit more colour to the outfit. I love bargain hunting on eBay!


Total $81

This was actually a really fun and interesting challenge. Looking back at those three outfits they are all very different and none of the parts are really interchangeable but I could have modified them all [maybe by using the same blouse and shoes, for example] and been able to put together a small and simple but workable lolita wardrobe for around $250. Ah, the joys of online shopping.

Want to see other people's take on this? Have a list of bloggers who participated in the first Lolita Blog Carnival challenge: