RuffleCon News Part 2: Lolita Designer Guests & Events

A few months back I wrote about RuffleCon an alternative fashion conference, and I'm back for round two with all the exciting news that's come out since then! When I first wrote about RuffleCon, it was only just announced, and in the past few months we've had a lot of really exciting announcements. One of the most exciting of which is that a few of the special guests for the premier year are Japanese Lolita brand designers!

Fumiko of Enchantlic Enchantilly (formerly known as Chantilly) will be be attending and her brand will be sold in the marketplace. Chantilly is known for their lush Gothic designs in bold jewel tones and delicate metallics, as well as their larger range of sizes. They are definitely one of my favorite Gothic Lolita brands and it's very exciting to get the chance to see their clothes in person and meet the designer!

The other Lolita designer special guests are Kaie and Babi, the designers behind Triple Fortune. This is incredibly exciting news because this will be Triple Fortune's first event in the US! Their clothes are notoriously difficult to get a hold of online, as they mostly sell at events and you usually have to be lucky enough to stumble across something secondhand or through their very limited Kera shop. While Triple fortune is most known in the US for their elaborate bonnets, they also release gorgeous dresses and corsets too! Getting to meet the designers and be able to purchase their items is a rare chance for Lolitas outside of Japan!

Of course, these aren't the only Lolita brands being represented at RuffleCon's marketplace! There is a wide assortment of indie Lolita brands that will be attending, you can check out the currently announced ones here!

Even just beyond designers and shopping, there are a lot of things for the Lolita to do at RuffleCon! We have a number of panel rooms featuring panels and many of our special guests will be presenting panels. In fact, we still have about a week until panel applications close! There will also be quite a few main events including a fashion show (featuring the above brands and then some!), a couple different coordinate contests, and a masquerade with live music. So far it's really gearing up to be an amazing event!

You can check out RuffleCon here:

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If you happen to register for RuffleCon, add my name as a referrer ;D

Misako Aoki in New York City

This first week of February 2014 is a pretty exciting week for Lolitas in the New York area! We're lucky enough to get a visit from Misako and a few very exciting Misako events.

Over the years, Misako has done a lot of cool things to bring Lolita to the limelight, from being one of Japan's first official Kawaii Ambassadors, to her new project the Japan Lolita Association, so it's really exciting for her to come to New York City!

Misako's first event in New York, on Wednesday the 5th, is to be part of a panel at the Japan Society, "Lolita Fashion: Costume or Culture?". Myself and Christina of Ramble Rori will actually also be speaking at that event! The panel will end with a Baby the Stars Shine Bright fashion collection showing and a meet and greet wine reception with Misako! You can buy tickets for the event here.

While in NYC, Misako will be filming with Jiji Press and is hoping to put together a group of Lolitas to ride The Ride around Midtown with her on Friday the 7th. This event is still tentative and dependent upon a few things, but if you happen to be free early Friday afternoon in NYC, you can check out how that's developing here (The latest news I've heard is that the tickets will be discounted to $20, but they need at least 15 Lolitas! The bottom of the post should have the newest info).



That Friday, on February 8th, we over at RuffleCon are lucky enough to have gotten the chance to sponsor an event with Misako! From 2-7PM Misako will be the guest of honor at a tea party in New York at The Dove parlor! There are a few activities planned for the evening, including a few raffles. There are only a very small number of spots left, so if this is something you're interested in, you can see details and prices here.

These are all really amazing events, and I'll personally be at the Japan Society event, as well as the tea party on Saturday. I think it's a really cool chance to get to see a big-name Lolita guest outside of an anime con environment, which is usually the only chance some of us get to meet Lolitas like Misako, especially out here on the east coast, where we have an unfortunate lack of physical Lolita shops.

Is anyone else planning on going to any of these events? If you're on the east coast, particularly the north east, what sort of Lolita events do you hope we one day get around here?

RuffleCon: An Upcoming US Alternative Fashion Conference

Have you ever ventured into something that's incredibly exciting, but also incredibly scary? That's exactly what happened over the summer with me and Christina of Ramble Rori. It happened as all big scary exciting things happen, while chatting on Facebook.

We were talking to a mutual friend about Lolita and anime conventions, and how a lot of anime convention are cutting out Lolita and other J-Fashion panels and events from their schedules. Our mutual friend from Germany, Tralala, is lucky enough to have a lot of large scale Lolita events and even Lolita conventions in Europe that she has the opportunity to attend, and after a bit of complaining from us about lack of any fun events (of course, this is outside of Frill! Which was unfortunately much to far for most of us in the Northeast to travel to) Tralala simply asked "Why doesn't someone start a Lolita convention over there?". At that moment lightbulbs probably flickered on over both mine and Christina's heads and we rushed to PM to discuss exactly why no one did and who should do something like that. After some serious consideration, and some really amazing dedication on Christina's part, lawyers were called, LLCs were filed, and RuffleCon was officially born.

So, what exactly is RuffleCon all about? After thinking about it for a bit, it was decided that a strictly Lolita convention isn't the way to go. After all, a lot of the people we wanted to get involved with building the event had a lot of different and amazing personal styles that were not necessarily strictly Lolita, so with that, we decided to expand RuffleCon to encompass other alternative fashions as well and decided we were really more of a conference, than what one typically thinks of when they think "convention". We wanted to provide out dream fashion weekend of shopping, fashion shows, stage events, and even panels. Our "big three" fashions are Gothic, Lolita, and Steampunk, but the list doesn't really stop there!

Just part of the staff for RuffleCon 2014!

I was lucky enough to go with Christina to visit one of the potential hotels to host the event at, the Omni in New Haven Connecticut, and we walked into the lobby and were blown away by the elegance of the place. The aesthetics of the hotel perfectly fit the shared aesthetics of the fashions we wanted our conference to represent. It was decorated in a very lush and inviting Victoriana style, even the panel rooms had wall sconces and chandeliers. It was about a million miles away from the white walls and abstract neon carpets of your average convention center. Connecticut might seem like an out-of-the-way spot at first, but the hotel that RuffleCon will be at is less than a mile away from from a train station that connects directly to Grand Central, as well as pretty much anywhere Amtrak (and a number of bus lines) runs!

We have an Indiegogo up and running to help fund this project and make it even better. While we currently have a fair share of guests, some extra funding can help add even more guests, as well as lowering ticket prices for attendees! If you want to help out even further, and are already making plans for RuffleCon, we're always looking for volunteers as well as people interested in presenting panels or other events. Even just helping to spread the word by sharing the Indiegogo link would be a fantastic way to help. The Indigogo page even has code for a widget for your blog's sidebar!

One of the biggest ways you can help make this event even better than it's already going to be is to donate to our Indiegogo fund! Check it out here!

So far, this whole project has been the making of a dream come true. It's seriously something that I know a lot of people have dreamed of for years. As scary as all of this is, it's really amazing to be a part of something like this! You'll definitely be hearing more about this from me, but in the mean time you can check out RuffleCon's website or facebook for more info!