What It Takes To Be the Best Lolita You Can Be, According To The Gothic & Lolita Bible!

While digging through some pictures from the Gothic & Lolita Bibles, I came across this little comic. Of course, it was in Japanese originally, but I was intrigued and a bit confused by what was going on! I asked if anyone had translated this because I was quite curious what that owl was tormenting those girls for and Tanpoponoko came to the rescue and translated it! I simply edited her translations into the original comic for reading ease. If clicking it doesn't bring up a bigger picture (because sometimes blogger does weird things to images!) click here for a larger version!

Before I say what I want to say, check out the comic by clicking for a larger version (or alternatively, check out Tanpoponoko's text translation here).

I found this comic neat because it's a bit of a controversial topic in the Western Lolita circles, especially the bit about adjusting how you act and speak to be a better Lolita! Does that necessarily mean this is bad advice, even outside of the cultural context of Japan? I'm going to maybe be a little controversial in my own opinion and say "No, this is not actually that bad of advice!".

Generally in the West, it's regarded that owning Lolita clothes is all it takes to be a Lolita, and this isn't exactly untrue. It is definitely the biggest hurdle in becoming a Lolita, and you just can't be one without them, but to become a great Lolita it might take a little more than simply plopping a dress down over your head. While it's generally considered that changing the way you act and dress while in Lolita annoys people and makes it seem more of a costume than a fashion, it's not a bad suggestion to polish your look with a nice hair style and some simple learning how to move elegantly in a fluffy skirt.

You don't have to turn yourself into a perfectly made up and coiffed doll to wear Lolita, but a little bit of polishing in the form of some nice coordination, a good hairstyle, very basic mascara-and-lipgloss makeup, and learning how to move in a fluffy skirt without covering everything around you in your petticoat an simultaneously flashing everyone is never a bad thing! If you're looking for some very basic things you can do to make your Lolita look the best it can be, learn to perfect those things!

Gothic & Lolita Bible Volume 40

The 40th volume of Gothic & Lolita Bible hit jmagazinescans just the other day, it's really hard to believe that there have been 40 volumes of this out so far! In general this issue, like always, was filled with tons of gorgeous eye candy. The summer theme was evident in the vast amounts of flowers and pale, muted tones. My prediction about the Bibles (and thus Lolita in general) leaning more towards the Classic end of the spectrum, and leaving OTT behind, was apparently correct, because this volume is filled to the brim with Classic Lolita coordinates and toned down Sweet Lolitas. Maybe it's the summer heat, but even the Angelic Pretty ads passed up the opportunity to deck them selves out in accessories and extra petticoats.

The one thing that this volume seemed to be lacking was, believe it or not, patterns! I looked through it three times but I couldn't find any patterns in the whole thing! I think the patterns were replaced with a little mini-booklet of different ways to style wigs, which is hardly a compensation. I prefer patterns I can't read and craft tutorials I probably won't try out a million times over "How to make a braid" or "How to clip ponytail falls onto your wig" tutorials.

Check out some of my favorite pages from the 40th Gothic & Lolita Bible! Click to get a larger version.

While this issue was filled with gorgeous outfits, and I am happy to see a return to the art-based covers, this volume felt a little empty. Maybe it was the lack of the patterns and tutorials, which has always been a staple of the Bibles, but maybe it was missing something I just didn't pick up on? Looking back, I can't recall seeing any multi-page editorials about something cute like flowers, art, tea or something like that. Not that I can read them, but they still feel like they give the volumes some sort of substance. This volume was pretty much 100% clothes and coordinates. I'm certainly not complaining! I was very pleased and inspired by a lot of the coordinates in here, but I still felt like "That's it?" when I got to the end. If you want to pick up your own scans of the magazine (because you don't have a single local place that sells the Bibles, right!? You know you should be buying them if you can find them!) you can check out the Jmagazinescans community!

I'm doing a bit of blog housekeeping at the moment! Just straightening stuff up and doing some layout rearranging. I'm still trying to find a way of tackling the tags, a tag cloud is just so ugly, and the list just takes up too much room. I am thinking about streamlining the ones that are listed onto the side into a few very basic groups, all the tags will still be there, and accessible in individual posts (and maybe in a drop down box too), but a visitor to the blog wont need to sort through a sea of tags to find all the how-to posts, or all the lifestyle ones, or the ones labeled "inspirational" or one of the other big tags. What do you think? Is the tag cloud just fine the way it is? Or do you think things need to be a little bit more at-a-glance?

I also added a "Weekly Lolita Prompt" box on the sidebar! I plan on changing it every week with something cute and Lolita related to do, whether it's tutorials, a cute new trend, a Lolita related quote, or some sort of frivolous activity for you to do to add a bit more Lolita in your life. Once I get the second one up, I plan on having a separate page to list all the previous weeks prompts, just in case you miss one. It's just a little something extra I've been thinking about doing for a while!

Gothic & Lolita Bible 39

It's hard to believe that the Gothic & Lolita Bible is almost at issue 40! I remember, when I first discovered it, volume 10 or 11 was fresh off the press and getting excited about finding scans of it!

I definitely enjoyed this issue a lot more than the previous 2 volumes! The photos were all gorgeous and the patterns and crafts look fun. As for patterns, this volume contained a whole dress and a few random crafts that basically involved gluing cute things to accessories, but looked cute none the less!

When volume 38 came out, I had noticed that there were a lot less OTT coordinates and sparkle covered photoshoots than there had been in previous volumes. I wondered if this could be the beginning of the end of the OTT trend, which, while alive and well in the English language Lolita communities, seems to be fading a bit from popularity in both Japanese street snaps, and the Bibles. Fall/Winter volumes of the Bible (and many other fashion magazines!) have always been darker and more subdued than other season's volumes, so I wasn't exactly ready to make any bold statements, but the Spring/Summer issues often use the bright colors of the new season as an excuse to design some rainbow prints and bust out the glitter brush in Photoshop, so I was actually a bit excited to see that in this volume, instead of bunnies and unicorns I noticed much more pale pastel florals! So, I think I am ready to call it, as far as the Gothic & Lolita Bible is concerned, OTT Sweet seems to be old news now. Even Angelic Pretty, the brand that pretty much started the trend, has been releasing bold colored, almost ETC styled prints and simply designed "Sweet-Classic" prints.

Even the street snaps only contained a handful of Sweet Lolitas, and most of them were quite toned down, or even wearing very old school styled outfits, although, there was one girl who looked like she was trying to make up for the lack of OTT all by herself! Overall, there were much more Classic Lolitas, Gothic Lolitas, and regular old Sweet Lolitas in these street snaps! There was also something I don't think I've ever come across before, that sort of makes me feel a bit hopeful:

Mary Magdalene clones! Well, not quite, but while pictures of groups of Sweet Lolitas wearing the same Angelic Pretty print are a dime a dozen, I don't think I've ever come across a picture of multiple girls wearing the same Mary Magdalene dress!

I am sure you're sick of me rambling about my "the future of Lolita trends" predictions, I know you probably are all just interested in seeing some pretty pictures, so here are my favorites from this volume of G&LB. Click on the thumbnails for larger pictures!

So what do you think about this possible trend of more elegance, less kawaii? I think it's pretty much inevitable, many people feel a bit burnt out with OTT Sweet Lolita, and if you pay any attention to the online communities, you've probably noticed that for the past couple years people have been hoping for a return of the Classic Lolita. So far, I'm enjoying it, although I am sure, just like any trend, too much of a good thing can be bad. I think that a lot of people still have a bit of the Over-the-Top bug in them and I can easily see Classic Lolita going the way of the Sweet Lolita. Everyone having to have the next big Innocent World print, everyone needing to have the same wig with those little braided loopy pigtails, loading up their Classic Lolita with tons of must-have accessories, and I can even imagine some wacky OTT trend happening in Classic, like instead of cake hats we all want to wear hats that look like stacks of books. Hopefully though, the need for OTT will restrain itself with Classic Lolita, or will simply begin to become less and less the norm.

Gothic & Lolita Bible 38

The 38th Gothic & Lolita Bible has been out for a little bit now, but it's finally been scanned and put up online (You can find it here). As I have mentioned before, I haven't bought a G&LB in a long time because they have become pretty much impossible to find in my area. We used to have a comic book shop keeping them in stock, but they seem to have stopped some time last year, probably because I was the only one buying them!

I whined about the glamor shots on the covers in my review of volume 37, commenting on the fact that they really take a bit of the magic of the mook away from me and so I was a little disappointed to see yet another glamor shot on the cover of volume 38. But, I've still got my fingers crossed for the day they start putting art on the cover again! I liked this volume a little bit more than I did the previous one, there was nothing that really blew my mind, and the patterns really sucked (There was what I think is an apron and a whole lot of Christmas ornaments) but there were lots of lovely coordinates and photos. I'll share a few of my favorite of them with you here. Click the thumbnails for bigger pictures.

In this volume's photo shoots I've noticed a lot of huge curly, multi-color wigs. This is something they've done for years in photo shoots, so it's probably not supposed to be "the next big thing", but I certainly did notice more gigantic curly wigs in this issue than in previous. Something else I noticed, which could possibly just be chalked up to the fact that this is the Winter volume, is a lot of more classical outfits. With the exception of an ultra-pink Mamicimam ad that featured a girl wearing an outfit that looked like it was made completely of pink stuffed bunnies, there were hardly any OTT Sweet outfits. Even Angelic Pretty's ads in this volume were very subdued.

The street snaps (the last 4 pictures above being street snaps) also featured a lot of Classic Lolita and quite a number of girls that looked like they stepped out of a 2004 issue of G&LB. I'm, of course, talking about the old school style. There were a few Sweet Lolita's snapped, but they were all generally tame.

Is it because this is simply a Winter issue, where colors are a bit darker and styles are a bit more Classical, or is it because of the rising popularity of the Dolly-kei style and a general disinterest in the uber-pastel OTT Sweet Lolita trend that has been the style to wear since about 2007?I can't really say until I see the Spring issue. If the photo shoots and street snaps go back to cotton candy colored wigs a mile high and prints that would look right at home painted on a nursery school wall then, oops, never mind, seasonal trends as usual. But if the next Spring issue features dusty pastels and lighter floral prints, then maybe Lolita trends are finally taking that turn for the Classic that everyone (well, most everyone) has been predicting and hoping for for the past couple of years!

One final thing I'll leave you with from this volume is this ad, for cheapo contact lenses.

That's probably the least cutest pose since the duck face. WTF are these girls doing with their mouths?

Gothic & Lolita Bible 37

I feel like I've been waiting forever for the new Bible to come out! Like many Lolita's, I don't really buy the Bibles any more. With import fees they are just too expensive and sometimes they are nearly impossible to find without having to spend even more on shipping. So, instead I wait around for someone else to buy it and scan it and upload it to Jmagazinescans, a Live Journal community devoted to scanning and uploading Japanese magazines. Earlier this morning I did my usual desperate check on the comm to see if the new Bible has been uploaded, and what do you know!? It has been! By two different people no less. You can download your own copy here or here. Of course, there are drawbacks to just downloading the magazine, first of all being that you aren't supporting the makers of the magazine, but also you sometimes have to deal with low resolution scans, missing pages, and you don't get to have your own flesh and blood (er, paper and glue) copy of the magazine. But, for free, you can't complain, and you can always pick up the real thing later if you really like it, and if you can find it.

This issue of G&LB was sort of a let down. Nothing really blew my mind and the photoshoots ranged from "meh" to "sort of neat". The patterns, on the other hand, are awesome, and a good incentive to actually buy it since scans of the patterns are nearly never included with scans of the magazine. Pattern scans for this issue feature a beautiful BtSSB nightgown, an h.NAOTO headpiece, a Peace Now star shaped purse, an Angelic Pretty hooded capelet, and an Innocent World apron, bustle skirt, and detachable bib collar. That's enough goodies to make up for the uninspired photos and coordinates!

One final thing, before I get to a few of my favorite pages, on the topic of complaining about things I love, let's talk about these new photo covers :( Frankly, I hate them. I loved the beautiful cover art that the Bibles used to feature and I really don't care about whoever it is on any of the covers. There is, sadly, little art inside each of the Bibles, so why take it off the cover and replace it with something you can find in abundance inside? The illustrated covers felt like something much more special to me, with glamor shots on the cover it feels like just another fashion magazine. The Bibles have always been a little bit more than just a fashion magazine, containing bits of Loliwisdom and sewing projects and all sorts of other useful things that make you a well-rounded Lolita, even if you couldn't always read the language. But the cover glamor shots sort of take away that feeling for me.

What did I like about this issue besides the patterns? Well, there were a few things at least, and I'd like to share some of them with you. Click for a much larger picture.

This issue also featured what looked like an in-depth guide to the different kinds of Lolita clothes and styles and laces. Which would be pretty useful and interesting, if I could actually read Japanese!