Lolita52: How Lolita Has Changed Me

I've already managed to slide into laziness with the Lolita 52 meme and get my second question in on what is technically the last day of the 2nd week! However, I'm excited to see that the other bloggers that are participating in this meme aren't being as lazy as I am and I'm really enjoying seeing the topics pop up on blogs.

This week's prompt out of the jar-o-questions is "How Lolita has changed me". Questions similar to this end up on a lot of Lolita memes and questionnaires, but usually they're in the form of "How have you changed since you first discovered Lolita". Personally, it's been a long time since I discovered Lolita, so that's a pretty difficult question to answer. This way, I thought it was a little more direct. 

Lolita has changed me probably too many ways to count, and a lot of this probably does have to do with that whole "discovered Lolita back in the dawn of time" thing, and it is a bit hard to tell in which ways Lolita has changed me, and in which ways time has simply changed me. But let's take a look at some of the major ways that Lolita has changed me!

Shopping

The most major change Lolita has done to me is the way I shop! I no longer really feel the need to pick up random items for a cheap price just because. Since I got heavily into Lolita my major concern when adding items to my wardrobe is "Can I wear this with my Lolita wardrobe?" and "If I'm buying this now, is it going to prevent my from buying Lolita later?" If the answer is "No I can't wear this with my current Lolita wardrobe, and if I get it I wont be able to get Lolita later" there's a 95% chance I'll put it back. I make very few non-Lolita related "I want this just to have it" purchases now.

Does that mean Lolita saves me money? Haha, oh gosh no. That just means I save all those gotta have it, don't know what to do with it purchases for when I'm lurking the sales communities.

Crafting

I love doing various crafts and Lolita has definitely changed the way I craft. While I've obviously picked up a ton of new crafts because they help me add things to my Lolita wardrobe, there are adversely a number of crafts that I think are cool, but will most likely never end up bothering with because they're not Lolita crafts. Now, this isn't to say I have some sort of weird Lifestyle Lolita urge to only do Lolita appropriate historically accurate crafts, just that they're things that look neat to do, but I can't figure out any way to make them produce things for my Lolita wardrobe.

I recently discovered Random Tutorial Generator, a site that lets you press a button to get a new random craft tutorial. This is such a cool site and it shows you so many awesome tutorials you may have never found (and also a really obnoxious amount of baby related tutorials. I am pretty thankful that I don't need to know how to make cloth diapers or whatever a burpee is, but pretty annoyed that sometimes I have to press that big red button close to a dozen times before it decides to stop it's romp through babyland) and I love to spend a good chunk of time just clicking around to find new ones. However, every time something like, say, a spiked friendship bracelet pops up, I get super excited because it looks so fun to make and I have all the supplies, but oh, wait, when am I ever going to wear a spiked friendship bracelet? Never, because they totally clash with my grandma couch floral print dresses.

Friends-ing

Lolita has also definitely changed the friends I have and how I make them! I can't even imagine how weird getting together, and in some cases traveling pretty far, to hang out with people you have never met before to talk about clothes would be outside of Lolita. I was looking through my phone's contacts for something the other day and it struck me how many people I have in my phone that includes their internet handle because that's what I know them by most of all!

Through Lolita I have made a ton of great friends, and the social nature of Lolita often pushes me to go out and do something social when I would otherwise just be hanging around avoiding doing social things. Even just in online communities, where I am typically inclined to just lurk, I'm now more willing to actively participate because of the positive experiences I've had in online Lolita communities.

What about the rest of you? In what sort of specific ways has Lolita changed yourself? Do you find that Lolita just so happens to line up perfectly with your own personality and habits, or has it changed you for the better, or perhaps even the worse?

For those of you who want to check out the other topics in this weekly meme, check out the original post on it, or keep an eye on the Lolita 52 tag!

Lolita 52 Challenge: A Lolita Topic a Week!

There are tons of blogging challenges floating around out there, but very few Lolita specific ones! So to kick off the new year and a fresh set of 52 weeks I came up with my own list of 52 questions. These range from simple preference questions, to advice, to lists, to questions that might have a more in-depth answer.

  

If you feel like attempting to tackle this list with me, there are a few ways you can go about doing it. You can either just go down the list at one question every week until the end of the year, or you tackle in all at once like a survey, or you can do what I'm going to do! If I see a list like this I'll see questions on it that I might not feel like answering at the moment, for whatever lazy reason I have, so I will just dread doing it and give up, so what I'm going to do is write down these questions on little slips of paper then put them all in a jar. Every week I'll pull a new one out and answer it! For me it will be a physical reminder to complete this challenge.

1.  5 pieces that every Lolita wardrobe should have, regardless of style
2.  5 movies for Lolitas
3.  What my own Lolita lifestyle is like 
4.  Favorite thing to put on my head
5.  My wardrobe turnover
6.  My favorite Lolita brand
7.  Why I wear Lolita?
8.  Why don't I wear Lolita more often?
9.  5 keywords that describe my personal Lolita style
10.  How I first found out about Lolita
11.  3 trends I wish would come back
12.  Combining other fashions with Lolita
13.  Lolitas I have met in real life
14.  Lolitas I would love to meet
15.  3 things I wish I was told when I was a new Lolita
16.  10 facts about my Lolita wardrobe
17.  My first meetup
18.  Trends I thought I would never get into, but I now love
19.  Trends I thought I loved, but now I'm not too keen on
20.  How satisfied I am with my current wardrobe
21.  Plan for a trip! A week's worth of Lolita outfits I can fit in a small suitcase
22.  How I accessorize
23.  What influences my Lolita style
24.  What's in my makeup bag
25.  Best places to wear Lolita
26.  How I get out of a wardrobe slump
27.  Purses that I love
28.  Bloomers or no bloomers?
29.  Lolitafying things in my everyday life
30.  How long it took me to build a complete wardrobe
31.  Impulse buys that were totally worth it
32.  My best deal
33.  Something that I made
34.  Wardrobe blunders! Things I bought that I ended up regretting!
35.  What I thought when I got my first real piece of Lolita
36.  Nails to match my favorite looks
37.  Something that's not my style, but I love anyways
38.  Favorite hair style
39.  Most versatile Lolita item I own
40.  5 inspirational fictional characters
41.  Fondest meetup memory
42.  The ways in which I fit the cliche
43.  The ways in which I do not fit the cliche
44.  How strangers react to my clothes, and how I react to their reactions
45.  Something that was a gift
46.  Parasols: Vital or frivolous?
47.  The item in my wardrobe that was the hardest to get
48.  My "signature" outfit
49.  My favorite Lolita print
50.  What's in my closet, but I haven't worn yet!
51.  Predict the next Lolita trend!
52.  How Lolita has changed me

Considering it's a whole new year, now is as good as a time as any to start this. The first week's question that I pulled was:

Something that's not my style, but I love anyways

Over the years I've come to the realization that, despite how much I might love something, if it's not my style I'm probably not going to feel comfortable wearing it, and I'll eventually just start to dislike it. I've learned that it's okay to like a style without feeling the need to wear it.

One of my major "Oh my gosh I love that, but I'd totally never wear it!" items are Baby's Rococo styled dresses from about 2007-2008... in white.

I love everything about these dresses! I love the frilly open fronts, the giant bell sleeves, the massive amounts of ruffles and lace, and I think that in white, they're even prettier. They remind me of the even older Old School trend of "Angelic Lolita", only even more over the top.

However, as much as I love looking at these dresses, and seeing other people in them, I simply can't imagine myself ever wearing one! Besides the fact that they're usually a few hundred dollars out of my price rage, I would be too paranoid to ever wear an all white outfit for any extended amount of time, and I can't really imagine any of them would look very flattering on me. Most of all, they're probably the exact opposite of the styles that I feel comfortable wearing, so I can only imagine wearing one of these gorgeous dresses would probably be an incredibly awkward and uncomfortable experience!

What about the rest of you? Anything out there you love, but you just can't imagine every actually wearing it?