Print Bandwagon: Perfume Bottles

There are many motifs that brands like use over and over again, and many times you will easily notice that certain motifs will be used by multiple brands, often all at once it seems. Recently, a couple brands, namely Angelic Pretty and Mary Magdalene, have revisited the theme of perfume bottles for their new prints.

Left: Metamorphose, Perfume Bottle. Right: Angelic Pretty, Rose Toilette

While this theme is nowhere near as popular as something like rabbits or toys or some other ridiculously cute thing, there have been a few stunning pieces in the past to feature perfume bottles. Not only the sought-after Rose Toilette from Angelic Pretty (a personal favorite of mine), but even Metamorphose has released a punchy version of this classy motif.

Angelic Pretty's blobby pale pastel Pale Blobs of Pastels.

With this new wave of perfume bottles, we have a bit of the old, and a bit of the new! The old comes in the form of Angelic Pretty re-using this theme, this time a bit more cutesy. The print on this new Angelic Pretty perfume bottle dress (named Glass Bottle of Tears, oddly enough) is, I think, both a bit hit and a bit miss. I think that the perfume bottles themselves are gorgeously illustrated but I can't find a single colorway of this print that actually looks good. The pastel versions just sort of look like a bland blob from a few feet away, and the black version looks sort of ridiculous. I think it's the stripes in the background that I am just not a fan of. While they are my favorite part of Rose Toilette, which featured elegant and detailed stripes, that looked a bit like fancy Victorian wallpaper, Glass Bottle of Tears just looks like generic fill-tool stripes, and sort of remind me of the quick-fix striped background that are in a lot of Bodyline prints (who also have actually released a dress featuring perfume bottles as well!).

Mary Magdalen's Perfume Bottle print. When you've never released a print before, you don't have to think up a ridiculous name for it!

The new comes in the form of the Mary Magdalene dress, which, unless I'm mistaken, is the first time Mary Magdalene has used, not only a border print, but something other than a solid color or all-over floral. I think this ended up being a completely gorgeous dress! The print is so elegant and classy, and it completely suits Mary Magdalene's style. Now, when I first heard people talking about this dress, I have heard a few people complain that they feel like Mary Magdalene is, very belatedly, hopping on the print trend, and are acting like the next print from Mary Magdalene is going to feature pancakes shaped like bunnies riding on a rainbow made of ice cream. Honestly, I am pretty excited to see Mary Magdalene try something new! The results are obviously gorgeous, and completely fitting for the brand.

Innocent World's Antique Perfume Bottle.

The other perfume print to come out recently comes from Innocent World. I actually wasn't aware that Innocent World released a perfume print until I was writing this. And before I googled it, just to be sure, I was trying to imagine what a print of perfume bottles by Innocent World would look like, and I was pleasantly surprised to find out that what they released, looked a lot like what I imagined a print by them would look like! Innocent World's print features a relatively simple and understated print featuring some very elegant monochromatic vintage illustration styled perfume bottles, all lined up along the hem. All in all, it's a very cute dress!

There are very few of the major Lolita brands that haven't released a perfume print, so far as I know, I don't believe that Baby The Stars Shine Bright have released one to feature perfume bottles (although, they have made so many prints, I'm sure one of them includes a perfume bottle somewhere!). Moi Meme Moitie certainly hasn't, although, I can imagine if they did, it would be pretty awesome and feature coffin-shaped bottles filled with electric blue liquid, with some rosary beads and candelabras nestled amongst the bottles. Or, there's also a pretty good chance it might also look like a clip-art disaster.

Personally, I really enjoy seeing brands reuse themes again and again. I know some people might feel like themes get a bit stale after a while, but I feel like so long as brands are picking themes and motifs from a big enough selection of them, and not just doing cherries and rabbits over and over again, I think it's actually pretty fascinating to see how a brand will reuse the same theme, 6 years later, like in the case of Angelic Pretty and their perfume bottles, or how the same theme can look so vastly different when interpreted from one brand to the next!

Trends of the Past: Camouflage Lolita?

Cruella De Vil wigs, mismatched socks, pastry hats, applying your false eyelashes about halfway down your face... Lolita definitely has it's fair share of odd trends that come and go with the times, but I think that one of the weirdest and most inexplicable ones to hit the fashion was the trend of Camouflage Lolita, from back in the old school days. Yes, that's right, quite possibly the least elegant thing in the world managed to become a Lolita trend, albeit not a very widespread one.

I'm honestly not sure how this happened, it probably happened with a somewhat strange Angelic Pretty collaboration in 2005 with the Jrock band Psycho le Cemu, in which they designed this set, complete with old school giant ruffly headdress, for the musician Aya.

 The elegance! The mystery! The crossdressing!

This was not a one-off, a just-for-Aya-to-dance-around-in costume, but something actually released by Angelic Pretty. Believe it or not, Aya was something of a Lolita idol, a pink-haired second-rate Mana, who often appeared in the Gothic & Lolita Bibles, usually wearing, or doing, something questionable. I am particularly fond of a picture of him posing with a vacuum cleaner, pretending to be some sort of Punk Lolita housewife, and one sort of awkward Wizard of Oz photo shoot that involved drawings of bishounen Scarecrow. I honestly have no idea what ever happened to Aya, I seem to recall some sort of brief career as a Halloween themed costumed rock star, but for whatever reason, he seems to have slipped from the pages of the Bibles, and from the Lolita timeline.

 Angelic Pretty's stock photos for this set.

When most people even recall that camo-print Lolita was even a thing, they usually think back to Metamorphose's Punkma Camouflage set released a year later, in 2006. After all, Meta tends to be the odd ball in the Lolita world, no one would have really expected Angelic Pretty to make something like this, it seems to have Meta's shenanigans all over it. Maybe Meta didn't invent camo-loli, but they certainly jumped all over that bandwagon with Punkma and released a surprisingly large amount of pieces, in a wide range of styles, in their particular brand of camo-print, which featured cute silhouettes of their bunny and bear mascots.

   

Believe it or not, there are actually a few more pieces in this series!

While this is Meta's most famous camo-print line, it certainly wasn't their first! Before this bunny and bear covered camo-print came a more generic print set. As far as I know, it came in grey and pink, had 2 different styles of skirt, and a heart-shaped apron. At least, these are the only pieces of it I have ever seen online.

 

A couple pieces from the original Meta camo-print set, complete with matching heart-shaped apron. Because just a camo Lolita skirt is never enough.

Did it come before the Psycho le Cemu Angelic Pretty set? Did Metamorphose, in fact, invent such a thing as Camouflage Lolita? Honestly, I have no idea, as there is very little information about Meta's first camo series online. All I know is that, just like all the other camo-print Lolita pieces that have released, it is pretty awesome, for it's equal parts of badass and tackiness. I actually used to own one of the pink skirts from this set! I loved it for it's tackiness, but never quite knew how to wear it so, regrettably, I sold it. I would probably pick it up in a heart-beat if I saw it for sale again, that is, if it was for the $35 that I paid for it and had been making the rounds through the second hand Lolita community for.

Sometime last week I was tweeting around Twitter and was conversing* with a fellow old school Lolita/fashion-in-questionable-taste fan about the old camo-loli and wondered if this weird trend could ever get revived for current generations of Lolita fans. Conclusion: probably not, but wouldn't it be wacky if it did? So, I coaxed some life out of my dying Wacom tablet and doodled up what I thought a print would look like this trend happened today in Lolita.

 Awful? More like AWESOME-FULL.

First thing to change, from the old style, would definitely be the colors, they're just too bold and monochromatic for the modern Lolita. Drawing inspiration from Angelic Pretty, I made a pallet of all the pastel colors I could think of (Which is apparently just four colors...) and made a big pastel mess of a camouflage print. If you squint your eyes and think about bunny rabbits, it sort of looks like what a lot of relatively recent Angelic Pretty prints look like to me. But, still, it was too plain. All-over prints are so Baby the Stars Shine Bright, and that's just not what we were going for. Knowing that Lolitas can't ever get enough of irony (Guro Lolita, anyone?) we decided to bust out the big guns. The big cookie guns, covered in frosting, and made into a frosting sandwich, that is. And some grenades and tanks and hearts for good measure too.

My tablet managed to give out on me while I was trying to draw up some outfits with this print, which is a shame, because they were actually really fun looking, if a bit completely an utterly silly. They involved hats shaped like tank cookies and machine gun cookie purses. And the dress came in 2 styles, typical Angelic Pretty OP, and a more Fairy Kei styled empire waist mini-dress with matching bloomers. I think I hear Maki and Asuka knocking on my door now, just begging me to fly to Japan and design dresses for them now!

That's about the short-lived and weird trend of Camouflage Lolita in a nutshell. What do you think about it? Did you not even know about this skeleton buried deep within the Lolita closet? Or maybe you were actually a fan of it at one time? When I first started buying Lolita pieces, this style was in full-swing, well, as full of a swing as it ever was, and I was a bit baffled by it, this manly and inelegant print, so out of place in a time when nearly all Lolita prints were classical and elegant florals, but I enjoyed it for it's silly irony, and I still do. When I hear people complain about some new trend being un-Lolitalike, or someone not considering something part of the Lolita fashion just because it doesn't follow their idea of elegance, I tend to think back to these camo-printed pieces and wonder how they would react if they knew that brands used to put out pieces like this.


*the following story is a bit over dramatized, the conversation basically went Her: "Remember Meta's camo print?" Me:"OMG LOVED IT! It should come back in OTT!" Her: "OMG WITH COOKIE GUNS" Me: "I'M GONNA DRAW IT!" But that's not very fun to read, or write about.

Metamorphose Temps de Fille Old School Lolita Elegance

Sometime last week I was on Twitter, tweeting about some older Metamorphose pieces that I loved when a couple other Lolitas joined in and we exchanged a few tweets about how elegant the older Meta pieces used to be. Metamorphose used to be my number one favorite brand, but a lot of their releases in recent years have sort of made me ask myself "Wait, why do I love them so much?" Not that their newer pieces aren't often lovely, they are simply quite a bit different from the older pieces that I fell in love with, and it seems like they changed so gradually that it was hard to notice when I started to fall out of love with them.

Older Metamorphose pieces, and I'm talking early to mid 2000's, even late 90's in some cases, have such an air of Victorian elegance that their newer pieces usually don't have. The lush floral prints, bonnets, great big bell sleeves, rich velvets, stark black and whites, and excessive use of lace were my ideal Lolita for years, and honestly, still is, even if it is a bit outdated.

I usually like to use GLB scans and "official" brand photoshoots and ads for examples, but instead, here are some of my favorite real life coordinates based around older Metamorphose pieces. These are all from Flickr, so credit goes to the photographers and models in each of the photos, click on the thumbnails to get to the original photo!

  

  

 

What makes older Meta pieces so special, to me at least?

Floral prints- I am a big fan of floral prints, if you couldn't tell! Even the grandma's-sofa-and-curtains-matching-set sort of florals make my heart flutter. I think a big part of it has to do with the nostalgia factor for me, since a lot of Lolita dresses when I first got into the style were made with floral fabrics, seeing just about anything in a pretty floral print instantly reminds of of the elegance of Lolita.
Bold colors- While nowadays Meta is fond of using bold colors in their custom prints, before the days that nearly every release was a print, Meta often used bold color solid pieces, as seen above in the jewel toned velvet dresses and richly colored floral prints. Rarely does Meta ever come out with a dress in a soft baby pastel!
Lots of lace- Older Meta pieces were known for having tons of lace, many of them were even made with complete lace overlays! But more often, they happened to have lots of lace details, either criss-crossing around a skirt or an extra wide ruffle of it about mid-skirt or even on hems. Believe it or not, much of lace Meta used back then was actually raschel lace, not all raschel lace is created equal!

Detail overload- I've talked about this a bit in my older post, Angelically Sweet, but I am sort of a sucker for detail overloaded Lolita dresses. Not necessarily accessory and print overload, but dresses that contain rows and rows of lace ruffles, extra wide bell sleeves, bows at every corner, and pin tucks all over the lace. Even a plain colored cotton dress gets kicked up to a sort of insane level of decadence when all of these are added to one dress.

Simplicity- I know, I just said I loved the overloaded details in the point above this! But on the opposite end of the Old School Meta scale is a much simpler elegance. Relatively plain jumper skirts with a bit of elegant embroidery, pleated minimum-poof skirts, and  even simply styled hair and accessorizing.
Old School headwear- Big floppy bonnets and extra ruffly headdresses were seen a lot in older Meta coordinates, and while they took a bit of working to look right, they really do look stunning.

With the apparent decline in OTT Sweet and rising interest in Classic Lolita I can easily see styles like this coming back in an updated version, maybe details will be a bit more refined, the lace won't be so ruffly, the headdresses and bonnets will be neater, and the colors might be a bit more muted. I think that this sort of elegance, whether it comes directly from Metamorphose or elsewhere, is just the sort of thing to add a little bit of both Classic and Old School flair to a wardrobe. It's a style that really helped define Lolita for a lot of people, not just for myself, and I think it still can still hold itself up to today's trends!

Metamorphose is sort of an in-the-middle brand for some people, it seems like you either love them, hate them, or tend to forget about them completely. So, what do you think of these older Metamorphose pieces? Do you think styles like this, extra wide raschel lace ruffles and all, could make a comeback? Or are you pretty happy with it staying in the past?

Metamorphose's Nostalgic Chess & Victoria Princess

Metamorphose has a couple new prints out in their winter line, and I think I'm in love with them! First up is Nostalgic Chess, a design reminiscent of their Old Emblem series, only featuring huge bold chessboards at the hem.

This print is fantastic! It reminds me of more indi Lolita brands such as Excentrique. This design will come in quite a number of different options. I am counting 3 JSK designs, a vest, and 2 skirts, as well as 2 different matching headdresses and a really awesome pair of socks.

Their other new print is a bit less bold, it's more of an all over floral print, called Victoria Princess

I am all sorts of in love with this series! I love the delicate antique-looking print, as well as the princessy designs. The Victoria Princess print also comes in quite a few different design options, a JSK, a short sleeved dress, 2 different tops, and 3 skirts as well as a bonnet and a rose corsage to accessorize with. My favorite piece is definitely this very princessy top. Tops like this used to be a standard Lolita design, but they have faded in popularity in the years so now they are quite a rare and refreshing sight! I don't know about the huge lace on the pink version (which doesn't seem to be there for the worn picture?) but it has it's charm, and is definitely very Metamorphose looking.

In keeping with their old school roots, Meta has also released this skirt in the Victoria Princess print:

*Gasp* It's not the standard Lolita shape! This style of skirt is another thing that was much more common way back when, before bell shaped skirts became the standard. The question "Is something like this still Lolita?" has always been debated, or at least, it has been in the past 6 or so years, but really, right now I don't care if it's Lolita or not, because I know that it's gorgeous.

In blog related news, sorry to bother everyone yesterday with a couple technical updates, but I am in the process of doing a lot of stuff to the blog and I don't want anyone to get horribly confused if things start looking weird! Comments should be back to normal in the next couple of days, I have Disqus migrating all my old comments to the new domain name (haha, I hope that's what I did at least!) and that usually takes a while. I have noticed that people have still been able to comment, bravo to them because I can't figure out how to right now XD

Autumnal Prints

One of the best things about Lolita is the fact that there are so many different themes that there is something appropriate for every season and occasion. One of my favorite, and the most practical, thing to match my Lolita coordinates to is the season. There are a few things that, to me, are just perfect to wear in the Fall season. You don't have to go out and buy a whole new wardrobe for Fall, and you're not forbidden to wear anything not on this short list, but here are some suggestions and ideas if you are looking to add a special piece or two to match this season.

Autumnal prints

• Tartan. I think the one print that matches the season most of all is Tartan or Plaid, especially in muted and earth tone colors. Maybe it's Tartan's association with back to school, or the fact that it's often made of a thicker and warmer fabric, but Tartans are always perfect for fall.
• Heraldry and royalty. While this is a rare to see coats of arms in prints, it is much more common to see crowns used. This is probably just a personal preference, but for some reason these things, especially combined with subdued classic colors and printed in dull golds or warm browns, always reminds me of autumn. It might be the color combos that are so often used with these prints, or maybe it's the link to history and so these prints sort of have a back-to-school feel, just like Tartan.
  
• Forest scenes. Even if the forests aren't gold and red and in full autumn bloom I still find forest scenes to be very Autumnal when it comes to Lolita prints.
• Deer. This can sometimes go hand in hand with a forest scene print, but a print featuring deer, so long as it's not Angelic Pretty's pink chubby cartoon deers, always screams Autumn to me.
  
• Apples. An infrequent theme that is just perfect for the Fall season, for obvious reasons.
  
• Floral prints in muted colors. While pastel flowers might be very Summery, flowers in muted browns, dusty pinks, and dark salmony pinks are very reminiscent of Fall and sometimes even goes so far as to look like bunches of red and gold leaves to me.
  

Here are some specific prints that always feel very Autumnal to me, especially in these colors.

What are some of your favorite pieces to wear in the Fall? Or pieces, prints or non-prints, that you've always wanted to get a hold of to wear in this season? Do you match your wardrobe, even just some of it, to the seasons? Or does your wardrobe know no seasons besides adding some layers in the winter?

Metamorphose's Moonlight Night

With Autumn and Winter just a few months away brands have been gearing up and busting out some pieces that are a bit more Gothic and Classic than normal. Metamorphose has really blown me away with their newest print for reserve, Moonlight Night. It's a very simple looking print, sort of their answer to Moitie's Iron Gate, with a bronze gate print on either a black or ivory background.

The print is filled with a few classic Meta symbols, including fleur-de-lis, winged crosses, and twin swans. But, as is typical with Metamorphose, they are only releasing the print images and drawings of the future dresses, so you're going to have to use your imagination a bit to see what they are going to look like.

The skirt in this series is the only piece that has a photo of the finished product. It has a relatively simple design, which is perfect with a print like this.

The dress and JSK, on the other hand, have no finished photos are and are a bit more complicated than the skirt, making me a little wary of what the finished pieces might look like. The possibility of the print clashing badly with the design aside, the designs are both very pretty and have a very Metamorphose look to them. The dress especially with the attached choker and faux-corset details, which are both very old school looking details that Meta loves to cling to. I do wish that they had gone a bit simpler on the dress and JSK designs though! Meta seems to have a lot of fantastic ideas when it comes to designing dresses, but I feel like they should leave such elaborate designs to plain colored dresses, because all too often they end up looking like a bit too cluttered. But, then again, hot messes are sort of Metamorphose's trademarks.

While I have learned to wait for Metamorphose to release pictures of the finished dresses before I get overly excited and adding the dress to my dream dress wish list, I am optimistic about this print! Even if the skirt is the only piece that turns out to be the only good looking piece, it's still an incredible print on a perfect, if a bit simple, skirt.

What do you think of Metamorphose's newest designs? Are you sure that the finished pieces are going to be stunning? Or are you not holding your breath until you see the final pieces?

Edit: Chera has kindly pointed out that finished pictures of the dresses are up on Meta's English blog.

I'm actually surprised at just how lovely these dresses look with the print, despite how busy the design is! The JSK especially is just gorgeous! Oh Meta, you are tempting me, really badly.

Metamorphose's Gardening Teddy Print

Meta has recently come out with a new series of prints called Gardening Teddy. The print itself is an all over design covered in classical florals and teddy bears. Click here for the reservation time.

This series offers quite a few different pieces, an OP, 2 JSKs, 2 skirts, an apron and bloomer set, a purse, and matching socks. Lets check out some of the pieces!

First, the OP, which is quite possibly my favorite piece in the set, especially in this brown print. Design wise, Meta pulled out a few classic designs from their early days and added it to one dress. This dress features a button up front, a detachable extra collar to be worn under the smaller collar, long straight sleeves, and Meta's classic 3 tiered skirt. All of this combines into one really cute dress that might not be everyone's cup of tea because of the dated details.

Next is a more modern JSK. This is a pretty standard JSK design with a fitted waist and a big poofy 3 tiered skirt. While the shape is up-to-date this JSK still has a few details in common with the OP before it, namely buttons up the bodice and the 3 tiers. For when you want a little bit of classic Meta, without having to go all out.

Finally is an underbust JSK with a rather simple design, just a few details on the bodice and a ruffle at the bottom. It looks like a cute and comfy dress than can easily be dressed either up or down for a more casual look.

There are no Alice bows in the headdress section of this set, just old fashioned headdresses, like this flat headdress. While these are very nice looking flat headdresses, I really wish they would have released headbows as well, because it's nice to have options. Maybe meta is forcing us to go back to our Lolita roots by offering a cute print series, but only old school school headdresses.

The only other headdress available is this handkerchief. This is a really weird choice of headwear, and honestly I haven't seen anything like this worn with Lolita in a very long time, it's much more of a Natural-kei accessory. Despite it's strangeness, it does match very well with the series, especially the old sleeved OP that it is shown paired with. If the dress were longer it would be the perfect Natural-kei dress set.

The final piece in the series that I'm going to talk about is this bloomer and apron set. In keeping with the old school/Natural-kei look that this set has this is the perfect finishing touch for an outfit. I really wish that they had shown this apron worn with one of the dresses, especially with the OP.

All-in-all, I am liking this set very much, despite some of the strange choices they have made with headwear. What do you think? That they should have played it safe with some more up-to-date designs? Or do you like this nod back to the early days of Lolita?