How This Started...

Since I am an older lolita, I can't quite remember those misty days before the fashion so well, haha. But as with many of the first overseas lolitas, I definitely recall encountering the fashion after getting into anime (from classics such as the English dubbed Sailor Moon and Pokemon) and video games and the resulting immersion into Japanese music. Specifically, visual-kei and more specifically, learning of Malice Mizer through recorded tapes of Japanese music television and Japanese music magazines. All analog, children! Nothing digital!

I was immediately fascinated by Mana's look and followed news of him and Malice Mizer and Gackt avidly, which is how I found Mana's brand of gothic and lolita fashion, Moi Meme Moitie around 2000 or 2001. I never really pictured myself in it until much later, being a tomboy during my childhood, but the cuteness mixed with the darkness, the elegant princess doll aura with touches of the historical and the fantasy and the mysterious, it was so different from what was popular in America at the time, and appealed to me as a visual artist. And everything went uphill from there.

Back in those days, the livejournal community went by the term "EGL" or "elegant gothic lolita" to describe the fashion, not "lolita" as we call it these days. Since no one could easily buy stuff from Japan back in those pre-e-commerce days, most non-Japanese lolitas wore handmade or thrifted or Ebay finds, all of which made up the majority of my early outfits.

After dabbling in handmade and thrifted, I fell out of dressing in lolita for a while, though I continued to draw lolita fashion, until the past 4 years, when I built up enough savings to buy brand that had suddenly became more available through the internet and paypal and such.

Of course, coming from an  anime trash background I do have a slightly different perspective about the style than the pure fashionistas who wear lolita for its unique charming qualities; for them, anime and Japanese music come in as a secondary interest. For me, I don't scoff at people who come into the fashion through anime conventions and street fashion panels, cosplay lolita doesn't bother me at all, as long as it's done well. I love lolita fashion for both its Japanese heritage as well as its stylistic appeal, so I don't deny either side. It's for fun first and foremost.