Improved Outfits [2]: Color Coordination - 2 colors

 So in this post I want to talk a bit about how to put together outfits with two colors. Using the base color of the dress and a color picked from the colors in the print. To balance this type of color coordinate its often good to have shoes in the base color so that you then can wear socks in the accent color to get contrast from the shoes. If the socks or tights are the same color as the dress you end up lumping together the same color and it looks unbalanced. The socks being another color gives a space between the shoes and dress. The blouse will be in the accent color to again be contrasting the dress. most of the accessories too since we already have so much of the base color from the dress itself. wristcuffs in the base color can help break off again after the sleeves and you will probably want either a headbow, some additional bow in your hair, or have your hair be in the base color. Just so You get something of that color in the top section.

The Fantastic Horoscope outfit will look very different from the one with Horror Candy Shop. But since both dresses have the same accent colors in the print you can put together the outfit in the exact same way! Coordinating with the accent colors from a print will really make the colors in the print pop a lot more and really nicely compliment your main piece. Its a pretty easy way to figure out what colors would go nicely with a dress, even though you can usually pick any color you like. The important thing to think about is balancing the colors, so that you have all the colors in each section from top to bottom.

I will be doing more posts like this so be sure to check back for that and more!

//Love Mintyfrills

Improved Outfits [1]: Color Coordination - 1 Base color

There are many ways of putting together a lolita outfit and I want to talk about some different ways of  coordinating colors. Lets start simple with some looks at how to match with the base color of the main piece. 

I think many start with wearing a neutral white blouse to go with pastel colors. Though I think going with all pink with a pink dress makes for a much cuter outfit. You could also make it more interesting by matching with a different shade of the same color, but lets talk more about that in a future post! While doing this type of outfit I would favor ankle socks over otk socks since your legs break off the color scheme. If you don't like bare legs I would suggest thin white stockings with the pink outfit and black fishnets with the black one.

Even though this dress is in the grey colorway you can choice to treat black as the base color since it has the black ribbons and a lot of black in the print. Even though I would love a coord using this dark grey as the base and black as the accent, its hard to find items in this kind of grey from Angelic Pretty. Even though light grey has become more prevalent in many collections. 

In the next guide I will go into how to do outfits with more colors! 

//Love Mintyfrills

Lolita Coording Guide [3]

We continue coording game this time with Angelic Pretty's Melody Toys. Above you see the same style of coording that I showed you with Toy Parade in the first part. Again we check what colors we find in the print. This is a three color print, it has pink, yellow and sax. The mint color is just past of the mint colorway and you can't find it in the other colorways. This means the mint colorway will give you an additional color too coordinate the dress with even though its hard to coordinate mint with sax because the are not contrasting colors (still worth a try!). When you are buying dresses try check what colors are in the print because these are most of the time pretty easy to coord with. See what can match with what you have.

Bellow you see the three color coording style that I showed you in the second part. As pink and yellow are in the print in both the colorways below it works with both! You might of notices that when coording with two colors the shoes are the same color as the dress, but not when with three colors. That's because you want to try and balance the colors and try to not have the same color beside itself.

//Love MintyFrills

Lolita Coording Guide [2]

Continuing on coording with Angelic Pretty's dress Toy Parade (first part here!). Here are some simple ways to turn it into a three color coord. I think the most simple way to spread the colors evenly is to make the shoes and bag the same color and then have the blouse and socks be the same, as you can see in my examples. I think this really makes the coord stand out, I love doing three color coords! We are still sticking to the colors that are in the palette from the print. Getting a new set of blouse and socks in the same color can give you so many new coording options for a relatively cheap price tag. This is an other reason that I prefer to have a jsk instead of the op, it just leaves you with so many more options.  

Try finding more accessories in the color palette that you have picked and try to spread out the colors as well as you can. Like having the lavender rosette pin on the top of the jsk makes a world of difference, this one is from EyeCandy. I think coording with yellow and lavender like bellow makes for a really interesting coord! 

//Love Mintyfrills

Lolita Coording Guide [1]

A lot of Lolitas fall into the habit of wearing the set and just sticking to that same cookie cutter outfit. But there is so much more you can do to make your dress feel more versatile. I'm going to show a bunch of ways how to coord this same dress, in this post I will keep it simple with two color coords. When deciding what color to have with your print dress first look at what colors it has in the print. Toy Parade has mint, pink, lavender and yellow in the print. This makes it very easy to coord with those colors as you can see on the picture below. When the bag, socks and blouse have the same color the coord will look balanced. And I think the color that contrasts to the dress looks much more interesting than just wearing a white blouse. 

//Love Minty

Cult Party Kei video guide

My Cult Party Kei guide is finally done! I hope you like it! I worked really hard on it so I would really appreciate if you shared it! 

//Love Minty

Some cult party kei looks

Working on a cult party kei video guide, I'm getting near to finished and I really really hope you all will like it! Thought I would share some of my cult party kei looks.

Most of the clothes in these outfits are second hand. The boots are from Demonia!

//Love Minty

Lolita Lesson #4: Classic Lolita

Classic Lolita is one of the three main Lolita styles (the other being Gothic and Sweet). It is characterized by a more historical, classy and lady like. The palette of Classic Lolita is muted nature colors like ivory, brown, beige, wine , navy and dusty pastels. Floral prints are common and prints featuring classical paintings.  The theme is more inspired by historical clothing like Victorian and Rococo fashion. Due to classic being a more mature style many Lolitas turn to it as they get older. Natural haircolor and natural makeup is most popular. Lately Longer skirts have been gaining popularity which have led to discussion of when it stops being Lolita, though I think that new ideas are a good thing as long as the general aesthetic of Lolita fashion is kept. I think the full length dresses could be considered a form of Classic Aristocrat.

Some of the biggest Classic Lolita brands are Victorian Maiden, Innocent World, Juliet et Justine and Mary Magdalene. 

I made a collage to help you get the general feel of the style visually:

None of these are any rules of the style, just descriptions of whats common so that you can get an idea of what the style looks like, so don't be afraid to experiment!

Angelic Pretty Themes: Berries

Angelic Pretty have released quite a few prints with berry themes and I'm going to give you some history on them! Hope you enjoy it. See this as a way to learn some print names also.

the right side one.

Strawberry Princess 

released: 2003

Going back to the old school before custom prints were a big thing in lolita. The simple patern reminds me of drained cherry, but I really miss this typ of detailed OP. This dress is perfect for a country lolita coord going out for a nice picnic.

Cherry Print

released: 2004

Sweet Berry

released: 2005

The name of this dress is unsure as Angelic Pretty released an other dress with the same name a year later. I think that since prints were not as big back then the names were not really that important to them either.

Sweet Berry

released: 2006

A few years later Angelic Pretty releases an other simple berry print. I like the earlier one more but this is also super cute. Prints were still not a big deal at this point. Solid colors were the thing in sweet lolita.

Ichigo Millfeuille

released: 2007

I really love this print and I think the mint colorway actually looks good, red and mint can be hard to coord. This dress can often be found for pretty cheap.

Pretty Cherry

released: 2008

Strawberry Picking

released: 2008

Sweet Ribbon Strawberry

released: 2008

This dress looks like a mess on a small picture but it has a lovely gingham print with rows of strawberries. I own this dress myself and I love it! It really has a old school lolita feel and the print looks great more up close!

Cherry Berry Bunny

released: 2009

This dress has the genius idea to mix lovely berries with really cute bunnies and the result is great! Boarder prints start to get more common and this is a good example of it, it's at this point where there started to be more focus on the print than on the dress details.

Milky Berry

released: 2010

Angelic Pretty continue to consistently produce berry prints every year. This time an other boarder print, I really love the look of this one. around 2010 is when OTT sweet lolita was really huge!

Strawberry Parlour

released: 2011

They again release a strawberry milkshake dress, the detailing on this dress is really cute!

Freshly Picked Strawberries

released: 2013

Drained Cherry

released: 2013

Really popular release, seems like people are looking for more casual dresses since OTT sweet is in a huge decline.

Berry Garden

released: 2014

I think this dress looks way to much like Freshly Picked Strawberries! They are both nice prints but really, they look the same.

Drained Cherry

re-released: 2015

Since it was popular it was released again and sold out pretty quickly again.

Cherry Marguerite

released: 2015

not yet released as I am writing this but there seems to be a lot of hype surrounding it, we'll see if it sells out quickly or not! Angelic Pretty have been releasing hit print after hit print. when will their customers run out of money to spend?

Melty Berry Princess

released: 2015

Also not yet released but really anticipated! I think all their prints have been really on point this year so far, cant wait to see coords with all these berry prints!

I will try to make more AP theme posts of people like this! Have a good berry coord? Comment with a link to it and I might feature you in a future post!

//Love Minty

Lolita Lesson #2: Gothic Lolita

Gothic Lolita is one of the three main Lolita styles (the others being sweet and classic). It is characterized as being related to western goth style and it has an overall dark and black look. Black is the most common main color for Gothic Lolita but white, jewel tones, silver and gold. Prints often contain gothic motifs such as crosses, castles, coffins, roses and bats. Platform shoes and high heels are used rather than teaparty shoes. Gothic Lolita used to be well known for its black with white lace look but after Gothic had been the most popular style for a while all the cheap badly made clothes that were trying to be lolita (horribly) started to try and copy that look and it lots all popularity due to being associated with this failed beginner look. I think the old school gothic look still hold up though if anyone wants to try and pull it of! 

The biggest brands are Moi Meme Moite, h.Naoto, Atelier Pierot, Chantilly and Atelier Boz. Moi Meme Moite is the brand owned by gothic lolita fashion icon Mana, he is a famous visual kei artist that used to play in Malice Mizer and later in his own project Moi Dix Mois. 

I made a collage to help you get the general feel of the style visually: 

None of these are any rules of the style, just descriptions of whats common so that you can get an idea of what the style looks like, so don't be afraid to experiment!

//Love Minty

Lolita Lesson #1: what is lolita?

Lolita is a fashion style and subculture that started in Japan that started late 70s. The style is inspired by Victorian children and doll clothing. The style is classy, stylish and cute. Lolita is not meant to be sexy and has nothing to do with Vladimir Nabokov's book 'Lolita'. The basic Lolita shape is covered and classic on the top and with a puffy knee length skirt. Lolita fashion has changed a lot since its start and developed into a world wide subculture!

Skirts got bigger and more cupcake shaped, square headdresses changed into headbows. Prints got more and more detailed. Simple knee-socks changed into detailed print stockings. I will make a series of guides about Lolita fashion so check back here!

There is much to learn about the basics of Lolita I thought I would leave you with some great videos about Lolita to watch!

//Love Minty