Halloween!!!!

For Halloween, I didn't do a whole lot. The day before however, I had a very small get together with a couple of friends. We all dressed up as pirates and did very un-pirate like things such as have dinner at Denny's and watch The Running Man. I was mostly happy to get to wear a bunch of my new items (and old items actually), that I have never gotten to wear yet!

Coord Rundown!

Blouse/Socks: AatP
Shorts: h.Naoto Gramm
Shoes: An Tai Na
Bag: BTSSB
"Corset"/Hat: Offbrand
Eyepatch: Handmade

As always, I'd love to hear what you think. Did anyone else do anything fun for Halloween?

AatP's Queen's Coach Print

I feel like I was just discussing how much I preferred AatP's prints to BTSSB. And now I have fallen in love with them all over again with the new Queen's Coach print.

More specifically, I have absolutely fallen in love with the OP version of it. I would love to be able to buy it right now, but it would be rather irresponsible of me to actually buy it I feel. I'm going to hope I run into it on the sales comm later. It always sucks to buy something at full price just to find out it's not going to be a popular print or it will go on sale a few months later at half the price. Everything about this OP is just perfect though. Hopefully someday it will be mine.

Aristo Kitty's Invitation Print

Not too long ago, Baby opened up reservations for their newest print Aristo Kitty's Invitation. I must say I am not impressed.



First and foremost, I will say I do not like that they have only shown us the print in the sax color way. I personally would never reserve a print if I couldn't first see what it would look like in my color of choice. I'm not a fan of the design of the OP and I find the skirt design to be very plain and boring. I like a basic skirt every now and a then, but I do like there to be a bit of thought put into my prints. Especially when this skirt would run me almost 18000 yen. The print itself is rather boring and for some reason the cat's face really creeps me out. Despite the strange cat face, I just find this print to be very un-awe-inspiring. I wish Baby would release some nice prints like their AatP line has. While I'm not in love with the St. Mephisto Cathedral print, I really wish I could have afforded the Dream in a Midsummer Night print, I would have in a heartbeat. While the designs didn't wow me for this print, the print more than made up for it in my opinion.



While the design does not save it, I really like the actually cut of the JSK. It seems to be really flattering to me. I'm not sure if they are just using a better petticoat, but the skirt seems fuller in this version which just gives it a better shape overall. Maybe we'll get a print worth having with a nice cut sometime soon? I sure hope so.

Renaissance Festival Coordinate

I've been quite excited for my trip to this year's Renaissance Festival in Sterling, NY. I've already got my whole coordinate planned out. I figured I would share it with you all.

For starters, I've picked out my Alice and the Pirates Gathers Frill JSK in ivory as the main part of this coordinate. I didn't want to wear it without a blouse but I wasn't really feeling wearing all white either so I'm pairing it with one of my favorite blouses from Rakuen. Lastly, I'm hoping that the black socks with the gold fleur-de-lis will go nicely with the gold buttons on the blouse and the gold chain and beading on the JSK.

I'm adding these "essential" pieces to this outfit. I thought about wearing my Dr. Martens with this outfit but I think that the rocking horse boots will fit in nicely with everything else so far. I'm going in July and therefore it's going to be quite hot out. I'm taking my BTSSB Vellsarie Parasol out on it's maiden voyage for this coordinate. I am kind of at a loss on what to do for a bag. I have chosen the Virgin Mary tote bag since I doubt I'll randomly come across the treasure chest purse for less than what it originally retailed when it was released.

Words cannot describe how badly I want this purse for this outfit. Considering that my studying abroad has left me in a bit of debt, I can't go throwing away 18,000 yen for a purse sadly.

Last but not least, this outfit needs some accessories and bloomers of course. I'm considering tea dying the bloomers since they are stark white in comparison to the rest of the coordinate and they probably are going to peak out just a little bit. If you scroll down to my previous blog, you'll see my review for that amazing tricorn hat that I am going to be wearing with this coordinate. As far as jewelry goes I'm going to be wearing my fake Vivienne Westwood choker and my pearl and metal flower bracelet. I'm hoping to maybe be able to get a hold of a few antique looking rings to cover my fingers with. I'm praying that we have some beautiful July weather like we did last year. I'd love to hear any comments or ideas anyone has to offer up for this coordinate.

Spring/Summer Collections

During one of my last visits to the Baby, The Stars Shine Bright shop in Paris, I was given the 2010 Spring/Summer catalogue as a "gift" for my purchase. I must say all in all, this is a rather disappointing season for me. I did see a few things that caught my eye though.

Damn it Baby! Who said you could try to put bare legs in mah Rorita again? XD

The ugly:

While I don't think that the cream puff skirt version of this design is terrible, the doll version of the JSK is downright hideous. There is just way too much going on and it reminds me of some of the more poorly designed Angelic Pretty rip offs that have been produced over the years.

The Bad:

While this set isn't even that ugly, I can't seem to help but hate it. It reminds me too much of something Mr. Yan would come up with. Bodyline releases dresses like this all the time. I suppose part of it stems from my extreme hatred of aprons, but this dress just isn't doing it for me.

This was another dress that had potential. While I kind of like the black version of this dress (It's my love of stripes, I can't help it), I feel that this print is overall just ugly. It's very plain and boring. On top of the bad print, I find the design of the actual garments to be equally as boring. While this had both the card suits and the stripes going for it, ça me laisse froid.

The Good:

While I'm once again not thrilled with the design of these dresses, I do love the print. If the design were better, this would be up there with Vampire Requiem for me. I do like that unlike Vampire Requiem, they actually released a few accessories like a tote bag purse. The wine bag give away and the brief case style purse that were available for Vampire Requiem left something to be desired. I personally would have like to have at least seen socks or something.

Although I really hate that they modeled this on a guy in the catalogue, I really love this dress. It's obviously not lolita at all, but it's very beautiful. It reminds me of something I'd see from h.Naoto more that Alice and the Pirates. While I find it to be quite beautiful, I don't think I will be purchasing this one myself. I think the dress would sit strangely on someone with any sort of curves, which is probably why this guy is modeling it instead of Kanon Wakeshima like the rest of the dresses in the Alice and the Pirates section of the catalogue. I really like that Alice and the Pirates went for something that stands out as original in this little catalogue of recycled frills.

The Awesome:

I almost feel like I don't need to put a description here about why this is awesome. I mean, it is after all the Marie Antoinette JSK... This print has been many people's dream dress for as long as i can remember. I , myself, would love to have the blue version. I don't even know how I would coordinate it in my 90% black and white wardrobe. But I do know that I want it very badly. The other colors are amazing as well, but there is just something about the blue that gets me.

The Meh:

While I absolutely love the print for this dress, I can't help but be left unmoved by the overall designs of the dresses. While both the OP and JSK strike me as frumpy and unflattering, I'm not terribly excited to see yet another corset skirt. Perhaps my dislike of the skirt stems from my not buying the Castle of Nightmare skirt when I last saw it, but I think it stems more from how I rarely see anyone pull them off without acquiring either a boobloaf or boob shelf in the process of it all. So while this had the opportunity to wow me, it fell short, therefore the meh.

Overall, I feel like I'm seeing a lot of the same thing over and over again. I feel as if even though Baby isn't releasing the same OTT sweet designs every month like Angelic Pretty, it all feels very much like I've seen it before. Not all of it is necessarily even bad. It's just disappointing to see the same concepts being recycled so soon that didn't wow me the first time around, with the sole exception being the Marie Antoinette series, which wows me every time I look at it.

I also just saw Angelic Pretty's new Wonder Cookie Cutter print. I was also disappointed in this one as well. I really like the black version of Sugary Carnival ,the mint versions of Melty Chocolate and just about every version of Starry Night Theatre but this was just poorly executed I think. This one also has that feeling of being a recycled design, more specifically the print looks so familiar to me as a mesh of several of their older prints. I don't agree with their choice of stripes for the dress. I think it adds too much to the already busy print. While the pink and white colorway seems less busy than the others, the black colorway makes my head hurt.

Those are my current feelings on Lolita fashion. I'm looking very much forward to the Marie Antoinette rerelease and will have a very hard time resisting if I can afford it when it is released. I've always been a sucker for the blue version from the very moment I saw it. Hopefully the Fall/Winter catalogue will make me feel better about the fashion I love so much.

In Europe Part 1: Paris & Brussels

I've been wandering around a few major cities in Europe this past week and a half. I started off with Paris. I have been to Paris a few times before however, this time was particularly awesome since my Dad was with me. We visited all the important sites: Eiffel Tower, Louvre, Versailles, Arc de Triomphe, and Notre Dame. We also made our way to a few other sites like Baby The Stars Shine Bright, Jim Morrison's grave, and The American Legion in Paris. Sadly our first few days there were rainy. I naturally used this as an excuse to buy myself a BTSSB umbrella... I also grabbed myself a pair of socks and a little bag.



Once the lack of umbrella problem was fixed, it stopped raining. I'm certainly not complaining about that. While there was a lot of new things discovered for my Dad in his first days in Europe, Paris provided me with no new culture shocking experiences other than French Pizza not being all terrible. I suppose the one thing that really did surprise me the gigantic crowd around the Mona Lisa at the Louvre.



Across from the Mona Lisa is a huge painting probably 100 times the size of the Mona Lisa. It was strange to see so many people flocking around such a small painting while behind them there was a great painting that most people wouldn't even be able to fit in their homes. While the paintings were great and all, I really prefered the statues and the basement where you could see some of the original infrastructure of the building dating back to 1100 AD if I remember correctly.


How Shocking!

From Paris we went to Brussels. I was rather surprised at how small the place was. We saw just about everything in one afternoon. The Grand Place was very beautiful, especially at night.



Brussels is also home to the best ice cream I have ever had. I had Speculoos, vanilla, and straciatella ice cream. While the vanilla was amazing, the fact that Speculoos ice cream had Speculoos in it made it my favorite. While straciatella is one of my favorite candies, I was disappointed by the ice cream because while it was still great, it just didn't compare to the other two ice creams or actually eating straciatella. We also made our way to the Manneken Pis which was sadly not dressed up. I heard a tour guide telling its group that when it is dressed up it pees beer instead of water as usual.



While in Brussels, we also went to Autoworld. While I'm not a big car person, it was a really neat little museum. Everything was in chronological order. As someone who alphabetizes anything with text, I appreciate order. They also had prototypes and working models of several more recent cars such as those adorable little smart cars you see everywhere (at least in Europe). They also had a few old carriages such as Napoleon's wedding carriage. It was quite an impressive collection of cars and motorcycles (among a few other vehicles). My personal favorite was the Amphibicar from the 1970's that you could actually use as a boat in addition to driving it on the road. I've seen the tour bus/boats that do this too, but I think the idea that this car being available to the general public was really neat. I wonder if you needed a boating license to go cruising in the water with it...



As someone who doesn't eat mussels or drink beer, I was quite fond of Brussels despite it not having a whole lot to do outside of bars and museums. It's a nice little place although the variety of languages being spoke can be confusing. I, myself, was never sure whether to speak to people in English or in French. I did get to see a man that was too drunk to move sleep in the middle of a somewhat busy street. I thought he was dead at first... Then the driver got out of his car and moved the drunk man to the sidewalk and continued on his way. I loved how none of this seemed to be anything but commonplace here. In part 2, I'll be talking about the second half of my trip through Europe to both Amsterdam and London.