I have been feeling rather nostalgic lately and thusly it's time to
visit good old, old school lolita. Ah those time retangular headdresses,
black and white, knee socks, clunky shoes and simple or no prints. When
everybody dreamed of Vivienne westwood rocking horse shoes and hoped
that brands would finally start shipping abroad... But I digress. Let's
get down to business and bring this stuff to the new decade.
The black and the white.
Black and white... the legendary and
notorious combination. Legendary because it is so iconic, notorious
because it's so easy to do poorly( And because most of started with
doing this one.. Poorly). And also one of my favorite colour
combinations. It is infinitely stylish when done right.
There's is really two ways to do black and white. Either you get a black
dress with white lace or you wear a black dress with a white blouse.
The latter is easier to do nicely but I find that the first really gives
a more old schoolish air.
So here's something in black and white. The dress as you can see is mostly, even the lace is black apart from the embroidery which is white. It's really a very ligth way to do black with white lace. To counter balance this ligthness I added white blouse and socks which will bring out the white embroidery rather nicely. Other old schoolish elements in this look are the mary jane shoes and the mini hat.
Clunky, clunky shoes.
As dear readers might have noticed,
although I use mostly quite dainty shoes, I do still have a thing for
big stompy boots and occasionally lolita shoes too. Back in the day it
was asid that bigger your skirt was, the clunkier and stompier your
shoes should be. It was to give outfit some balance.
The most desired of all those deligthfully stompy shoes, boots and
whatnot was and still is the Vivienne Westwood Rocking horse shoe in its
many incarnations. They were immortalized in the novel Kamikaze girls
as the chosen foot wear of Momoko and bougth Vivienne Westwood a place
in lolitas hearts everywhere.
And of course I chose them to be the part of our next polyvore. I have sort of hate love relation ship to these particular shoes. They look really nice (if the have wooden soles), but are hell to walk in. I wanted to make this look all about the shoes so rest of this is very simple.
Ode to the headdress
The headdress is possibly the thing that
weirds out people the most about lolitas. Yes we have a poofy skirt and
lots of lace but the headdress. It's a piece of cloth absolutely
drenched in ribbons and lace. Combined to with the early sausage curls
it look positively curious albeit very cute. I still love the
combination to bits.
In recent years the headdress is gone through a revision. No more
ruffled oodles of lace and frills just a simple band of fabric or
quality lace to match you dresses. Especially classic brands have
released many of this kind. The subtle beauty of this type will hopefuly
bring the headdress back.
So obviously there is a headdress here. To balance it's frou frouness I added a luxusuriously ruffled skirt and a shirt with a bow tie. This isn't very matchy matchy but as one of my friends says: "The longer I wear lolita the less I care about matching perfectly."
Last tips!
With what else than headdresses, black with white and
clunky, stompy shoes, can youadd old school flare to your look? Simple!
By eliminating bold screen prints and going for the simple florals or
solid colours with white lace instead. Or wear tartan, polkadots or
other overall prints instead.
Other really oldschool items
include one pieces worn with aprons, stripe socks and lace
edged knee socks, bell or princess sleeved
blouses, removable collars and capelets (which I personally think are
really cool).
When it comes to wigs ditch them unless you own
one with ridicilously tight sausage curls in which case go for it. In
old school years hairstyles were much much plainer (not counting the
sausage curls which take forever to make) braids, bob cuts and simple
pig tails. Also one must note that old school make up was plainer too.
Fake eyelashes were almost never seen and circle lences were unheard of,
so keep it simple and natural.
So that's all this time. Are there somethings you miss about old school? Please do share your thougths.
Mademoiselle Parapluie
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