Lolita Blog Carnival: How I Got Interested in Lolita Fashion

This week's Lolita Blog Carnival theme really brings back memories! 
It's incredible how long back ones' road to lolita-dom really starts, when you think about it. It might all, and this is a bit of a stretch, really have started when you were 4 years old and your grandma bought you this princess Barbie, and from then on you were hooked on princesses. The seed to what would become your Lolita aesthetic. 

As I said, that might be a stretch, but I consider my road to lolita-dom to have started back when I started school. That's when I met my closest childhood friend. 

But let's move forward a little bit: 

I was introduced to Lolita back in my "weaboo" days. I had lost contact to that special childhood friend of mine even further back, when I moved to a different part of the country. Luck would have it, that my aunt still worked in Copenhagen, and I knew that my childhood pal's mom was a colleague of hers.

I really was your typical teenage weaboo. I dressed in Naruto sandals and cat ears. I ended pretty much every sentence with a "nyan~" and was sure that I was the decendant of some kind of magical girl. I'm very fortunate that my parents were decent at dealing with my teenage identity crisis. I was about 13-14 years old or so. 

One random day, my aunt let me know that my old friend had also gotten into that "japanese thing", and I excitedly demanded that I get her phonenumber so I could call her immediately! 

Of course it turned out that she was about 300% cooler than I'd ever be, at least in my own opinion. I was awed by her Visual Kei-awesomeness. She dressed well, she was beautiful, incredible when it came to drawing and she had brought japanese magazines along with her and introduced me to "An-Café". (I still listen to them. So much nostalgia..)
All of that added up to her being everything I all of a sudden wanted to be.

Of course I decided to get into Visual-Kei immediately, but that was nothing new. I had always wanted to get into goth, or punk, or emo, or some other alternative fashion. It didn't really matter to me which it would be. I just wanted to dress differently. I have always been the kind of person who gets really into a project in the beginning, but never finishes anything. 
That also meant that my wardrobe was a mess, of course.

My friend showed me the online forum for the first ever japanese fashion community in Denmark. It was one forum for all the japanese fashions that were big back then- Visual Kei, Decora, Gyaru and, yes, Lolita. 

I don't know why, but I ended up spending a bunch of money on the first (and really not the best) Lolita stuff that was up for sale on there, including an ita-astic blouse with scratchy lace and shiny ribbon, a rectangle headdress and skirt, and a pair of black and purple platforms. The perfect coordinate, as you can imagine.
As soon as it arrived, it was buried in the back of my closet never to be seen again. I had already moved on to the next thing- Asian Ball Jointed Dolls. 
Of course I managed to thoroughly embarrass myself before I left the online community, by trying to create a lolita coord out of whatever I had in my closet and posting it online. 

A couple of years passed. I was actually into ABJD's for at least 3-4 years. 
It was a boring day sometime in mid-late november when I, pretty much out of nowhere, remembered that online community that my friend had shown me years ago, and I decided to google it. I found that it had a new url, but it was still thriving. I read everything on there about Lolita- I was skeptical about sweet lolita, and gothic was too dark for me. I fell in love with the romance of classic lolita but, impatient as I will always be, the oldschool stuff I had bought 3 years ago would have to do for now.
And the rest is history. I didn't even consider it- It just felt natural that I spend all my money on an obscure street fashion, right out of nowhere. 

It's fun to think back and notice how everything has changed- today, the romantic and simple lolita style that got me hooked at first is the least appealing to me. I have become gradually more "extreme" in my lolita preferences- The the bonnet, the rufflier the dress, the brighter the print, the happier I am. 
And that goes for any Lolita "genre."

I guess lolita for me was a thing that I had to mature for, and grow into.
My style and my preferences have broadened and changed, and I have no idea where I'll end up. My style keeps evolving.

Thinking back, it was all pure luck. Had I gone to a different school, I would never have met that one girl, and she would never have introduced me to Lolita fashion, and it's safe to say that I would've been an entirely different person whose life would have been totally different. 

Thanks for reading!
And hey- Please tell me, how did you get into Lolita fashion? I love hearing other peoples' stories!

Wanna know how some other awesome bloggers fell down the rabbit hole?

Gothic Strawberry

The Cute Lifestyle

Her Lumpiness
Sidhe Banshee
Oh Velveteena
All Sweet in Deed
Alice in Lolitaland
Wild Jackalopes
A Sweet Lolita's Disney Life
The Bloody Tea Party
Hello Batty
Pretty Little Habits