This is always a fascinating question. We’re all individuals and despite loving the same fashion, we look at it and experience it differently, leading to people creating beautiful yet varied coords with the same main piece for example. Everyone has their own process and will find different things inspiring, so it’s not just interesting to see how this looks for others, but could also help us improve our own outfits.
I feel like I don’t have one set inspiration or even way of building a coord. If I do, I haven’t noticed a pattern yet. However, there are some things that I always take into consideration when building a coord: the dress, the occasion and the theme.
In most cases the dress will be enough to inspire an outfit – hah!, multiple outfits even! Lolita dresses are known for intricate details in both print and construction, so you could literally pick any one thing from it: a colour, a motif in the print, the lace, the things it makes you think of – anything! To use an example, in my coord using British Crown I picked at the obvious theme of crowns first, through socks and jewellery, and then tried to accentuate the royal theme using jewel toned tricolour. On the other hand, my Summer ILD outfit focused more on the colours and materials of the dress to exude a sense of luxury and royalty, completely ignoring the print in that outfit. Of course, your coord could be inspired by another piece of your outfit: a blouse, a bolero, socks, even a necklace. But you do need a starting point of some kind if it’s the item of clothing itself that inspired you to create an outfit.
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| If the dress itself doesn't inspire you, then are you really seeing it in all its glory? |
However, the dress is only part of it, you also need an occasion or a reason to wear it. This will both help to determine the practicalities (things like will you have to wear sensible shoes or are you going to be in air conditioned spaces) as well as the level of OTT that’d be appropriate (not to say that you can’t do more casual outfit for a tea party or an OTT one for a casual meet – consider whether you’d feel under-/overdressed or whether it’s practical to wear that). Usually the occasion and the activities you’ll take part in will inspire you as to what to wear. For example, because Winter ILD was in, well, winter I really wanted to celebrate that occasion by creating a look that would evoke snow and cold temperatures in a sort of Snow/Ice Queen kind of way. And for comparison, when going to Manchester Museum I had already worn this skirt when travelling, so I just had to think carefully about what I’m packing and ensure that it’d be comfortable enough to walk in (flat shoes, socks that don’t fall down) and warm enough for the weather (I still needed my jacket, but it didn’t clash that badly).
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| Big events or small meets, you'll know what to do. (Though for an OTT lover like me the big events are more up my street!) |
Finally we come to the theme. Sometimes that theme will come from the occasion: a themed meet or the event theme. Other times the theme might already be present in the dress or you might feel like adding a theme to a dress that doesn’t already incorporate it. Creating outfits based on themes can sometimes be a lot easier as you will have some sort of preconception of what an outfit like this should include and look like – there’s a little less thinking involved because you almost follow a template with some of the themes. To show what I mean between a theme, a ready-made theme and an added theme, I’ll use these three outfits: Wicked and Whimsy day 1 coord, Fortune Telling meet coord and Cardigan Meet coord. The first one was made with Team Whimsy in mind, but whimsy is so open to interpretation that everyone who was Team Whimsy that day wore something completely different. This was just one person’s take on it. The Fortune Teller is what I’d consider to be a template theme: we all have an idea of what a fortune teller looks like, what kinds of elements their dress includes that need to be transferred over to a Lolita coord and you build from there. As for added theme, it’s when a dress doesn’t have a certain theme in it (or any theme at all), but you decide to work it into an outfit anyway. Sweets and matryoshka dolls have nothing to do with marine themes, but because the colours worked together it was easy to incorporate a sailor collar cardigan, some anchor OTKs and a beret worn almost like a sailor’s cap to make the two themes blend. (Maybe the Biscuit Meet coord would’ve been a better example: polka dots and cherries have nothing in common, but the colours and the plain background of the dress made way for accessorising it in a way themed around cherries.)
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| Themes can be great triggers for moments of inspiration |
This is a big generalisation on coord building inspirations, but it does cover pretty much everything without going into details on putting the coord together. Looking at other people’s cords is always inspiring in and of itself as you get to see other people’s vision or pick up little tricks of the trade on how to make your coord more on point and more blended together – but even then I’m still considering things like the main piece, the occasion or the theme.
What inspires you when you’re putting together an outfit? Have you noticed any common threads? I’d be very curious to know!
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