Thoughts on the Lolita Rules
I was reading some of my old drafts for this blog, intending to perfect and finally post some of them, and (besides noticing how much my view on certain things has changed…) I noticed that many of my thoughts appeared to contradict one another. In particular, my stance on the “rules” of Lolita fashion seemed to see-saw. Sometimes I sounded like I was in favor of them, sometimes I seemed to fight against them.
In actuality, what I value is a balance. Extremes are usually bad no matter which side they take. Lolita, like any other alternative fashion, is a balance of meeting visual critera while simultaneously expressing one’s individuality. In a way, Lolita is a set of guidelines that allow you to express yourself through a specific medium, as though you are a canvas and Lolita is a set of certain paints that complement each other well.
Pay attention to the phrase “visual criteria”. Lolita fashion does not come to you with a written manual. There are many guides that were created to help new Lolitas understand this criteria, but they typically come with a personal bias, no matter how hard one tries to be objective. This is because Lolita provides each individual with a unique experience, and I think it’s difficult for anyone to generalize something personal and be able to appeal to everyone else’s unique experiences.
So, I support the original intention of such guides, and I encourage you to view them if you are new to lolita and feel completely at a loss of how to attain the look yourself. However, lolita is a FASHION, and as such you must become familiar with what it LOOKS like if you really want to excel in it. After all, you fell in love with the way it LOOKS, not the way it sounds in words, right? For example, when people tell each other that in order to do Lolita properly, one must have a bell-shaped skirt no more than 3 inches above the knee, it severly limits the fashion and completely disregards all the other types of skirts available, resulting in a totally homogenized appearance among all Lolitas. Victorian Maiden has sold mermaid skirts and bell-shaped skirts that fall well below the knee–so is Victorian Maiden not Lolita anymore?
But as I said earlier, a balance is needed, and if your philosophy is “I can wear anything I want and it’s Lolita if I feel like it,” I think you’re missing the point. A Lolita outfit must meet certain aesthetic criteria if it is to be labeled “Lolita”, otherwise the label itself would have no reason to exist. If you wear a pastel pink tank top with lace on it, and a jean miniskirt hemmed in ruffles, I’m willing to bet it will not look Lolita one bit. Again, you need to look at other people who are wearing the style in order to understand how to do it properly. If you’re at a loss of what to do, and I’ve scared you away from style guides, look through some images and try finding or creating imitations of the garments that inspire you. (I’m not a big fan of exact replicas, but to each her own….)
I guess when all is said and done, I’m really just a big fan of the “visual criteria” thing. If you lived in Japan you would have the ability to surround yourself in Lolita aesthetics by going to shops and talking to people in the alternative fashion scene. Here, the best you can do is look for pictures, and those can be hard to find, especially if you have no way of obtaining Japanese magazines. It is actually quite easy to order them from the internet. Here are some links to a few stores you can purchase Gothic & Lolita publications from:
Sasuga Books
CDJapan
Amazon.com
(Actually, there is also an English version of the Gothic & Lolita Bible available at most major bookstores–Borders, Barnes & Noble, etc.–but I haven’t looked in one recently, so I don’t know how “good” it is…)
An even better option is going to a loli meetup in your area. Not even all the loli pictures in the world could compare with seeing authentic lolita clothing up close. My early meetups were such wonderful experiences and taught me so much more about lolita aesthetics than pictures ever could. If you are afraid to go to a meetup, you might be lucky to find lolitas at your local anime convention, if you enjoy going to those things.
Everything I’ve said in this article applies to all Gothic & Lolita styles (it’s just that the others aren’t as “tainted” by over-generalized style guides ;P )
Understanding Patterns Written in Japanese
Someone asked me in January to translate a pattern for them. I had the full intention of doing so…after completing a few other priorities. And then I got a full-time job. I have very little time to spend on extra activities now (I have a to-do list, really!) so the least I owe is a quick set of links to places where you readers can find help and translate all of your own patterns by yourselves. I would rather do this now because I’m afraid if I wait until I get to it on my list, I will have completely forgotten by then.
http://www.antipope.org/feorag/gosurori/
This website hosts a link to a pdf of Japanese words commonly found on patterns (in the Gosurori specifically) translated into English. It looks like it might be from the English Gothic & Lolita Bible, but I haven’t been reading them, so I wouldn’t know for sure.
There used to be similar guides elsewhere on the internet, but I can’t seem to find them again…I’m sorry! This list is huge, so I hope it’s helpful by itself.
Lolita, Elitism, and Snobbery
You probably think I’m going to whine about the snobby Lolita elitists and how evil they are, right? How they called me Lolita-inspired and put my photo on The Community That Shall Not Be Named? Well, not exactly.
I’m going to tell you what it’s like to be one, and what I think of them now that I’ve grown up.
First, it is essential that we define the term “elitist” since it has a tendency to be carelessly flung around the Gothic and Lolita community.
When a member of the community accuses another member of elitism, it may refer to one of the following:
1. Someone who abuses or flaunts her knowledge of Gothic and Lolita to establish her superiority over others.
2. Someone who nitpicks another’s outfit in ways that exclude her from belonging to an imaginary class of “True Lolitas.”
3. Someone who is trying to offer legitimate help to an individual who cannot handle personal criticism, or who did not expect to receive critical advice by posting their photo on the internet.
After performing a search for the dictionary definition of “elitism,” I found the two most concise entries at MSN Encarta and The American Heritage Dictionary (courtesy of Bartleby.com). They are, respectively:
1. belief in concept of superiority: the belief that some people or things are inherently superior to others and deserve preeminence, preferential treatment, or higher rewards because of their superiority
2. belief in control by small group: the belief that government or control should be in the hands of a small group of privileged, wealthy, or intelligent people, or the active promotion of such a system
3. control by small group: government or control by a small, specially qualified, or privileged group
…and…
1. The belief that certain persons or members of certain classes or groups deserve favored treatment by virtue of their perceived superiority, as in intellect, social status, or financial resources.
2a. The sense of entitlement enjoyed by such a group or class. b. Control, rule, or domination by such a group or class.
It seems that this term is, indeed, being used correctly in two out of three cases.
I am by no means one of the “original” Lolitas–I discovered it in 2003–but I have been part of the internet community for a pretty long time. When I hit the three or four year mark, I went, “That’s it. I’m an expert now. I know just about everything there is to know about Gothic and Lolita, and it’s my duty to correct and educate these amateurs who keep getting it all wrong.”
And that, my friends, is how elitists, in the true sense of the word, are born.
My inner elitist broke forth from a sense of duty to save the subculture I loved from the dirty hands of the people who were screwing it up with their cluelessness. Granted, I don’t believe I was ever outright mean to anyone. There are ladies who become infamous for that, and I don’t believe I was ever a memorable figure in the Gothloli community. I think my desire to be respectful to others even through my pretentious comments held me check…mostly.
What kind of things did I say? You know, the good old “We have rules, follow them,” and “Lolita has subcategories, here is a list of them, there are no others.” Sometimes I feel utterly guilty for helping initiate some of the foolish trends in thought rooted in today’s Gothic and Lolita community–the idea of there existing only specific “subcategories” being one of them.
I don’t remember what broke me, but one day I realized -I- was the one who had it all wrong. Suddenly I was able to step out of my narrow vision and there was a huge, unexplored world waiting for me. In the past three years I have learned so many new things about Japanese Gothic and Lolita, I can’t even comprehend it all. “The more I learn, the less I know,” is an excellent phrase to describe how I feel about all this. (I thought this was an old saying, but I can’t find the source–I know I’ve heard it somewhere.)
At this point, I will be the first one to tell you that, although I feel confident enough with the aesthetics of Gothloli to put together a nice outfit, I do not know everything there is to know about it culturally. In fact, I don’t believe anybody can even come close to calling themselves an expert on Gothic and Lolita unless they are a Japanese person who grew up in it. It’s so vast that even the Japanese admit it cannot be categorized.*
You newer ladies and gents who are intimidated by Lolita elitists would do well to realize that what you have experienced is the shallow water, the outer layer, of true Lolita culture. Your self-confidence and passion for all things Gothic and Lolita are the keys to breaking through this brittle outer shell and entering the true center of this enriching subculture.
*I wrote this article last March (2008), and at the time my school, Columbia College Chicago, had a gallery of Japanese fashion photos, which of course included gothloli. It was hosted primarily (if not completely?) by Japanese faculty and students. The introduction to this exhibit spoke about the wonderful uniqueness of Japanese street fashion and mentioned that it is so vast and without boundary that one is unable to confine it to categories. It was like an epiphany to hear this coming from an exhibit that included even a minimal amount of Gothic and Lolita. I had intended to quote and cite it in the above paragraph, but of course by now I’ve misplaced the materials and my notes.
I didn’t write about it earlier because I procrastinated for the first week, and for the rest of the exhibit’s duration, the building (and consequently, the best Lolita photos) was COMPLETELY blocked by sidewalk construction!!
Gothloli’s Lament
I’ve never been a girly girl, and I’ve never liked frilly foo-foo things. I do like cute things, though. They’re funny, and ironic to my nature. I also like dark things. I especially like things that portray duality and opposites. Isn’t it natural, then, that I became so drawn to gothic lolita, cute darkness?
But I’ve never been a girly girl. Lace, frills, and pastels could go to hell for all I care. Isn’t it natural, then, that out of all the gorgeous brands featured in the Gothic and Lolita Bible, the ones I began to dislike the most were the gaudy and frilly Baby, the Stars Shine Bright, and the infantilized, hyper-feminine Angelic Pretty?
I watched in horror as Baby became the most coveted brand of my peers. Metamorphose, who I shared the same sentiment for, followed closely behind. Has anybody even heard of Moitié anymore?
I got used to Baby and Meta, somehow. I even began to LIKE some of Meta’s Classical pieces, as well as Baby’s Gothic pieces, especially those in the Alice and the Pirates line.
As for Angelic Pretty…I don’t think that’s something I can ever get used to. They take girlishness to a new extreme. Give me the elegant darkness of Atelier Boz, the cute sorrow of Moi-même-Moitié, or even the classy sophistication of Victorian Maiden, but I will never drown myself in head-eating bows, pink puffs lined with lace, and little images of desserts and pastries. It’s just my preference.
It’s unfortunate what a drastic turn my peers took. I was initiated into a culture that embraced all that which defined me, and it evolved into one that embodies everything I find disgusting. It’s gotten lonelier by the year….
I have a LiveJournal…
Not sure if that’s something I should be proud of or ashamed of O_o
Livejournal has a pretty bad rap in general, but I’ve been a member for …I think 8 years as of a few days ago. I’ve always loved it, even for as much as I bash the Livejournal incarnation of Lolita. And for as much as bloggers bash Livejournal in general.
Anyway, I have one! I just made it open to the public, because I decided I wanted a diary for my homepage. Since I don’t update this blog very regularly, I invite you to visit my LJ if you’re ever wondering what’s on my mind at the time. It takes me a long time to edit Grimoire entries to perfection, but over there it’ll just be a bunch of spur-of-the-moment ramblings.
As for this blog, the first thing I want to do is finish uploading Antique Child. It occurred to me this morning that I ought to re-format everything as separate text files before attempting to import any of them–then the process of uploading them would actually be as simple as I originally hoped it would be. *sigh*
Afterwards, I’ve agreed to translate some patterns from Japanese into English for someone. Expect plenty of updates this January!
Anti-Lolita Lolitas: ur doin it wrong
Today I pinpointed something that irks me sometimes about modern-day Lolitas!
Well, Lolitas are just normal people who like to dress up funny, right? Right. I agree with that completely. But one of the things that used to captivate Lolitas a few years ago was the IDEAL of becoming a well-mannered Victorian maiden.
You should never pretend to be extra polite, because that’s just annoying–most people Lolita or not will agree with that. But what if you already admire politeness, and simply wish to attain the ideal of a well-mannered young lady? What if you want to be well-behaved not because of Lolita, but because it’s a quality you admire in others?
Acting extra polite and generally “Lolita-like” when dressed in Lolita was probably popularized by the Gothic & Lolita Bible, considering some of the older articles of theirs I’ve read. It’s not something that non-Lolitas just made up to spread rumors about us. It really was part of the Lolita image at one point. In the past, we used to say that only cosplayers and poseurs pretended to be polite, while the REAL Lolitas were actually polite individuals naturally.
Most Lolitas don’t want to be thought of as freaks, so both Japanese and overseas Lolitas have fought the “feigned Lolita attitude” stereotype. I think it’s been fought so hard that today’s Lolitas have killed the Lolita ideal!
I never realized it until after watching …hmm, 305 Lolita-related videos on YouTube while creating a Gothloli channel. I watched hundreds of clips of Lolitas not acting like demure Lolitas, nor acting like normal people; they were acting like hooligans.
I don’t care how you act normally, but dressing in frilly clothes and acting like a socially-inept brat is not charming–and I know you are doing it on purpose, because when you go out in public dressed like that, you know you’re being watched.
What I’m curious about is this: how can you care enough about your appearance to dress yourself so meticulously, yet allow yourself to destroy your image by acting however the hell you want?
This has made me realize just how much one’s attitude is a part of their overall appearance. It’s a part of how you present yourself. If you want to dress a certain way, your attitude should reflect it a little bit. The defining features of Lolita fashion are elegance and beauty, so you should restrain the parts of you that are the opposite. In a Reuters article I read recently, an older Japanese Lolita commented that she would like newer Lolitas to refine their inner beauty before they start wearing the fashion. “I see a lot of girls smoking and sitting down on the floor in their outfits. I don’t want them doing this.”
Someone responded to the article, “I’m kind of annoyed that she said that, because Lolita is only about fashion, but whatever.” Maybe this is where we went wrong…we convinced the new Lolitas that as long as they follow the Lolita dress code, it’s good enough.
(Ok, so smoking isn’t the same as acting like a hooligan. Maybe a better way to put it is acting anti-Lolita.)
Perhaps everyone just took the ideal Lolita too seriously. Lolitas don’t REALLY wear Lolita every single minute of their lives, consume nothing but tea and cake, and act super polite all the time. Honestly! Who really thinks this?! It’s just an ideal, an inside joke almost! Nobody SERIOUSLY does that, and nobody expects anyone to live up to that! I think that’s why Lolitas started to fight the Lolita ideal–they knew nobody could really embody it.
Acting deliberately anti-Lolita while dressed in Lolita made an interesting statement when it was rare, but it’s just become a cheap gimmick, even when it happens in ignorance. So please stop! Pay attention to how you act, and how it affects the image you so painstakingly work for!
Gloomth and the cult of melancholy
Have I finally found it?! That independent North American gothic lolita shop I’ve been searching for?!
Well, maybe not quite, but Gloomth comes closer than any I’ve ever visited. Most webshops cater to either Lolitas or Goths, but neither really do justice to the elegant gothic, dark lolita styles that are my favorite. Until now, replica and cosplay shops are the only places that could give me this window-shopping satisfaction, but of course I’d never pay money for that kind of stuff.
I stumbled upon them while hopelessly searching for some such garments for sale on ebay. I saw this coat, and clicked on it because I thought it was cute. In the description it had a store name, and not an ebay store! So I checked it out, and voila! I discovered the beauty of Gloomth.
Although I was initially impressed with the obvious gothloli influence, I’m having a hard time picking out anything I’d like to buy (and even though the coat is super cute, it’s a little too cute for my style, I think). I encourage you to pay them a visit and judge them for yourself.
Kuroloki’s Quest for Gothloli
Oh dear…after editing this, I’m afraid I made myself sound like an otaku fag-hag from Hot Topic. Oh well, I think I became a pretty decent adult, and I’ve enjoyed many things unrelated to this article throughout life, so I’ll let you read it anyway.
Maybe I should also make clear that I currently believe I am totally NOT Goth, because I am not nocturnal and get sick in noisy places with flashy lights, i.e. will never step foot into a Goth club during any decent gothing hours…unless of course my closet-goth fiance manages to convince me to go with him one night.
——————————————–
It was Sailor Moon who guided me to the Dark Side.
I was about 13 or 14. Whenever I went to the mall, one particular store always grabbed my attention, yet frightened me all the same. I never dared venture inside; I only watched it with a morbid curiosity as I passed by.
But news of Sailor Moon goodies in there years after it’s original North American release? Coincidentally at the time my best friend and I became obsessed with Sailor Moon?? You bet I made a beeline for Hot Topic when I heard that.
From then on, it became my favorite store, even long after Sailor Moon went missing off the shelves. (While I am still a Sailor Moon geek today, I can’t say I hold quite the same sentiment for Hot Topic….)
When I was that age, I never knew where to find information about Goths, or where to find Goth music, or even that music had anything to do with Goth, but somehow I knew that Goths weren’t depressed kids who always wore black, painted their faces white, and cut themselves as they wallowed in self-pity, which was what everyone else thought they were back then. I knew Goth was an identity, and that identity appealed to me.
I didn’t start thinking of myself as a Goth until my early college years, and it was only because so many people throughout my lifetime up to that point had asked me, “Are you Goth?” I thought if other people thought I was, then it must be true. After all, wasn’t Goth a mindset? I did have an attraction to the “beauty in Darkness”….
But while the Goth mindset had always appealed to me, and so had the fashion, I never imagined myself wearing full-on Goth attire. Ok, part of it was that I had no idea where to buy the clothing besides Hot Topic, but even with their relatively cheap prices, I couldn’t afford to dress that way either. And I definitely did not belong in Goth culture–I didn’t really know anything about it, or have any friends to initiate me into its secret ways, so how could I? I liked some things that were of typical Goth interest, but …something didn’t appeal to me. (And don’t worry, I stopped telling people I was Goth after I discovered it was more than just a mindset.)
Let’s backtrack a few years…I happened upon a Japanese band named Laputa when I was 15, and I don’t even remember how, but it was love at first listen, and it ignited my fascination. Part of what thrilled me was the men dressed up in bizarre, effeminate costumes. I would later learn that I had fallen prey to Visual-kei.
A few years after, I was lucky to make friends with someone who was more versed than I in this music, and she would help mold my identity in this respect. She introduced me to Malice Mizer, and after that I morphed into a VK fan like Tetsuo morphed into a giant blob. Somehow, and I honestly do not remember how, this led me to the egl community. Gothloli sidelined my college life.
If I had been born in Japan, I know exactly who I would have been. I would have been one of those girls who went to Visual-kei concerts dressed in Gothloli, and I would have gone to Meiji bridge on Sundays to cosplay with my group of friends, maybe pretending we were in a band. Only to us it wouldn’t be cosplay or pretend, it would be a dream come true, a fantasy paradoxically taking place in reality.
My favorite type of Goth had always been what I once called “cute-yet-goth,” which seemed extremely rare, and I felt maybe it was an aesthetic unique to me and a handful of others. Occasionally, cute characters like Ruby Gloom and some of Junko Mizuno’s creations would appear inside Hot Topic and I would think, “Yes! I’m not the only one!!”
My discovery of Gothic Lolita changed all of that. Gothic Lolita was everything I loved mashed into one wonderful fantasy. It was gothic, but it was also cute and beautiful, not sexy or frightening.
As Gothic Lolita, and then simply Lolita, grew in popularity, I became one of those girls who thought she could be the judge of who was a real Lolita and who wasn’t. I thought I knew it all and it was my duty to help teach others. But I was never nasty to anybody, and I never allowed myself to become brainwashed when specific rules dominated the community. Maybe this is what allowed my departure from the crowd mindset and let me look at myself as an individual Gothloli.
I know what I am and I know what I love. I don’t want to be that person who measures herself based on how much she knows about Gothic and Lolita. I want to return to the girl who loved the elegant-gothic feel and mindset of Gothloli, the girl who wanted to dress like the beautiful people on the stages at the opposite side of the world and become her own rock star.
I’m doing it now. What about you? Do you remember what made you love Gothloli?
The Boystyle Mysteries
Since I’m discussing boy styles tonight, I might as well share with you a day’s set of notes to help clarify some of the ideas I was trying to get across in Gothloli for Men. It’s a wonder I didn’t post them right away…?
The following is dated January 16, 2008. I edited some of it to make more sense.
I truly believe that the names things are recognized by should stay relatively the same worldwide. There’s no use giving something a new name when it already has one…it just makes it more confusing for cross-culture communication. For this reason I’m searching for the Japanese terms used to describe Gothic and Lolita boystyles.
The obvious one is Ouji. Most people know that. But there are so many variations on the boy styles…what criteria exactly does Ouji imply?
While searching, I found other names…
–Ouji-loli
–King
–Unisex
–Uni-mens/Uni-otoko
–Goth-ouji
- My first impression of Ouji, upon finding websites and photos, was that it is a men’s style (and sometimes women wear it too, but it is adult-man-like, not childish like our Kodona).But when I search only for Ouji, or Ouji-kei, I get so many hits that it’s impossible to sift through them all and find the relevant ones. This term is obviously widely used for other things, not just our fashion. For the Ouji-kei search I remember finding a lot about a theater….
An image search of Ouji turned up a lot of photos of Gackt. (Ouji means Prince, for anyone who might not have known.)
- While Oujiloli seems like an ingenious name, it turns up few relevant webpage hits, and only two pages of images, one of which is a drawing of what I would call a “Sweet Kodona”. That’s it.
- A blog article claims that magazines call this men’s style King, Unisex, or Uni-men (I have to read it more closely), but Unisex turns up many photos of watches (from the same site), Uni-men turns up many photos of diapers, and King turns up a great many random photos, none of which looked anything like boystyle as far as I could tell. In the Unisex search I did find one photo of two young men dressed in Ouji-like attire.
- Gosu-ouji turns up far more relevant hits in the image search, but only three pages of them. While most of them appear Gothloli related, only a handful actually resemble the style I’m looking for.
- For the hell of it, I did an image search for Kodona. I got a ton of hits. Among them were Coolio, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, a cute blog, and also some lolita…and I do not mean our kind of lolita. Almost nothing had anything to do with fashion, although I did find one pretty cool cosplayer. I think I also found a photo of someone’s pets having sex. Great.In a regular web search there were several hits, but none of them seem to have to do with fashion. I started getting the impression that whatever it is, kodona = something very cute. Then I found this site (the link is dead as of July 9, 2008)…
Kodona = an adult who is a child at heart.
Otomo = an adult who never fully became an adult.(These are plays on Kodomo+Otona and Otona+Kodomo.)
I don’t know how universal this is, but it makes sense considering all those cute hits I was getting.
I tend to say it’s ok to use the word Kodona for the boyish Ouji styles until we find the proper name, since that’s the name everyone knows it by, but that was under the assumption that Kodona didn’t mean anything in Japanese. If it does, then we should probably stop using it altogether. Kodona seems to be skimming the waters of Burikko (or “fake child”, which is essentially a young adult who acts like an infant in order to be KAWAII, and I think is considered uncool by today’s generation), and that is definitely not something that Gothloli typically embraces. It also seems to be paralleling teenybopper, which MOST definitely not something that Gothloli embraces at all.
VERY Rough Translation:
(Ok, this makes a LOT more sense after realizing that parents use this term to describe their teenage children. This is probably a parent talking about her daughter(s)!! That makes me really glad, actually, to know there is not some weird subculture of adults with Peter-Pan syndrome, which was my original impression…)QUESTION:
Recently, there seems to be a lot of “kodona”-chan activity!Kodona-chans’ homes seem to be busy with extracurricular activities such as karaoke, purikura, fashion magazines, and videos.
Aren’t kodona-chan’s minds are on summer vacation activities? (<–confusing line…)
What extracurricular activities are you in?
BEST ANSWER:
What is “kodona”-chan?
“Child” + “Adult”? A child is a child…ANSWER 2:
wtf is kodona?????????????????????? - I also looked up gothloli ouji and ouji fashion, but for the first I got a lot of auctions and stores, and for the second I just came up with a bunch of random men’s fashion stuff. I guess the word Ouji is really just descriptive, which is probably how Lolita started, or it just doesn’t have as strong an online presence as Lolita.
My conclusions are:
Ouji is a man’s style. Common names are Ouji-kei and Goth-Ouji. Some women wear it too, but they still have a masculine air.
Ouji-loli is a girls’ style. Baby, Meta, and the popular Lolita brands sell this. It’s boyish and a little cute.
Now I am confused…what about those girls’ styles that are boyish, but punk or gothic instead of cute? I wonder if that has a name. Maybe it’s just Goth-ouji or Punk-ouji, or even simply Goth-Punk.
Gothloli for Men
For this article, I am going to abandon my fear and loathing of hypocrisy and become a hypocrite. I tend to stress that one should not let others decide what is “right” or “wrong” in anything as open to interpretation as fashion; however, every English-language Ouji or “boystyle” guide I have ever come across is embarrassingly misinformed!
Maybe this isn’t hypocrisy, because I have always believed that while the “rules” of Lolita are completely bogus (which is why I tell you not to listen to the people who tell you what’s right and wrong), it still stands that Lolita is the name of a specific fashion. Likewise for Ouji.
Because it is one of my favorite fashions, I strive to understand Ouji and related styles as they are in Japan. I have NEVER come across a style guide that satisfied me and matched what I have learned. It’s as though everyone is making up their own styles and calling it the same thing. The style called “Ouji” has already been created–we do not need to make up our own versions.
I strongly believe that the main reason we have so many misinformed Ouji guides is because they are being written by Lolitas rather than Ouji! Ouji is defined by the people who wear it. Like true Lolita, its rules are purely visual and intuitive. This may be another one of the reasons why it is so hard to find a well-written Ouji guide: because it, like most fashions, cannot be confined to words without giving it severe restrictions. Needless to say, I have never come across a Japanese Ouji guide on the internet…or a Lolita one for that matter, although there are at least sites that give basic descriptions of different types of Lolita.
I do my best to understand men’s “Gothic and Lolita” fashion without actually being there experiencing it with them. I buy magazines and mooks, I do internet searches on Japanese search engines, I watch Japanese videos on Youtube. I read and observe. I go beyond LiveJournal communities. I do my best. This is all I can offer you.
Overview of Popular Terms
First, I have to get some things off my chest.
There is no such substyle as Dandy.
Dandy fashion was created a long time ago and still exists today as a men’s fashion completely unrelated to Gothloli. It is Dandy fashion that modern-day men’s formal wear evolved from. Either way, nobody in Japan seems to use the label “Dandy” for any major genre of men’s Gothloli styles.
If what you wear looks like something a Dandy would wear, then of course no one is stopping you from calling it “Dandy”. But please stop asking Lolitas what Dandy style is, or how to dress it, and if you are a Lolita, please stop telling new people that there is a boy-style called Dandy. There isn’t.
There is really no such style as Kodona either, but sometimes I use it anyway to describe the overly cute and childlike boy styles (at the time of writing this essay, this style seems the most popular at LiveJournal). That’s because “kodona” stands for “kodomo otona,” or “child adult”.
It drives me nuts when people describe masculine, aristocratic Ouji outfits as “kodona”. This is incorrect vocabulary usage and proves that the person using it does not know what it translates to, or its origin, which is detailed here.
Well, it appears we should ALL stop using this term. “Kodona” is apparently an actual word in Japan that stands for something that seems to be a trait you do not want to brag about.
- In a Yahoo!Japan community with a structure similar to Yahoo!Answers, someone asked for ideas of activities for “kodona-chan”s and was not met with particularly polite responses. Read more here.
- I also found a website that defined “Kodona” as a term for an adult who is a child at heart, as well as “Otomo,” an adult who never really grew up.
- Let us not forget a conversation held by Japanese Lolitas regarding the word “kodona” on this infamous Gothloli site (which I happen to believe is one of the few Lolita resources worth reading, as the author has actually done first-hand research). According to one of them, “kodona” is a word parents use to describe their children in the awkward phase of adolescence between childhood and adulthood. Do you remember that phase? Right. I don’t want my clothes to be named after that phase either.
Now let’s talk about Ouji. There is such a style as Ouji, but NOT ALL menswear in this fashion is considered Ouji. If a man is not Ouji, he is Gothic, Punk, Cyber, a mixture of several of these, or not wearing anything considered Gothloli. (Some people call this style Oujisama or Ouji-kei.)
I don’t even think a man’s style can be called “Gothloli” even if it’s just used as an umbrella term. It’s best to just describe the man by what he’s wearing, because a man is never “loli” unless he is crossdressing or cosplaying.
The different types of menswear within the English-speaking/non-Japanese version of this subculture do not have agreed-upon labels. This is partially because there is no one person to set the standard and make definitions (whereas Lolitas have Novala Takemoto and the egl community). Another reason labels cannot be agreed upon is because many people use terms like Dandy and Kodona without doing their research, and purists like me refuse to adopt those labels.
Next I will talk about the different styles, but instead of trying to force everything into one huge article, which is taking forever to do, I will discuss them in separate articles. So, if you are interested, please check back every week or so for new style guides.
