Do you want to look like someone may mistake you for a cake? How about an Addams? Maybe a young Victorian child? Sweet. Gothic. Classical. Each of the main sub-styles has its own character and personality and its own group of dedicated fans. Sweet may feel like a hard candy but gothic decadent chocolate cake and classical a nice soft cookie easy to look at and eat. But to go about defining them simply is difficult in my mind and in the minds of beginners and people who haven't been in the fashion long. A sweet print on a black dress may come off as gothic and a white dress with a gothic style as a classical look or even a darker classical as gothic, or a light floral as sweet. But I think I may have figured out how to tell these slightly confusing instances apart. And as a result how to define them.
We will start with Classical possibly the most confusing of the 3 to really define and make an opinion on. Classical Lolita can look like anything from a beautiful floral print on a pink background to a dark wine OP dress with a Victorian or Edwardian styled sleeve and neckline. The defining attributes though in my opinion can be the neckline and how the dress is cut. A classical dress will normally have a higher neckline in an OP or a more square neckline in a JSK and the blouse will often be high necked as well with a good deal of ruffle around it. the color pallet is often muted pinks, dark wines, browns, dark blues, dark greens, and off whites. Classical is a slightly more mature-looking substyle like that of a Victorian or Edwardian woman. Classical Lolita is very much going for an elegant but cute look.
Gothic is quite a bit easier to recognize. Lots of black, dark reds, and dark blues. The motifs are usually things that you would instantly recognize as "goth" such as bats, black cats, crosses, Christian and Catholic and even Satanic iconography, and general gothic motifs. Gothic JSKs are generally cut a bit lower in the bust than their classical cousins nothing too dramatic usually, but enough to notice. Some gothic necklines have embellishments such as being shaped or trimmed in some way. Generally both Sweet and Classical have a gothic variant with more dark colors and more gothic motifs, such as Bitter-Sweet or Dark Classical. Some gothic blouses will have collars in the shape of bat wings or spider webs and often will come in black, a stark white, dark red, or dark blue with detailing in a contrasting color. Gothic Lolita is very much a dark and very mysterious feeling part of the fashion.
And now on to my personal favorite substyle. Sweet Lolita. With pinks, Saxon blue, lavender, teal, light yellows, and stark whites and the main colors, sweet lolita is a very loud and colorful substyle. It is very noticeable in a crowd and a Sweet Lolita may often get mistaken for a cosplayer, I know I have been. with the popular motifs of candies, pastries, fruits, and sweets of all kinds it is easy to see where the style gets its' sweet monicker but other popular prints include animals, tea parties, and even carnival scenes. compared to its; more demure cousins Sweet Lolita can seem like A LOT. but it has a very dedicated set of fans and is well-loved within the community. Sweet Lolita feels like walking into a candy shop as a child and being able to try all of the candy and sweets they have to offer.
These are not all of the substyles of Lolita by a long shot but they are the 3 main substyles and the ones that most other substyles usually fall under. And like all things in fashion, it is okay to mix things up a bit and make something totally your own. Lolita is about the fashion but it's also about the freedom of self-expression and the right to love yourself loudly. So carry on and love yourself in your own way, be it dressed like a giant cake, a bouquet of flowers, or a porcelain doll you would find in a goths bedroom.
Thans all for this post, I do hope you found it interesting and informative and maybe even entertaining. Thank you so very much for reading and I hope to see you back here soon.
Yours Always
Rose