Confessions of a College Lolita

Dear Loyal Readers,

I apologize for (again) missing a post, but I've been sick this week and I haven't had the energy to think about something intelligent to say about clothing. Suffice it to say that lolita clothes are beautiful, and everyone should wear them.

Now it's Wednesday, and you're expecting a post on lifestyling and whatnot. I'll be honest though, I haven't had the time or ability to lifestyle this summer at all. I have a job (hurrah!) but for work, I clean houses. When cleaning, one must never EVER wear lolita. This isn't so much because it is unbecoming for a lady to clean, but because when you're making something less messy you don't want to scuff your 100 dollar mary janes, get bleach on your 400 dollar JSK from Angelic Pretty, or sweat out your curls.

And you will if you're cleaning properly.

But lets continue in this vein and discuss jobs and lolita. At some point in your journey down the ribbon lined path of lolita, you will find the thing that bothers me most about the subculture: it's very, very expensive. There are ways to skirt around this with crafty thrift-store shopping, altering of clothes and (if you can) sewing some but for all those great finds and handmade items, it takes time and effort that sometimes you just do not have. So in order to, well, order your items you'll need the duckets. More importantly though, as we get older we find that we need to provide for ourselves and our family and we need jobs to do so.

Before we get started with a list I'd like to say something of high importance: lolita NEVER comes before food, shelter, (cheaper) clothes or getting a job. First and foremost, lolita is a hobby and comes after all the necessities are taken care of.

A lot of these jobs have to do with classic lolita likes and interests such as clothes, sweets and yummy drinks. If your job or the area that you would be interested in working in doesn't match up with where a stereotypical lolita would work, don't fret! You don't have to change who you are just to fit the lolita mold.

Now then, ideally a lolita would have a job at a store like BSSB or BPN or AP or something along those lines, but not all of us live in the Bay Area, New York, Japan, Paris...et cetera, and among the lolita community, these jobs are highly coveted. Fear not though! There are many lolitas of the past who have opened their own stores on the internet. Say you have a friend, or know how to sew yourself. You can go to Etsy.com and open your own store (for free I'm fairly certain). They even have a handy dandy help page located here:. If you sell your wares for somewhat cheaper that your competition, you can eventually make more money. You can also follow the ways of In the Starlight (now closed) or Sweet Roccoco and make your own website to sell your wares, but that requires a lot more work. So you don't want/have the ability to sell clothes? No worries, you can sell just about anything hand made on Etsy...hair clips, jewelry, stationary...shoes even.

If being crafty isn't your thing, try finding your local tea or coffee shop. Having afternoon tea is an extremely lolita notion, and having afternoon tea or coffee stirs up images of ladies in a flower garden on a spring afternoon, or writers sitting in their bay windows when suddenly a stroke of inspiration comes. You probably won't be able to wear lolita at a lot of tea or coffee shops because you must wear long pants and closed toed shoes. Also, there is a chance of spillage and we don't want to ruin our dresses do we?

A bakery, sweets shop, or ice cream parlor would be a good place to search for jobs as well. Candies, ice cream cones, cookies and cakes are classic lolita motifs and associating yourself with sweet things is a lot of what lolita is about. Again, there is a serious stain risk here, so wearing your lolita here wouldn't be a great idea. A lot of places frown upon eccentric dress among their workers anyway, but along with having your own store or working in a lolita shop, some places that might allow you to wear your favorite JSK and have a minimal damage risk could be stores like Hot Topic and various thrift stores. There is a store in the Bay Area called Buffalo Exchange where a lot of alternative young adults work, and I am fairly sure that it is a requirement to wear scene/punk/emo/goth clothing when working at Hot Topic.

If none of those appeal to you, and though this is not strictly lolita, historical reenactment might be more up your alley. You still get to wear pretty dresses, and learn a bit more about the past. If you're lucky enough to go into Victorian reenactment, you might even be able to learn a little bit more about how to be a lady (which is highly important in being a proper lolita).

In this tough economy, I hope this helped give you a few ideas on where to find a job suitable for a lady such as yourself.

Yours truly,
~Yana