30 day challenge
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Lolita 30 Day Challenge ♡ 06 : Your absolute number one dream item

This isn’t a very big surprise, my number one dream item since forever has been Angelic Pretty’s print Puppet Circus… Fortunately I was able to purchase the black JSK in 2011. But that doesn’t mean it stopped being my dream print! Haha. There’s still the ivory version that completely haunts me in my dreams.

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Story time! Puppet Circus came out in 2006, and was, for a long time, the only Angelic Pretty print I really liked. When I first got into Lolita, I was pretty much only into Gothic Lolita and Punk Lolita, and I thought Sweet Lolita was way too much for me. Back then, AP had sweet prints that I didn’t think would fit me. For one, they were waaaay too pink. :P But more importantly, I got into Lolita because of Gothic Lolita, because I liked the Victorian appeal of it, and because I liked the simplicity and elegance. I preferred Baby’s more Country style prints, but even those didn’t really feel like me… I was a girl who liked black, and band tshirts, and had a mohawk and wore spikes around her neck. Light blue and teddybears just didn’t work for me! My gut feeling when I was starting out was to wear tartan and black and just keep things simple. I never thought I would be into Sweet Lolita because it felt so far away from everything I had known up until that point. I used to hate pastel colours! I wanted bold and crazy (I really liked Decora) or monochrome. What is now known as ‘old school Lolita’ is basically all I knew back then, and what I thought Lolita was.

So when AP started doing their prints thing, I wasn’t very impressed. I remember seeing the ad for Twinkle Mermaid and just thinking “That’s too much of a costume, that’s not for me at all.” This was because in my mind, Lolita was about going back to a simpler, historical place… so what did mermaids have to do with that?!

TwinkleMermaid

Twinkle Mermaid, 2006

Right now I actually don’t understand why I didn’t like this at first because I have always been into crazy hairstyles and mermaids are fucking awesome (and this is now one of my dream prints…) but I think there are a lot of things that I didn’t like at first and then suddenly started to LOVE haha.

So then Puppet Circus came out and it made me start looking at Angelic Pretty more intently. It was super elegant, made of velveteen, had a gold print, and the ads were just amazing. It inspired so many coordination possibilities in my mind. It didn’t feel ridiculous or over the top, but like something I could actually see myself wear.

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Puppet Circus and Melody Doll were somewhere in the back of my mind as ‘potential AP things I would probably wear’ but I still didn’t pay much attention and thought Sweet wasn’t for me for a really long time! I had a couple of years where I first had to ease into liking Sweet over Gothic and Punk (but still preferring Baby and Meta over AP) and then realising that most of what I owned was indeed Sweet. When I eventually came to my senses and realised that Angelic Pretty was pretty much the brand for me, Puppet Circus was the absolute number one item on my wishlist. Finally, I allowed myself to lust over this dress properly. Too bad that by then, the rest of the world had caught on as well and trying to get hold of this dress is near impossible… plus black and white are the most popular colour options, of course. So I was left lusting for years and years.

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Actually to illustrate how indifferent I was to AP at first, I remember how I met Maki and Asuka in 2009 and went to the AP stall at Japan Expo and bought nothing except a postcard. So I liked AP, I just wasn’t a crazy fangirl like I am now. But my postcard was of a Puppet Circus illustration, of course.

postcard
art by Kira Imai

It’s obvious that my favourite colourways are black, ivory and red and I don’t like the pink. Of course I won’t say no to the red version but ivory really tops everything. I think Ash and I both need the ivory OP version. Although I think right now I’m still going to be lusting and lusting for years again because getting this dress is really hard and the competition is fierce!

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Twinning in Puppet Circus is like my Lolita Holy Grail… and I’m very jealous of Takulu and her friends who are so awesome in Puppet Circus and AP in general~!

sources: hellolace, Takulu’s blog 1, 2 and 3 (Takulu’s purikura in Puppet Circus are amazing (✿ ♥‿♥) ♡).

6 Comments

  • Angelica

    That’s a very pretty dress, I understand your lusting over it.

    It’s interesting how ones style changes over the years. Even though my style still is very similar to what I wore ten years ago it has gotten cuter and lighter with the years. Still a lot of black but also tons of baby pink.

    • Vief

      That is so true about styles changing. I actually would like to do some sort of ‘overview’ over the past few years since I started wearing dresses and things, but I’m also a little embarrassed haha…
      I think overall a lot of elements stay pretty constant for most people! For example ten years ago I was really into rainbows and I still am ;)

    • Vief

      Haha ja! En ze is Zweeds :D maar dat streepje maakt het voor mij wel iets makkelijker om jullie uit elkaar te houden [al is dat niet heel moeilijk haha] ;)

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