this is the how-to-lolita page. this is information i have relied on since starting my egl journey in 2024. most lolita information is locked behind discord servers or hard to find/obfuscated on reddit or something, so these are purely anecdotal suggestions to help newbies on a public page so people can find it more easily to reference and, hopefully, share it with their friends. bear in mind while i've liked lolita from afar for a decade i'm new to wearing it myself so my insight will be slightly limited/i'm just one person/make sure you do your own research/etc.. last update 11.20.25 (brand list update, a new section about USA tariffs, and some grammar adjustments for clarity).

suggestion #1: make sure you even want to get into lolita.

with the rise of jfashion across social media, first off i recommend making sure you actually like lolita and not something else. more often than not i see newbies asking for coord help featuring a dress that isn't lolita but would better fit into a different alternative fashion like himekaji, jirai kei, girly, or it takes from aestheticized -cores like balletcore or royalcore etc.. this isn't me suggesting this out of any semblance of gatekeepy-ness, i merely want to point out that there is a misunderstanding about what lolita fashion actually is, and it's worth looking into to make sure you actually like lolita and aren't drawn to frilly, ruffly dresses. it is ok to want a frilly, ruffly dress, and not want to dress in lolita! lolita is simply a label for an alternative fashion.

while i think there is lot of room for flexibility in coords and the so-called "rules" of lolita, i highly recommend combing through jfashion magazines or looking at brand pictures on google to see what styles you are drawn to before making any sort of purchase. liz lisa catalogs look very very different from baby the stars shine bright's catalogs. also, fully recognize it is ok to want to buy from lolita brands without dressing in lolita. you can have an angelic pretty skirt and style it in a non-lolita way.

if you think for sure you are into lolita, i recommend looking at the dress you are eyeing and comparing it directly to a scan or a picture of a coord you like (more on that below) and seeing how they are similar and how they are different. compare dresses in a similar style that aren't being used in lolita coords. remember, i only suggest this to hopefully save you money if you think you are into lolita but actually prefer something like fairy kei. or even edwardian dress since sometimes you can find an item marketed as classic lolita when it more strongly resembles a proper historical garment. even hime lolita, which is supposed to look very princess-y, will look different from a typical princess ballgown.

suggestion #2: gather inspo.

this relates to the above but now it's time to look at coords so you don't buy a lot of stuff that doesn't go together. lolitahistory is a great resource for scans of old jfashion magazines like the fabled FRUiTS, gothic&lolita bibles, kera, etc.. most of these scans have since been slapped on pinterest, but due to the rise of jfashion, sometimes you get coords that aren't lolita tagged like they are, which can be confusing and it can be a whole mess, so i recommend going through the sources yourself on lolitahistory and comparing the outfits to each other to see what you like. take screenshots! make a pinterest board! hell, print them out and make a physical collage if you want. personally, i use a pinterest board.

now that you have your board or screenshot album, it's time to look at what the coords you like have in common. do you like a specific color? if you like prints, do these prints share anything in common (chess, animals, alice in wonderland, pastries, strawberries)? what sock length shows up the most? what kind of shoes are you drawn to? for me, it was lace-topped over-the-kneesocks and anything with a rocking horse silhouette or a wooden sole. and i quickly discovered i liked any blouse with a princess sleeve or trumpet sleeve. identifying these very specific details and seeing how other people style them will help you a lot with keeping your dream wardrobe in mind. learning the name of the substyle(s) you are drawn to will also help.

the three major substyles in lolita fashion are: sweet, gothic, and classic. i recommend figuring out which one of these three you are drawn to the most. there are lots of posts about the different substyles out there, so i'll avoid getting into it too much here.

once you have an idea of which major substyle(s) you prefer, then you can look at themes. some of the more popular themes include: sailor, country, nurse, and punk. sailor themes typically include nautical motifs and sailor collars, of course, but the way a 'sweet' sailor coord is coorded is going to look pretty different from a 'classic' sailor coord. so it's more important to identify which major substyle you prefer before looking at themes you have interest in coording!

suggestion #3: learn how to use a shipping proxy service to buy from taobao!

taobao is your friend. japanese brand pieces, especially oldschool brand pieces, are subject to insane price scalping on the secondhand market right now. however, taobao is pretty unfriendly to the majority of overseas users. luckily we have a good starting point for resources and learning taobao brand names: sites like devilinspired and 42lolita, which are taobao resellers. this means they buy items from taobao and sell them at a slightly marked-up price. do not ask devilinspired or 42lolita or whomever to send you a taobao listing as this is how they make a profit and you might be barred from ever buying from the service. i also recommend my lolita dress which is ran by linda; i do not have personal experience with 42lolita but i did have a positive experience with MLD. i bought my very first pair of rocking horse shoes from MLD in july 2024 and she made the process of ordering very easy and was very kind and the item arrived to my house pretty quickly and it motivated me into wanting to build my egl wardrobe once i had a little bit of experience about how it worked.

to find chinese indie brands, go on 42lolita or your taobao reseller of choice, and do some searching. once i find an item i like, i'll take note of the store or the brand name. then i go to the proxy parcelup because they have a pretty nice taobao search engine and i plug the brand name into parcelup's search bar. you probably will have to tweak the name of the brand and do some digging because most of the time google translate can't get the exact characters correct, but i've had relatively decent luck with this method to find taobao stores. if i am especially struggling with finding a piece or a brand, i take the brand name and go to the lolita subreddit r/lolita and i search the reddit for the brand name hoping someone has a link to the taobao shop. once you have a link to the taobao shop or item, you're golden, because parcelup has a feature that lets you look at the entire store's listings without needing a taobao account. this is why i use parcelup to 'browse' taobao.

once you found the item you wanted (or something else by the same brand since you'll be able to see the brand's whole catalogue on parcelup now) take the link and plug it into your shipping proxy's website. i personally use spreenow, but whatever shipping proxy you use is up to you. with spreenow you just have to plug the link into the search bar and it'll pull up the item page and from there you just select the options you want like color, size, etc.. be sure to reference the size chart the taobao store page provides! if an item is on pre-order spreenow will let you know and charge you the full amount of the item upfront if you want to proceed after a service representative reaches out to you to confirm that that's ok with you, then they'll let you know when they've received the item.

speaking of spreenow, they also have a little 'dashboard' feature on the main page of the website so you can see items people have recently ordered through the service if anything catches your eye. i also frequently utilize the wishlist tool, even on items i don't particularly like, just to save links to shops on taobao for browsing so i don't have to dig around for the store link again. i recommend keeping a personal document just for saving taobao shop links as taobao is pretty difficult to use if you aren't in a country that has it widely accessible (like the USA, which is where i am located).

if all this sounds daunting, you are welcome to purchase through 42lolita or my-lolita-dress (i don't recommend buying direct from devilinspired however) just be aware that the prices are typically more expensive to accomodate business costs as they have to handle issues if anything goes wrong, labor cost of them talking to the taobao store and buying on your behalf, etc.. my rojiroji socks that i got using spreenow were about USD $2 + a 10% commission fee, meanwhile the same socks retail on 42lolita for 9 dollars. however, the convenience of ordering from a storefront like 42lolita and my-lolita-dress can't be beat, especially for us western customers who can't really use taobao so i think it's a great alternative if you're just trying to place a few orders and you don't know if lolita is something you're even going to stick with in the future.

here are some chinese indie brands i know off the top of my head: rojiroji, antaina, wang yan & summer (spelling might vary on taobao, 王妍与夏季服装工作室), lilizi, yidhra, kuno:noku (try without the colon in the name), aerialcat, the princess's garden, tiny garden, nuit de cellophane, sos meme club, with puji, rose & never land, MODO, angelic imprint, cyan cat, big grocery store (大样子杂货铺), big goose, taotao soda (桃桃苏打), barbara manor (芭芭拉庄园), little bear (小能熊), lacegarden, strawberry8, rococoheroine, cheese cat, magic of utopia.

suggestion #4: buy secondhand.

the reseller market is getting crazy but it's still worth scouring places like mercari japan and rakutan. closetchild and wunderwelt are two online secondhand shops that are more like 'boutiques' for brand pieces. they're not necessarily cheap all the time, but they are reputable. most of the time i am scrolling lacemarket. prices vary drastically, especially for oldschool, but occasionally a solid deal pops up.

xianyu recently got a website--it's basically a secondhand market in china, and the prices there are much much better than most other sites. if you use spreenow, you can bundle your xianyu orders with your taobao orders and save on shipping, which is really convenient. xianyu can be a little difficult to navigate but seriously i recommend putting in the effort (or, do what i do, which is click through recommended listings until i find a listing i'm interested in that isn't super expensive lol). bodyline is a dime a dozen on xianyu for very cheap. to be honest if you're like me and you prefer solids and you aren't really drawn to any specific printed pieces, i highly encourage sticking to chinese indie brand on taobao and bodyline listings on xianyu when it comes to curating your wardrobe. xianyu is also very convenient for finding good deals on secondhand chinese indie brand pieces!

i'm pretty surprised by this but i've found depop of all places to be pretty good for finding reasonably priced lolita for other USA-based lolitas; just search for 'egl' instead of 'lolita' otherwise you'll get a boatload of stuff that isn't lolita. i also suggest making sure you know what to expect from typical pricing when you look on depop since you'll see something like angelic pretty and bodyline both going for like USD $50 on depop--which is a good deal for AP but not for bodyline). something else to be aware of when shopping on depop is that a lot of the egl on there is sourced from devilinspired (meaning it's available on taobao) and it will often be sold at similarly marked up prices since people don't know that devilinspired marks up blouses being sold at USD $35 to $80. so be aware of that as well. i also recommend avoiding looking for the more street fashion jfashion brands on depop (especially liz lisa + h naoto + putumayo) because they are being marked up like crazy right now and you can generally find those much cheaper elsewhere.

suggestion #5: the petticoat rule.

i see many people on reddit asking about what petticoat is best suited for their dress. i recommend aurora & ariel for petticoats. cheap, available on 42lolita, often easily found on spreenow's timeline feature since people are always buying them. you want your petticoat to be roughly 5cm shorter than your skirt. per what i've seen on reddit, most people suggest the 45cm length one for daily wear. as an oldschool fan i opted for the least poofy option. note that especially with modern lolita, some dress shapes are tailored to look better with a cupcake petticoat (especially modern sweet) and others look better with a-line ones (modern classic). however, reddit consensus is that the a&a petticoats are pretty versatile for both skirt shapes! i recommend flipping your petticoat inside out so when you hang it up in your closet it lays upside down. this will help it preserve its poof.

suggestion #6: document your wardrobe somewhere.

i use a pinterest board with sections for this! it can be helpful for coord planning or seeing what you need to round out your wardrobe more, especially when using this suggestion alongside suggestion 2 so you can compare the pieces you have to the coords you like/want to emulate. if you like peter pan collars but all your collared blouses are high-neck ones, maybe it's time to really hone in your wallet and buy one peter pan blouse. i'm at the point with my wardrobe that it's expansive enough that it's helpful to see everything without needing to look around for it so i can plan my coord a bit better. it also encourages me to not forget about certain items in my closet.

suggestion #7: take pics of your coords.

you don't have to share them anywhere, but taking a pic to look at even 5 min later will help you identify what you like and don't like about the coord, or where the balance can be improved. where other fits will typically build themselves around having one statement piece, i feel this isn't as much the case in lolita where it's more important to make the pieces look cohesive since you'll already stand out so much thanks to the silhouette of the fashion.

tariffs (as applicable to USA people).

hopefully i'll be able to delete this section of the guide at some point but it's worth mentioning to all people residing in the USA that at this time (11.20.25) importing items from out of the country is extremely expensive due to the current tariff policy. USA has removed de minimis. what this means is that previously if a package was under USD$800 you didn't have to pay an import duty when the item arrived in USA customs, but now that de minimis is gone, all packages require someone (the default responsibility falls on the buyer) to pay that duty.

what does this mean for lolita?: well, since most items are coming from out of the country, you are going to have to pay extra. many out-of-USA sellers on lacemarket have paused shipping to the USA entirely to avoid having to deal with tariffs. you can still make purchases through shopping services like spreenow and parcelup and taobao resellers like my-lolita-dress and 42lolita though. what many of these services have done is bundle the duty fee into the cost of shipping. so you might notice on any packages you make on those sites, the shipping to the USA is significantly higher than it feels like it should be! this is done so that you, the buyer, don't have to pay the duty when the package arrives in customs. i don't know how wunderwelt and closetchild are approaching the tariffs because i've never bought from them, so i can't speak about their practices. the tariff situation changes like literally every month so i recommend you look into it more, but this is what i've noticed from the past half-year or so that this has been in place. don't hesitate to ask the seller if you're scared about getting hit with a receipt when the item makes it to customs!