this is the how-to-lolita page. aka some info i personally 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. 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..

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

with the rise of j-fashion 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, merely 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 merely 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 j-fashion 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 j-fashion 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 j-fashion, sometimes you get coords that aren't lolita tagged as such, and it can be a whole mess, so i recommend going through the sources yourself and just comparing the outfits to each other to see what you like. take screenshots! make a pinterest board! be free!

now that you have your board or screenshot album, it's time to look at what the coords 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. some of the more common substyles are sweet, gothic, country, sailor, and classic. learning what items these substyles tend towards--i.e. classic often opts for longer dress lengths and use more victorian styled heels and vintage canotiers whereas sailor of course is going to have a sailor collar in there--and which styles you like will help you when it comes to picking out items to buy.

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

taobao is your friend. brand pieces, especially old school brand pieces, are subject to insane price scalping. however, taobao is pretty unfriendly to 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. aka, they buy items from taobao and sell them to you at a 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.

go on 42lolita or whereever and do some searching. once i find the store or the brand name, i go to the proxy parcelup as they have a pretty nice taobao search engine. and i plug the brand name into parcelup's search. you probably will have to tweak the name of the brand and do some digging, but i've had relatively decent luck with this. otherwise, i take the brand name and go to reddit and just 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, you're golden. parcelup has a nice feature that lets you look at the entire store's listings without needing a taobao account, which is why i use parcelup to 'browse' taobao.

once you found the item you wanted (or something else since you'll be able to see the brand's whole catalogue) take the link and plug it into your shipping proxy. 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 page and from there you just select the options you want like color, size, etc.. if an item is on pre-order spreenow will let you know and charge you the full amount of the item if you want to proceed, so any deposits will be handled on spreenow's side of things.

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 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.

if all this sounds daunting, you are welcome to just go through 42lolita (i don't recommend buying direct from devilinspired however) just be aware that the prices are typically much more expensive. my rojiroji socks that i got using spreenow were about $2 + a 10% commission fee, meanwhile the same socks retail on 42lolita for 9 dollars. however, the convenience of just ordering from a storefront like 42lolita can't be beat, so i think it's ok if you're just trying to place one order and you don't know if lolita is something you're even going to stick with.

some brands i know off the top of my head: rojiroji, antaina, wang yan & summer (spelling might vary on taobao as wangyan), lilizi, yidhra, kuno:noku (try without the colon in the name, i think they have an instagram), aerialcat, the princess's garden, tiny garden, nuit de cellophane, sos meme club

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 marketplaces that are more like 'boutiques' for brand pieces. not necessarily cheap, but reputable. most of the time though i am scrolling lacemarket. prices vary drastically, especially for old school, 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. i've only bought from xianyu so far as i can bundle my taobao orders with any secondhand pieces i find on xianyu and therefore save on shipping by shipping only from china and not china + japan. therefore i haven't actually bought from any japanese secondhand marketplaces yet as i'm just trying to amass a small wardrobe of staple items i will wear and not feel too bad about if i end up needing to pass any of them on. if you're like me and you prefer solids and aren't really drawn to any specific printed pieces, i highly encourage sticking to mostly-taobao and bodyline listings on xianyu as they are quite cheap there.

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 find sellers mark up bodyline to secondhand AP prices (i.e you'll see AP and bodyline both going for like 50 dollars on depop--which is a good deal for AP but definitely not for bodyline). something else to be aware of is that a lot of the egl on there is sourced from devilinspired (meaning it's available on taobao) and will often be sold at similarly marked up prices since people don't know that devilinspired marks up blouses being sold at $35 to $80. so be aware of that as well. i also definitely recommend avoiding the more street fashion j-fashion brands (especially liz lisa + axes femme) because they are being marked up like crazy right now.

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 old school fan i opted for the least poofy option. note that some dress shapes require a cupcake petticoat and others tend to prefer a-line ones.

suggestion #6: document your wardrobe somewhere

i use pinterest but also would like to showcase my pieces here! but 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.

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 piece look cohesive since you'll already stand out so much thanks to the silhouette. of course OTT fans will probly beg to differ, but that's my suggestion to newbies :].