Sarah. Sweet Lolita with a dash of Old School. A tumblr for Lolita fashion because after roughly ten years in it I can get really stagnant. To prevent that we have this! Thank you for visiting.
Hi Lauran, I've been a fan of your outfits for over a decade. Would you ever consider making a post about your experience as a pioneer in lolita fashion? I went to Jingu bridge in 2013 and couldn't help but notice how barren it was compared to pictures I'd seen of yours from the mid 2000s. I can't help but wonder what it was like... Also, what brought you to Japan and how did you get into lolita? Thanks for considering my questions!
Thank you for your message. That’s a really hard story to sum up in one post.
I guess to answer your questions specifically:
I would consider it. I’ve never really recounted the story in any specific detail before. I have no clue how boring or entertaining it would be to an outside reader, so I never really considered writing it down before. I have my blog Lauran.com but naturally it’s missing a lot of details. ~~What brought me to Japan? I’ve always had an interest in Japanese culture due to a love for Japanese video games, which is why I wanted to study the Japanese language in the first place (I had this very weebish dream of ordering Japanese games before they were localized so I could play them earlier).
While studying, I learned more about Japanese culture, music, fashion, etc. It was 2002 when I learned about Malice Mizer, Moi dix Mois, Dir en grey, Gackt, Buck-Tick, Mucc. I learned about Gothic Lolita through Mana and Malice Mizer, and researching him led me to ordering the new Gothic and Lolita Bibles through an import book store.
By 2003 I wanted to try wearing it myself instead of just looking at it, and none of the brands sold overseas. Your options were hand-sewing, having a shopping service like Crescent Shop order for you, or piecing something together from pre-made clothes. I made some really awful coordinates at first, altered swing dresses combined with fetish wear and hot topic accessories.
Then I tried sewing my own outfit using a pattern from Gothic and Lolita bible using cheap curtain fabric which turned out to be a total mess. It wasn’t until 2004 and already in Japan to study abroad for my junior year of university that I was able to finally afford to buy a few pieces from the cheaper brands like Putumayo and h.Naoto summer sales bins.
My first few brand coordinates weren’t actually mine, a handful of livejournal friends asked me to go shopping for them and asked me to put them on and photograph them for them to see how they looked. Those dresses were from MAM/Maxicimam and Pina Sweet. One girl bought quite a lot of stuff from many different brands, and instead of paying me for my services (I was doing her a favor, not running a shopping service for profit), she bought me my first outfit from BTSSB to thank me. After experiencing the luxury of brand clothing, I became more diligent in saving my money and shopping for brands like Victorian Maiden, MMM, etc. Over the years I’ve tried most of the other styles as they’ve come into trend, but I still consider the original gothic lolita style my favorite. I’m extremely amused at the recent old school lolita trend. It doesn’t really feel old to me.~
The scene in Harajuku (at least the bridge gathering on Sundays) has been dead for a while so I’ve heard. From my understanding everyone just paired off with their respective friends groups and now meet in cafes, restaurants, tea parties, and live concerts instead. The Harajuku scene lost it’s appeal after being taken over by too many tourists, attention seekers (those free hugs guys and crazy dancers, etc), political activists, not to mention the regular foot traffic. Sometimes if we were unlucky, we’d get the right wing nationalists in their propaganda cars that would camp the street with a speaker phone and tell us we were all a disgrace. It’s also key to remember that the bridge was mostly visual kei cosplayers, so the decrease in mainstream popularity in visual kei music means less cosplayers. Not to mention a lot of visual kei bands are ditching the costumes and trying to separate themselves from their past, and even going so far as to badmouth it, so it puts pressure on cosplayers to stop cosplaying in respect of the bands ‘new image’ (I’m looking at you Dir en grey).
A lot of the lolitas you would see on the bridge were usually just popping in and out while visiting their cosplay friends, using it more like a ‘let’s meet up here and then go shopping and take purikura’ type of place. So they wouldn’t stay long, even back then. The group that I was in, the kind that would stay all day and all night, was small, about a dozen of us, and they were neither cosplayers or lolitas specifically, more like a rag tag team of bored youths with a common interest in japanese rock music and alternative fashion. You still see Kyouka haunting the place though, he’s the longest lasting one out of the group, I think he feels its his personal mission to keep going.
There is a really terrible and mildly embarrassing documentary that someone recorded of one of my visits to Harajuku in 2007. The video they recorded inside my apartment wasn’t supposed to be published, hence the disarray of my apartment, bedhead, and wearing pajamas (they woke me up at asso’clock). Because of the lack of professionalism, I refused to introduce them to my friends, which is why it cuts off rather short on the bridge side of the video. In hindsight though, it’s somewhat more honest than if I was prepared for it.There are two parts - a teaser and the video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzwtnt4n4QUhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kl5iwPaddk0There are a couple more old short clips/videos in there from that time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCBOUx5dOB8https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VY5NohYHONQ~~
What was it like? If you’ve been then you’ll know there are two sides, the big main side and the narrow/small side, divided by a street in the middle. There were several photographers that would camp out at the end of the small side. They were all a bit different in the way they photographed the cosplayers. Most of them were middle aged, and quite respectable. There was a young man with a baseball cap and a 35mm camera that would take dozens of shots in glossy full color. Another with a telephoto zoom lense that camped in the street and would make you stand 15 yards away. Another had a digital camera with a portable printer, lower quality photos, but he would document each person who visited with one photo and stick in a binder, the cosplayers loved him because he’d let you look at the photos. There was another photographer, a middle aged deaf man with bleached hair and a polaroid camera, he was slightly goofy. My favorite was a very professional photographer who shot only in black and white, he gave me several beautiful sets, but he disappeared from Harajuku, and I didn’t see him again until I saw him on the news on tv in 2006, he’d moved his attention to Akihabara cosplayers instead. There was one other photographer that took a keen interest in me, his photographs weren’t anything special. He would call my cellphone (Japan is a country of texting, so it was doubly awkward that he would call), and he would give me gifts of kimonos and yukatas (most of which I regifted after I left Japan).
Also on the narrow side of the bridge with the photographers, it was almost exclusively Dir en grey cosplayers at the time when I went. Dir en grey has a very dedicated cosplay fan base, and I was part of that group for a long time since I cosplayed as Kaoru back then.
The main side of the bridge was everyone else, all the other visual kei band cosplayers, non-specific visual kids, lolitas, musicians looking to network with new fans, and all the tourists.
There was a purikura shop across the street in a basement of a building with a private bathroom and a large vanity mirror with bright lights that could sit three people side by side. Everyone would change and do their makeup there. It was dingy and there was never any toilet paper in the bathroom because if they did put any in there everyone would waste it on their makeup. Last I heard that purikura shop was flooded and closed down, so everyone ended up moving to the subway bathrooms and mcdonalds to change and do their makeup. Most cosplayers don’t get changed at home and then take public transportation while dressed up unless if they absolutely have to. Back then lolita fashion was still considered deviant to wear in public outside of the designated subculture areas, but now that it’s more common people wear it much more frequently in public, so there is less appeal to go to Harajuku. Back then going to Harajuku was a safe haven, now people can go wherever they like.
After getting changed, you’d go to the bridge, find your friends, network with new people, exchange business cards you’d make yourself with your your cosplay name and your blog address, and everyone would trade purikura like they were pokemon cards. Networking was important to most cosplayers, because your blog would be submitted to a ranking site, and you could tell who the most popular cosplayers were by that ranking. The photographers would steal an hour of your time taking photographs one after the other. Your friends would take pictures together with their own cameras. Everyone mostly talked about music, recent shows, upcoming shows, future cosplay plans, shopping, gossip, look at other people’s purikura collections etc. Everyone smoked a lot, I smoked at the time too, but quit shortly after I left Japan. When the photoshoots and networking excitement would die down, everyone would pair off to go to take purikura together. You’d go and come back several times, see if anyone else wanted to take purikura together, or just go with a big group all at once. At this point, it’s probably been several hours, everyone’s either freezing their butts off if it’s winter, or overheated and sunburnt if it’s summer, and ready to go inside somewhere/anywhere to eat and relax. Usually at this point between taking purikura and dinner you’d find some bathroom to wash your makeup off and change your clothes, re-do your makeup, etc. Bringing your own hand towels and makeup remover tissues was always important. There were a couple choices to go after that. There is/was a billiards and darts room on the top floor of one of the buildings at the entrance to Takeshita dori, some people would go there, or if they were hungry they’d go pile into McDonalds, go to karaoke, go shopping, go to the cafe Repi Doll (my fav), or go home. I would usually go hit up Closet Child, then drink tea and eat cheese on toast with my friends. If the weather was nice, we’d grab food from the convenience store and hang out all night outside on the bridge picnic style. Sometimes if a friend’s band had a show, we’d go pile in a train and head to wherever they were playing and catch it, usually followed up by an all night all you can drink karaoke afterparty til 6am, and then lay down like sardines on someone’s apartment floor to sleep it off and play Japanese video games I couldn’t understand (the fact that it was this very thing that started me on the path in the first place does not escape me) or watch old band concert videos. Then you’d wake up, go home, take a shower, deal with your week, and come back the next sunday and do it all over again. The all night gothic parties (Alamode Night, Tokyo Dark Castle) usually landed on Saturday nights, so sometimes you’d go party and dance all night, take a nap at mcdonalds in the morning, before going to Harajuku on Sunday, and then leave early to crash. The photographers usually have your photos ready from the previous weekend, and they give you a stack of print outs you get to keep for free. Another thing that I forgot to mention, sometimes while walking around, official photographers might stop you and hand you a clipboard with a questionnaire and a release form and take your photograph for magazine street snaps. Other times we’d go to Shinjuku for KERA snap, which was held in the stairwell of Maruione, the dates were always announced in advance in the KERA magazine, and there were always way more people in line for the snap than there were spaces on the page, so getting into a Kera snap was kind of like winning the lottery. I remember when Marui One was it’s own building farther away from Shinjuku station. The old building was wider, big open floorplan, not like the newer Maruione which is narrow and cramped. The shops felt more spacious. I guess that’s why they moved, too much of a niche for all that expensive luxury realty space. Financially it made sense to move. I haven’t been back in a long time, so I couldn’t tell you what’s it’s like now, but from what I see it’s not the same as it used to be. Welp, this is longer than I anticipated it to be. Hopefully that answered your questions!
This JSK was a stage costume for the 2004 film, Shimotsuma Monogatari / Kamikaze Girls. We see Momoko style this daisy-embellished stripe JSK quite casually, leaning towards proto-EGL style by pairing it with no blouse, platform sandals, and a BtSSB alice headbow, as well as a BtSSB parasol. Due to being a stage costume, this one-of-a-kind JSK is likely lost in circulation, in the hands of movie and prop storage, or in the hands of a private owner-collector.
I've been working on little lolita fashion paper dolls dress up, essentially, for class (there's a presentation to make and a group activity to plan, so I'm presenting on lolita fashion and the activity will be the dress up dolls), the goal being that people who don't wear the fashion can try their hand at putting together a coord. And honestly? I'm pretty happy with it.
Here's an example of one out of 4 dolls and two coords I made from their wardrobe
One of my darlings has dutifully tested each little "capsule wardrobe" and it's been so much fun hearing about their train of thought putting outfits together. They don't wear the fashion themselves, but always welcome me talking about it, so it's a good metric for how people in class will do with it.
Should I post the printable pages here? Would people enjoy that? It's just a matter of cutting out the clothes and glueing together the outfit, pretty much. I'd love to see what people do with it.
Well, you know what, we all deserve joy in life! So I'm gonna post these.
Here is the first one, in warm tones: I wanted to express something almost like summer transitioning into autumn.
And here's the one for the pastel loving sweets enjoyers! As you can see, it was mostly a deal of staring from the same elements and making them go into different directions -- but I think it worked!
Look out for part 2 of this, with two more paper dolls. Should I have some sort of tag for this? For people to tag it if they post their own take on it? Yeah sure.
Here's my take on a gothic lolita, even though I feel it leans old school in places, but in general I like old school so it's not surprising. One of my darlings suggested I give this doll darker skin because of how, I quote, "some people get really pissy about black people taking part in gothic fashion at large". I knew I wanted to have, if not a lot of body type diversity, at least a wider array of skin tones than just oops all white. So here's for that explanation, although I know there's no explanation needed because everyone gets to take part in lolita fashion and there shouldn't be any gatekeeping for frickin' bodily features.
Anyway back on track.
I already had a warmer toned classic wardrobe, so I tried my hand at a blue themed wardrobe! One of those JSKs certainly is VERY inspired by Misty Sky which I wish I could wear....
Feel free to print all of these out and show me your coords!!
Rose Ribbon Embroidery "Mini" Projects (for BABY NYFW) Part 2: Embroidered Bonnet
I decided semi-last minute to attend BABY's fashion show at NYFW!
BABY had mentioned in their NYFW brand description that their newest collection would be a return to their origins, as well as presenting archival items.
You have to dress to impress for NYFW, right? So of course, I had to pull out all the stops and wear my Rose Ribbon Embroidery.
Also at the last minute, I decided to make a few extra complementing items...
A matching RRE kumya JSK, and a bonnet.
What follows is more of a sew-along/journal rather than a tutorial or guide, mainly for my own memory's sake. But if you enjoy looking at my process (sometimes sloppy), I'm happy!
Also feel free to take a look at the more romantic process video I edited.
Part 1: Kumya JSK
Part 2: Bonnet (you are here)
This post will be my process pictures and notes for the bonnet, as well as a matching mask as a bonus.
I don't believe BABY released matching headwear for Rose Ribbon Embroidery, although I've seen an unknown velveteen headbow with rose lace sold with RRE before.
BABY usually coords RRE with the bunny ear bonnet since Ichigo wears it this way in Kamikaze Girls.
I do own this because I wanted to wear an Ichigo-like outfit at some point, but for this occasion I decided to do something different and make a "matching" embroidered bonnet.
I originally wanted to make a hard bonnet with a very defined brim that could show off the embroidery clearly as I don't really like soft bonnets, but when looking at existing BABY bonnets as a reference, it doesn't look like hard bonnets were a thing back in 2004 (and as it is, BABY rarely releases hard bonnets). So to keep with the oldschool theme, the bonnet is a soft one, although I later make some decisions to make it slightly more structured.
The next decision to make was full bonnet vs half bonnet. The bunny ear bonnet is a full bonnet and I think this is technically more "period accurate", but I am not a fan of how they look like a weird hood from the back so I opted for half (plus, that makes construction and patterning easier for me).
I still used my own bunny ear bonnet as a reference for approximate brim dimensions!
The kumya JSK was a little easier to carelessly sketch out and embroider since I was copying 1:1 from an existing design, but I felt I needed to do at least a bit more careful planning for the embroidery on this. I'm quite bad at creating embroidery designs from scratch, but with the mental image of the rose clusters and swags of vine, as well as referencing the embroidery from the film, I came up with this:
I wanted to emulate the embroidery style of the Momoko's (well, in reality likely the embroidery designer Onoe Megumi--unclear if she did the actual embroidery, but it's likely) embroidery, which I figured wouldn't be too difficult if I was also embroidering by hand.
For material, I am using the same velveteen I used for kumya's JSK. Not my first choice and I actually purchased some thicker looking 100% cotton velvet that I thought would be more similar to the original JSK material, but was worried it wouldn't arrive in time and wanted this project out of the way in case things went wrong/took longer than I expected (it did arrive about a week before the event, but it was totally wrong IRL so I'm glad I just went with this acceptable option). I also bought some more torchon lace, so I used that and another lace from my stash.
The colours of the embroidery in the film also seem to be quite different than BABY's dress. I'm not sure if the pink of the roses has faded over the years, but it has a slight salmon tone whereas the film's roses seem to be more of a pale cool/neutral pink (hard to tell with the yellow tint of the entire film) with some variegation. I love the colour scheme of the film's embroidery, but to keep things coordinated I try to opt for the same colours as the actual dress I have.
I only have white silk ribbon in the width I wanted, so I opted to attempt to dye it to match. Previously I have used alcohol markers to colour the embroidery afterwards, but I find the colour hard to control and it tends to bleed into the fabric. I've also tried colouring the ribbon with the marker before embroidering, but without heat setting the colour transfers onto the fabric as well (and it seems like trying to do so with the amount of ribbon I need would be a waste of ink).
I don't have a lot of experience with it, but since the ribbon is silk, acid dyeing seemed like the way to go.
Very interesting photo of ribbon in pot (the pink ribbon gets eaten up by pinwheel roses much faster than I expected so this is the second batch I had to dye--not ideal as they are definitely slightly different in colour but it's not too noticeable). In total, I think I had to dye 3 batches of ribbon and 4 for the pink ribbon as I just barely ran out near the end, and they are all slightly different colours. Thankfully the undertone is the same so it's difficult to tell unless you are really comparing up close.
I thought I would take this opportunity to use the "peach" acid dye that I bought years ago for another project, but this ended up being a mistake as the colour was totally off (maybe the red dye was too expired). I ended up using my regular fiber reactive procion dyes (with heat/acid), because I have many more colours I could mix together, and that was much better. I really should have done this from the start as I wasted perfectly good silk ribbon by making it too dark/off for my purposes (I ended up overdyeing it in pink so it's a usable colour now, but not for this project).
The silk seems to take on dye extremely fast--even just heating up the dyebath will colour it. In some cases I removed the ribbon before adding any acid at all because I felt the ribbon was already getting too dark.
I managed to get a fairly usable mossy green colour for the leaves and vines, however the pink still ended up being a little off/dark compared to whatever BABY used. It's not too bad here as one strand of ribbon, but when many layers are on top of each other in a rose it seems pretty dark. While not ideal, I think it's still okay, especially considering the embroidery colours used in kumya's JSK match nothing else (many pinks will be going on in this coord).
After dyeing and drying, the ribbon is super wrinkled so I ironed it and wound it on some spare card so it's ready to use.
And now I can start the arduous process of embroidery.
Like before, I mainly use a combination of ordinary ribbon stitches, pinwheel roses, and french knot roses. However, this time I try harder to duplicate, or at least evoke the appearance of the embroidery of the film.
It's interesting how plain and somewhat boring the roses look on their own, especially with this monotone colouring. The varied colours of the film's embroidered roses are lovely, but I decided against it here because the BABY dress has monotone ribbon roses.
The roses definitely seem to just be pinwheel style which is very easy and doable, however I am a bit more confused about the leaves. They look like a number of straight stitches in various lengths and directions that fill in a leaf-like shape. I have no idea if this technique has a name and if there is a proper method for it, because I am a silly beginner who is very uneducated in embroidery.
Anyway I do my best and hopefully I got close enough. Ribbon embroidery is really all about the texture, which is really lovely to look at. Except I have trouble looking at my own work for too long because I start nitpicking all the mistakes I made...
Adding the green and leaves really helps the embroidery come to life.
I took even fewer pictures of the embroidery process than kumya's JSK this time because it's not that interesting. I was definitely getting sick of doing the same pinwheel over and over...
I stupidly decided that aside from embroidering the front of the brim, I also wanted a little bit of embroidery on the back of the brim for interest, as well as on the side.
The designs I drafted out for these two pieces is much simpler, but still, more work....
Almost ready for construction! Hopefully a lot faster with the handwork out of the way.
I iron on some interfacing onto the back brim panel and the bonnet band for slight extra stiffness.
The bottom part of the brim is plain cotton sateen because I was worried that the part that touches the head would get dirtier more quickly it if was velveteen.
I wanted some lace gathered around the brim and an extra velveteen ruffle on the back of the band, so I prepare that now. The lace is gathered with a single gathering thread and sewn down before sandwiching between the two brim panels.
Brim sewn and topstitched (and band is ready for attachment).
The upper flowers ended up a little closer to the top of the band then I intended, but I think it's okay.
Gathering brim and attaching it to band. Because the velvet fabric is so thick, the usual "sew one line of stitching with a wide stitch length" not only made the fabric incredibly difficult to gather, but the thin polyester thread also continually broke when trying to do so. Therefore, I opted for an alternative method I think I'd remember seeing in my sewing machine manual of all things--a zigzag carefully stitched over a central gathering thread. This worked much better, although I probably should have used a thicker/extra strong thread as the central gathering thread because it did break the second time I had to gather the brim due to a mistake.
I also add a bit of lace to the inside of the brim. I think this adds some luxury and frilliness between the head and the bonnet's brim, so I wanted to add a small width. I probably could have used even more of the lace's width since it turned out very subtle when worn. But I still think it adds a small amount of interest to the innermost part of the brim and was worth adding.
Unfortunately here after sewing on both brim parts I realize that I gathered both using an incorrectly marked centre line, so I had to rip it out and do it again ;_;
Next, I can carefully align and pin the bottom of the brim to the bonnet and sew it down. I tack this down by hand because I'm not skilled/accurate enough with a sewing machine to topstitch both sides nicely at once (look closely, and my messy stitching is quite visible...)
I also fold in the raw edges and finish the sides of the brim by hand, leaving some openings for ribbon ties.
At this point I spray almost the whole bonnet with water to disperse and fade my markings. Unfortunately, some of the earlier batches of ribbon that I dyed (Can you tell the variance in the 3 dye batches I needed to do?) were probably not washed well after dying and seem to have bled into the fabric from the water...but hopefully it's not too noticeable.
Next I topstitched all around the brim and attached the ribbon ties.
I bought some double sided velvet ribbon in my last minute supplies shipment and made some bows from it. I think the material is a little thick and petersham would have worked alright as well, but the consistent velvet material feels more luxurious, doesn't it? I also think as an added benefit (?) the ribbon being plush and double sided made the bows more puffy looking.
I add some clips to the sides and a toupee clip to the top for security. I opted for a toupee clips because I think it's really the way to go if you don't want the head item to move at all, no matter how thin or slippery your hair.
Finished.
Bonus 1: rose accent pin
I was in a bit of a rush at this point as it was near the end of the week coming up to the show, so I didn't take any photos of the process here but the technique and templates I used were identical to my handmade faux rose rosettes I made for UM (and the bonus corsages). I have a post with all the details of this sitting in my drafts that I will post eventually, and I will update this post when that happens.
The brooch was just meant to add a bit of 3D faux flower accent to the bonnet, bringing in the rose motif even more. Partially inspired by the faux flowers BABY adds to their bonnets sometimes, like on Milk Tea Doll.
The fabric was "custom dyed" with the same fiber reactive dye I used for the silk. The fabric was further starched, cut out by hand, and shaped with flower iron tools before gluing together.
Bonus 2: matching embroidered mask
I wasn't sure about whether or not I wanted to wear a matching mask, but decided to do so for situations when I would want my face at least half-covered in public. I didn't really expect to be visible in fashion show pictures as someone in the back, but just in case. (I think this decision was worth it, although my makeup transferred all over the thing and in most pictures my face was even more unflattering. eh well)
I forgot to take a lot of pictures of my process for this, but it's very uninteresting and not dissimilar from every other mask sewalong from 2020. I draft out a design similar to the bonnet motifs on both of my mask panels (cotton sateen), and embroider.
I should have embroidered closer to the centre of the mask because when worn the embroidery is not very visible/covered by my hair at the sides. What can I do since the panels were already cut though...oh well!
The lining material is some Japanese CLEANSE Ex fabric I had bought previously to make masks during the pandemic. It's supposed to be antibacterial and antiviral, as well as washable, but I have no idea how well supported those claims are.
Sew together normally on both upper and lower sides, turn inside out, add a channel for nose wire and side channels for elastic.
I also have some mask elastic on hand so I use that.
And the finished outfit again with all my items~
Thank you for reading! If you ever feel inspired to take up a similar project, such as the kumya JSK, I'd love to see it!
Got this IW bonnet to match with my torchon doll JSK and it turned out to be made from the exact same fabric 🪄 ( excuse the lace, I still need to iron it flat woops )
There’s actually a Wikipedia page for Angelic Pretty that can get you started on some history of the brand. RaineDragon also has a lolita history post on Pretty’s history that covers a lot more (her blog in general is a great resource!). There’s also Pretty items on lolibrary but they’re hard to search for- I’m guessing there’s either not many entries or the year is unknown (searching Angelic Pretty items pre-2001 yields only a few results and there isn’t an ‘unknown year’ tag) so they’re hard to find (but if anyone has a list I’d love to see it!). There’s also this blog post from fyeahlolita that covers very early lolita history and has Fruits snaps with Pretty items. The Gothic and Lolita Bible had its first edition in 2001, but I believe they still refer to AP as ‘Pretty’ in some early volumes. Lolita History has GLB scans if you want to take a look. Fruits and Kera magazine scans from <2001 are going to have Pretty items as well- you can actually buy e-book versions of early Fruits on their website! Lolita History also has a bunch of early Fruits and Kera scans.
Was just about to say the same thing, Raine and the Lolibrary team are amazing and have tonnes of info on older brand pieces, as well as Lolita History's website. I believe they both have donation channels open as well, so if you found them useful, consider donating so they can continue running!
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