cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/6854518

Welcome back to Sery's dressposting~ We are taking a look at Hoshibako Works' collaboration with Zun to produce Touhou Project lolita dresses, specifically the Alice and Marisa ones since they're my favourite characters. As I do so, I'll go over how lolita coording should try to capture the essence of a character without simply cosplaying them. This is also a special issue where I am coping with the fact that I cannot afford these dresses despite really really wanting them. I'm sorry for the mess you are about to read.

Before we begin, some context for what the hell a Touhou is and why I care. Touhou Project is a Japanese bullet hell video game series developed by Zun that has a pretty huge cast of basically entirely female characters and some pretty incredible music. While I can't go over this series in much detail here, I'll be giving little explanations of these two characters before I delve into their dresses so as to contextualise them and I will be drawing from official art to compare to.

I really like these games. I suck at them, but I find them very fun. Plus I have a pretty strong attachment to the cast and a not-insignificant amount of the music I listen to on a daily basis is doujin-band covers of their OSTs.

So, beginning with Alice Margatroid. She is the Seven-Coloured Puppeteer, a magician who controls dolls as her primary gimmick power to fight other people and do daily chores with. You can even see a replica doll in the background of the photos of her dress! (Though unfortunately I don't think it's available for purchase or else I would get one as a cope) As a character she's generally a bit of a loner and a bit blunt towards people, but generally still caring. Essentially a cold exterior, but she warms up and opens up to some people, becoming more vulnerable and showing that she's got a little bit of a cowardly streak.

Design-wise she has been pretty set-in-stone when it comes to the official look: She has a simple blue dress over a white short sleeved blouse, with a white capelet on top. Then as accessories she wears pink: a ribbon around her waist, a scarf tied into a bow, and either a lace hairband or bow in her hair. And all of these details barring the shirt have some amount of spiky lace. Occasionally in some other official media like manga she swaps the short sleeves out for long ones and a few other minor alterations, but generally this is how Alice looks.

It's a design which, frankly, is basically almost a lolita coord as it is. All that it is missing is a petticoat to get the right shape language. (notice how it doesn't poof out that much on the skirt, instead it mostly follows her shape. Although some artwork of her does give it sufficient poof.) Yet Hoshibako Works didn't simply replicate the actual design for this collaboration, instead they made some pretty key changes.

The biggest and most notable being the capelet. Rather than have it be just plain white cloth with a lace trim like the character art, they made the entire thing lace and gave it a very lovely rose motif. Why would they do this? It's because a good lolita coord isn't meant to be 1 to 1 accurate to the source material. The goal is to capture the feeling of a character without actually copying them. And ultimately as a design, Alice's capelet is the most striking part which your eyes will be drawn to. But when translated to the real world, if it were accurate to the game it would become a lot less striking compared to the rest of the outfit. This is for a few reasons. The first is that the pure white of the capelet, regardless the black outline, would blend into the white and, in this design, long sleeves. This would leave that looking like a block, and while that can certainly work for a look, it would also draw attention away from the capelet itself which would be a mistake when trying to represent Alice. The second is to do with detail. Many of the smaller areas of lace such as around the waist would draw a lot of attention due to being the most visually interesting spots. By making the capelet fully lace, we solve both issues by making it both not solid white and also the area of the highest detail by far on the whole dress. It becomes the focal point, and captures the most important parts of Alice's design super well.

Similarly, an Alice by accuracy would have to contend with the way her design switches between scarfs and bows depending on the exact artwork. Here they decided to go with the bow, and it makes sense. It allows them to make a much more elaborate look (just look at how many loops it has) and, more importantly, it's a much more distinctly lolita appearance, allowing the overall outfit to stay in that realm of lolita design.

Of course, this is also an outfit, so the capelet is removable. And by god it is such a beautiful and simple dress underneath. I love the way that it's laced up so much. I'm not too keen on the fact that it seems to be an OP when Alice's dress is clearly a JSK and blouse combo, but I also don't mind because this is such a pretty one that it works anyways.

The last thing of note is then the bow tied at the waist and it's just, so, so pretty. I don't have anything to say, I just love it.

Moving on now to Marisa. She is an ordinary magician whose main gimmick is using love-coloured star magic. Big gremlin energy, I love her so much. Her entire thing is being a little menace who goes around solving issues, stealing books and just hanging out. She's also my main character in these games and has been on the banner of my account ever since I made it.

(As a small tangent, she and Alice are tied for my favourite character, I can't really pick one. Marisa is the one I get more joy from and I try to replicate her aesthetically (side braids go brrrr) but Alice is more me-coded in terms of both aesthetic and personality, or at least I feel she is.)

In terms of design, Marisa actually differs a lot from game to game. Unlike Alice, she is one of the main playable characters and so she will get new art every game. Her basic outfit is very set, it's a black witch outfit made with a black skirt and vest, with a white blouse and white apron.

The accessories are where it mainly differs, as she will usually have a bow on her hat and braid, but the exact colour of the bow changes in every single game and she will occasionally add extra accessories like scarfs, capelets, or pendants depending on the game. Plus her actual outfit will occasionally change slightly with things like embroidery being added.

Much like Alice, the dress based on her differs quite a bit from any of these depictions. Among the official ones I looked at the closest I could find is this one above, which comes from the artbook Who's Who of Humans & Youkai - Dusk Edition. This is mainly because it's the only design that includes this particular victorian style of collar which the dress itself replicated. Of course on the other hand the vest here is absolutely not the same as the dress's, but still.

(Tangent, while I was looking for official Marisa designs I discovered this one which Zun illustrated for the old official site and honestly I love this, I kinda want to make a coord based on this specifically. The capelet especially looks so pretty and I want something similar. Although the skirt is kind of a mess on this illustration, oh well, I get the idea and it's cool to me.)

So, now to look at the dress itself! Like Alice, it matches the basic design but differs a lot on details. A particular choice which I find very important for this dress is that they decided on plaid black and white for the accent colour used by the bows. This is really interesting since it's not one which has been used by an official Marisa design before and I think it's actually really pretty. It makes it striking and unique for her character while still entirely fitting in the realm of things she'd wear, and it helps to avoid the problem of picking a specific game's design only to have weirdos (me) critique it for not being their favourite. (Phantasmagoria of Flower View's purple btw, it's the one I included a photo of earlier.)

Construction-wise I'm... kind of confused more than anything else. I think it's an OP? But if so that's a huge shame because I'd have much preferred it being separate pieces for the blouse and skirt. At least the apron is removeable, since it's just tied at the back. But idk, I could have absolutely seen myself (in the world where I could afford it) using the skirt or blouse separately for coords but as is they're stuck being just for this one look which will always feel very Marisa-ish to me. It's just a small shame.

Similarly, with the apron, I'm not really convinced by the pockets. It's something which certainly fits her character, she'd love to have easy places to hide small trinkets she steals or ingredients she's collecting, but I'm not sure it's really doing it for me aesthetically. I have warmed up to it a lot since I first saw the dress though, so maybe I'll come around to it eventually.

Going back to the full outfit, the details are incredible. The collar has some lovely little embroidered stars on it,

and those motifs are continued down with the buttons.

This use of the stars as a detail continues down even into the lace and it's so adorable.

It's a really lovely way to, once again, bring in the feel of Marisa without being 1 to 1 accurate. She's a star-based magician, so giving her star themed detailing is the best move and brings in a lot more of her character than you'd be able to if you just replicated her in-game outfits.

Welcome back to Sery's dressposting~ We are taking a look at Hoshibako Works' collaboration with Zun to produce Touhou Project lolita dresses, specifically the Alice and Marisa ones since they're my favourite characters. As I do so, I'll go over how lolita coording should try to capture the essence of a character without simply cosplaying them. This is also a special issue where I am coping with the fact that I cannot afford these dresses despite really really wanting them. I'm sorry for the mess you are about to read.

Before we begin, some context for what the hell a Touhou is and why I care. Touhou Project is a Japanese bullet hell video game series developed by Zun that has a pretty huge cast of basically entirely female characters and some pretty incredible music. While I can't go over this series in much detail here, I'll be giving little explanations of these two characters before I delve into their dresses so as to contextualise them and I will be drawing from official art to compare to.

I really like these games. I suck at them, but I find them very fun. Plus I have a pretty strong attachment to the cast and a not-insignificant amount of the music I listen to on a daily basis is doujin-band covers of their OSTs.

So, beginning with Alice Margatroid. She is the Seven-Coloured Puppeteer, a magician who controls dolls as her primary gimmick power to fight other people and do daily chores with. You can even see a replica doll in the background of the photos of her dress! (Though unfortunately I don't think it's available for purchase or else I would get one as a cope) As a character she's generally a bit of a loner and a bit blunt towards people, but generally still caring. Essentially a cold exterior, but she warms up and opens up to some people, becoming more vulnerable and showing that she's got a little bit of a cowardly streak.

Design-wise she has been pretty set-in-stone when it comes to the official look: She has a simple blue dress over a white short sleeved blouse, with a white capelet on top. Then as accessories she wears pink: a ribbon around her waist, a scarf tied into a bow, and either a lace hairband or bow in her hair. And all of these details barring the shirt have some amount of spiky lace. Occasionally in some other official media like manga she swaps the short sleeves out for long ones and a few other minor alterations, but generally this is how Alice looks.

It's a design which, frankly, is basically almost a lolita coord as it is. All that it is missing is a petticoat to get the right shape language. (notice how it doesn't poof out that much on the skirt, instead it mostly follows her shape. Although some artwork of her does give it sufficient poof.) Yet Hoshibako Works didn't simply replicate the actual design for this collaboration, instead they made some pretty key changes.

The biggest and most notable being the capelet. Rather than have it be just plain white cloth with a lace trim like the character art, they made the entire thing lace and gave it a very lovely rose motif. Why would they do this? It's because a good lolita coord isn't meant to be 1 to 1 accurate to the source material. The goal is to capture the feeling of a character without actually copying them. And ultimately as a design, Alice's capelet is the most striking part which your eyes will be drawn to. But when translated to the real world, if it were accurate to the game it would become a lot less striking compared to the rest of the outfit. This is for a few reasons. The first is that the pure white of the capelet, regardless the black outline, would blend into the white and, in this design, long sleeves. This would leave that looking like a block, and while that can certainly work for a look, it would also draw attention away from the capelet itself which would be a mistake when trying to represent Alice. The second is to do with detail. Many of the smaller areas of lace such as around the waist would draw a lot of attention due to being the most visually interesting spots. By making the capelet fully lace, we solve both issues by making it both not solid white and also the area of the highest detail by far on the whole dress. It becomes the focal point, and captures the most important parts of Alice's design super well.

Similarly, an Alice by accuracy would have to contend with the way her design switches between scarfs and bows depending on the exact artwork. Here they decided to go with the bow, and it makes sense. It allows them to make a much more elaborate look (just look at how many loops it has) and, more importantly, it's a much more distinctly lolita appearance, allowing the overall outfit to stay in that realm of lolita design.

Of course, this is also an outfit, so the capelet is removable. And by god it is such a beautiful and simple dress underneath. I love the way that it's laced up so much. I'm not too keen on the fact that it seems to be an OP when Alice's dress is clearly a JSK and blouse combo, but I also don't mind because this is such a pretty one that it works anyways.

The last thing of note is then the bow tied at the waist and it's just, so, so pretty. I don't have anything to say, I just love it.

Moving on now to Marisa. She is an ordinary magician whose main gimmick is using love-coloured star magic. Big gremlin energy, I love her so much. Her entire thing is being a little menace who goes around solving issues, stealing books and just hanging out. She's also my main character in these games and has been on the banner of my account ever since I made it.

(As a small tangent, she and Alice are tied for my favourite character, I can't really pick one. Marisa is the one I get more joy from and I try to replicate her aesthetically (side braids go brrrr) but Alice is more me-coded in terms of both aesthetic and personality, or at least I feel she is.)

In terms of design, Marisa actually differs a lot from game to game. Unlike Alice, she is one of the main playable characters and so she will get new art every game. Her basic outfit is very set, it's a black witch outfit made with a black skirt and vest, with a white blouse and white apron.

The accessories are where it mainly differs, as she will usually have a bow on her hat and braid, but the exact colour of the bow changes in every single game and she will occasionally add extra accessories like scarfs, capelets, or pendants depending on the game. Plus her actual outfit will occasionally change slightly with things like embroidery being added.

Much like Alice, the dress based on her differs quite a bit from any of these depictions. Among the official ones I looked at the closest I could find is this one above, which comes from the artbook Who's Who of Humans & Youkai - Dusk Edition. This is mainly because it's the only design that includes this particular victorian style of collar which the dress itself replicated. Of course on the other hand the vest here is absolutely not the same as the dress's, but still.

(Tangent, while I was looking for official Marisa designs I discovered this one which Zun illustrated for the old official site and honestly I love this, I kinda want to make a coord based on this specifically. The capelet especially looks so pretty and I want something similar. Although the skirt is kind of a mess on this illustration, oh well, I get the idea and it's cool to me.)

So, now to look at the dress itself! Like Alice, it matches the basic design but differs a lot on details. A particular choice which I find very important for this dress is that they decided on plaid black and white for the accent colour used by the bows. This is really interesting since it's not one which has been used by an official Marisa design before and I think it's actually really pretty. It makes it striking and unique for her character while still entirely fitting in the realm of things she'd wear, and it helps to avoid the problem of picking a specific game's design only to have weirdos (me) critique it for not being their favourite. (Phantasmagoria of Flower View's purple btw, it's the one I included a photo of earlier.)

Construction-wise I'm... kind of confused more than anything else. I think it's an OP? But if so that's a huge shame because I'd have much preferred it being separate pieces for the blouse and skirt. At least the apron is removeable, since it's just tied at the back. But idk, I could have absolutely seen myself (in the world where I could afford it) using the skirt or blouse separately for coords but as is they're stuck being just for this one look which will always feel very Marisa-ish to me. It's just a small shame.

Similarly, with the apron, I'm not really convinced by the pockets. It's something which certainly fits her character, she'd love to have easy places to hide small trinkets she steals or ingredients she's collecting, but I'm not sure it's really doing it for me aesthetically. I have warmed up to it a lot since I first saw the dress though, so maybe I'll come around to it eventually.

Going back to the full outfit, the details are incredible. The collar has some lovely little embroidered stars on it,

and those motifs are continued down with the buttons.

This use of the stars as a detail continues down even into the lace and it's so adorable.

It's a really lovely way to, once again, bring in the feel of Marisa without being 1 to 1 accurate. She's a star-based magician, so giving her star themed detailing is the best move and brings in a lot more of her character than you'd be able to if you just replicated her in-game outfits.

Hello and welcome back to my sporadically updated lolita dress blog~ I finally have a bit of a break from assignments and after a particularly nice late night in trachat yesterday I found a couple dresses that I liked enough to inspire a new post.

Today's dress is Elpress' Double Rose Petal JSK! Like with dresspost #1's fish scales, I was mainly drawn to this one through its interesting way of using layered transparent fabric to replicate the look of, well, rose petals. Compared to the fish scales this one is certainly better executed, although I think the scales were a more creative application of the technique. Regardless though it's a stunning effect, and I love how it looks across all three of the colour options for this dress.

The flower motif of the dress is obviously quite strong, but I particularly love the "sash" of flowers that go across the chest. It is a bit busy, but I think it's a very lovely look. It's actually not a sash at all too, but rather a two clips, one at the shoulder and the other at the waist. They're simply shaped and placed in a way to appear like a sash. This gives the entire dress a huge amount of versatility in its exact design, since you can choose where to place these two clips. The shoulder one in specific is also meant to double as a hair clip which is nice, but unfortunately none of the photos of the dress have it being used as such.

Since these flowers are detachable, it means that the JSK on its own is actually deceptively simple; it's just the rose petal skirt and two bows with a fishbone corset. But this means the entire dress is actually usable in a lot of different outfits. Thanks to the rose petal skirt, however, it will always bring some of that flower-y flair into any coord you might make.

And this is an aesthetic that can work with many different themes! Among the model pictures here you can see two common ones with the fairy style for the pink model and the pure flower focus of the purple one. But there are other options too, the blue one for instance doesn't particularly fall into either of these camps, and I could easily see myself trying to create some sort of flower witch coord with this if I had the right hat. Or hell, moving outside the realm of lolita a bit, an elven princess-knight cosplay.

And on the note of hats, this one is very lovely. I believe based on some of the other photos that at least one of these bows is detachable, as some had them placed upon the wig's braid. Each of the colours is slightly different in its exact flower arrangement. Personally my favourite is this one, I find the double pink roses to be quite striking compared to the others which have colours that don't pop quite as much. In general the pink is my favourite of these dresses. I'm also very struck by the colour transitions and contrasts of the blue one. The purple, meanwhile has a lovely lavender subtlety to it that I quite love.

It has been a little while, school has been keeping me busier than I expected so I couldn't do the once a week posting I was planning, but I finally found the time to write this up. Unfortunately in the time it took this dress ended up filling its ressrvation slots so you can't buy it anymore, but that hasn't stopped me before.

This dress is Avenue Denfer's Return to the Darkness! Like a lot of the ones I've been covering lately, it comes in two versions, a OP or JSK and blouse combo. Both are utterly lovely so I'll be covering both individually after I go over the shared details I like. Starting with the colour, both versions are in green or purple. I like the purple a lot more here, it's a lot more gothic and so it better fits the intent of the dress. But I think the green might have a lot of potential as a classic if you wore a white blouse instead of the black ones, and green and white is one of my favourite colour combos. Unfortunately the set blouse is only in black, so there's no example photos of this idea.

Next up is the jacquard patterning on the main dress. Both colours and versions use the same design, and I love how it brings in butterfly, candelabra, and other gothic motifs while remaining very subtle thanks to being a jacquard weave and not, for instance, a print. I like the butterflies the most, especially due to how they tie into...

The butterfly brooch on the bow! I love this, it's so cute yet still very gothic feeling, it's the exact thing I love so much about lolita in general. And since it's only the one part of the dress, it keeps it still feeling classy overall while bringing in that cute little focal point.

Beyond the butterfly, this photo is also an excellent segway onto looking at the OP version of this dress. And what a good segway it is, I adore the lace on this one. It's so pretty. I overall prefer the OP of the two versions specifically because it uses the lace so much and so well.

In particular I love the little lace sleeves on top of the actual dress sleeves. It looks fantastic and brings in the draping which is both pretty and effective at deemphasising shoulders. It's the stuff that I love in capelets, although not to quite the same extent.

On the JSK version of the dress meanwhile, the blouse adds a ton to the look, particularly with the jabot on top of it. And due to its nature as a JSK set both the blouse and dress are usable for other outfits. And this works in its favour since they are both very versatile and could be used effectively for a lot of different looks. Like the white and green I was thinking of earlier, but one could also mix the blouse with a blue dress or whatever else one might dream up with it. It's all up to taste.

I would have posted an extra pic to end this off but I hit the limit and don't feel like waiting to add another pic. Needless to say I like the dress and it's very pretty. I hope anyone who read this enjoyed it or maybe even felt a bit inspired by the look!

So so far I've covered a few different styles of lolita dresses. I started with a sweet, then did a classic, but I haven't done a gothic yet, let's change that.

This issue's dress is Lingxi's Nightmare Lilith. It's a rose-themed gothic, as made obvious by its incredible collar. Seriously if I could get just the collar I would. It's perfect for basically any gothic rose coord. The thorns add so much to the rose which is a pretty common motif.

The collar isn't the only rose themed part of this dress though. The skirt has an printed rose motif. It's in almost the same black as the dress itself, so it's relatively subtle, but it adds a lot. Especially thanks to the pop of red behind it which adds some colour into the otherwise pure black dress. (Which, speaking personally, is very important for any gothic lolita in my eyes. Pure black can look good but I much prefer gothics that use dark reds, purples, and navys in their scheme since they add some visual interest. White too but white is tricky and not every dress pulls it off. But ultimately I'm not a gothic I'm a classic, colour is just part of my aesthetic in a way it isn't for a gothic.)

The dress has two sleeve variants, regular sleeves and bell sleeves. They're both lovely, I'm honestly not sure if I prefer one or the other.

Of the three model coords, I like this one the most for its use of prayer beads. It unfortunately gives up the witch hat that's part of the set (which I love, witch coords are so cool and I want one), but the new headpiece is beautiful and I adore how the spikes on it accent the rose collar's thorns.

So that's the dress! I didn't really have as much to say this time, like I said I'm a classic not a gothic. I just really loved this one's collar and rose theme.

cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/5430764

Hello and welcome to the fourth of my silly little rambles that people apparently like to read, only this time it's a post! I spoke with a few people over on trachat and the consensus seemed to be that making this a full post would be better, so from now on I'll be posting them here and crossposting to traa.

Jumping right into it, today's dress is Long Ears and Sharp Ears' Morning Glory. Unlike the other dresses I've covered so far, this one is available as both a OP and a JSK with blouse.

As you can see the JSK is a lot girlier and cutesier, while the OP has a nicer more mature and elegant look. Of the two I'm drawn more towards the white versions OP, but both are really lovely! I think however that the coloured versions of the dress work better as the JSK, particularly this purple version. I'm just personally drawn towards pretty white clothing in general.

I was mainly drawn to this one by the chiffon and tulle fabric, in particular the metallic tulle hexagon pattern that covers the entire dress is really beautiful and adds a nice shine without being overwhelming. The white versions of the dress show it off particularly well I think. It makes the entire dress glow in the sunlight, hence the name, and it is utterly gorgeous when it does.

As has become a theme, I'm also in love with the smaller details too. In particular this collar is gorgeous and I adore all the little bows on the JSK version. The mix of purple, blue, and green that you can see here is really difficult to get right but I think it works quite well here!

I honestly don't have much else to say about this dress really, it's a bit simple but I think quite effective and I really like it. I already quite liked LnSEars as a brand for their more elaborate fairy-themed pieces, but this one has shown me that they can do a decent variety of looks and it makes me want to get one of their pieces again. LnSEars are also a good brand for taller women, since you can custom order their dresses to match your sizes for only a slight price increase. ($10 extra for a skirt length increase, $15 for a full resizing)

Hello and welcome to the fourth of my silly little rambles that people apparently like to read, only this time it's a post! I spoke with a few people over on trachat and the consensus seemed to be that making this a full post would be better, so from now on I'll be posting them here and crossposting to traa.

Jumping right into it, today's dress is Long Ears and Sharp Ears' Morning Glory. Unlike the other dresses I've covered so far, this one is available as both a OP and a JSK with blouse.

As you can see the JSK is a lot girlier and cutesier, while the OP has a nicer more mature and elegant look. Of the two I'm drawn more towards the white versions OP, but both are really lovely! I think however that the coloured versions of the dress work better as the JSK, particularly this purple version. I'm just personally drawn towards pretty white clothing in general.

I was mainly drawn to this one by the chiffon and tulle fabric, in particular the metallic tulle hexagon pattern that covers the entire dress is really beautiful and adds a nice shine without being overwhelming. The white versions of the dress show it off particularly well I think. It makes the entire dress glow in the sunlight, hence the name, and it is utterly gorgeous when it does.

As has become a theme, I'm also in love with the smaller details too. In particular this collar is gorgeous and I adore all the little bows on the JSK version. The mix of purple, blue, and green that you can see here is really difficult to get right but I think it works quite well here!

I honestly don't have much else to say about this dress really, it's a bit simple but I think quite effective and I really like it. I already quite liked LnSEars as a brand for their more elaborate fairy-themed pieces, but this one has shown me that they can do a decent variety of looks and it makes me want to get one of their pieces again. LnSEars are also a good brand for taller women, since you can custom order their dresses to match your sizes for only a slight price increase. ($10 extra for a skirt length increase, $15 for a full resizing)