WTF Angelic Pretty Reservations...

Angelic Pretty is definitely my favorite brand, but there is one thing that annoyes me: their "reservations" for new prints!

They released a new print on Saturday, called Day Dream Carnival. The print consists of ponies, and like you know pony prints are generally very popular, and especially this particular print is in my opinion one of the most beautiful prints AP ever released.

my favourite dress from this series

the most popular dress & color of this series

But here comes the negative: AP sells far fewer clothes than there are demanded. That means if 100 people want to buy a dress, they only sell 30 pieces or so (EDIT: here someone wrote they sold only 40 dresses IN TOTAL at their international site + San Francisco store... ). I'm sure they make it on purpose and it is part of their sales and marketing strategy: AP makes their clothes rare so AP is considered as something special and people go crazy about this brand.

But that's not the only thing. It annoys me even more how AP deals with international costumers. You have to think about how many Lolitas there are outside Japan who wear AP and often buy the latest prints. However most of them don't buy it from the international online store or from the San Francisco store, but they buy it with a shopping service!! Because AP is so nice and sells only 2-3 dresses per color at the english sites -.-

Day Dream Carnival it is particularly crazy: Although the print was released not even 24 hours ago, it is already sold at Mbok/Y!Auctions and people even bid 3 times of the original price! And I'm pretty sure many forgeingers are bidding. I saved some screenshots from the auction pages:

They bid nearly 1000€ wtf?? Well if they have the money xD

My favourite is the OP in ivory, but I'd rather wait 5 years until it is cheaper than pay an unfair price.

EDIT: It seems that Angelic Pretty heard all the displeasure about the reservation this time and is willing to re-release it again with an made-to-order realease: http://egl.livejournal.com/19158217.html

The different styles of Sweet - FAIRY LOLITA

FAIRY LOLITA

Fairy Lolita is a mix of Fairy Kei and Lolita Fashion. It takes the general silouhette of a Lolita outfit as well as the doll-like appereance, combined with the general aesthetic of a Fairy Kei outfit.

Silhouette:

In Fairy Kei fashion you wear loosy clothes, so there is no difference between bust, waist and hips. But for Fairy Lolita you have to keep the typical Lolita silouhette of a small waist and a poofy cupcake-shaped skirt. Though the skirt can be shorter than knee-length.

Aesthetic:

In short, the look of a Fairy Kei can be described as a young fairy with an 80's twist.

First you use elements of 80's fashion. That means cartoon prints like Care Bears, colorful leggins, legwarmers, sneakers, bow belts in loud colors, scrunchies or big glasses.

Then you make it look fairy by using only pastel colors, adding a lot of chiffon and tulle to your outfit, and wear a lot of ruffles and cute prints.

Why is the fairy young? Because toys and plushes are also basic accessoires for a Fairy Kei. You can wear them as a bag, pin them to your clothes or tie them to a necklace.

Accessoires:

So the aesthetic is all about Fairy Kei, now how to add Lolita? Of course wear a typical shaped dress or skirt. Then add headbows or bonnets, wrist cuffs, knee-high/over-knee socks, Mary-Jane shoes or lace gloves to your outfit, to give it a dolly look.

Styling:

Go for a dolly eye make-up and typical Lolita-styled hair. When it comes to hair colors, pastels and blonde are most common to look more fairy-like.

BB-Cream whitening effect: yay or nay?

BB-Cream is the newest trend, everybody is talking about it! I also ordered one of the fabolous creams from Korea and I'm very satisfied with mine. BB-Cream is usually hyped as an all-in-one wonder: moisturizer, foundation, anti-spots, anti-aging, whitenig effect... since I never use all of this products except foundation, the all-in-one feature isn't important for me, but I like the fact that BB-Cream hides rednesses like foundation, but feels like a moisturizer and is easy to apply! And once it is dried, it feels like you had never put anything on your face!

Now comes th big "but": The whitening effect! I think most people can imagine that bleaching your skin isn't healthy and can cause great skin irritations. When I bought my BB-Cream, I wasn't sure about the fact if it really contains bleaching or if whitening just mean "it's a light color and since it hides impurities, your skin looks fresher and brighter". So I informed myself about the ingredients and I want to share my results:

source

Arbutin

Nearly every BB-Cream contains Arbutin, and it is really hard to find a good one without it. Arbutin is not a bleach, it just prevents the skin from tanning. When UV-beams hit the skin, it begins to produce Melanin, which is a dark pigment and the natural sun mechanism of the skin. But Arbutin stops this producing, so you simply don't get tanned. Because now the skin is more sensitive against UV-beams, the BB-Creams contain sunscreen (of course also to avoid getting tanned anyway or getting wrinkles).

Now the second fact is, that Arbutin can be converted into Hydrochinon by your skin flora, which was a often-used skin bleach, but caused great skin damages - so it is now forbidden for bleaching creams in many countries (as a side note, it is still used for medical purposes). Futhermore, Arbutin works the same way like Hydrochonin, that's why people are concerned about it.
But in the end, the main problem is that at this stage, it's just not well researched how harmful Arbutin really is if you use it long-term. Don't be afraid, you won't get immediately skin damage from using BB-Creams in the short-term, but since it is very hyped now and usually, if women find the perfect foundation she will stick to it her whole life, I just wanted to share this information, so you know what you are using.

For me, I decided to use my BB-Cream not so often anymore. I don't want to waste it but when my tube gets empty, I will search for creams without whitening effect - if you have any tips please tell me :)

Do you use BB-Cream? What do you think about the whitening effect? Write me a comment! <333

Sources:
~ 1 ~ ~ 2 ~ ~ 3 ~ ~ 4 ~ ~ 5 ~

What you should not do if you want to wear make-up

I didn't participated in this weeks Blog Carnival because I don't hit exactly the theme but I got very inspired by the current topic, so in case you recognize some similarities ^_^

Pictures are from here and here, klick especially the 2nd link if you want to read about a skin care junkie (there is nothing bad with it I just want to share ^^)

I think you all know the make-up gurus who tell you: "OMG YOU HAVE TO USE ALL THE TWENTY-FIVE PRODUCTS FOR YOUR FACE IN THE MORNING IN THE EVENING AT NIGHT OR YOUR SKIN WILL DIE A SLOW AND PAINFUL DEATH !!!!!11111oneoneeleven"

But to be honest, if you don't know what primer, eyelash curler and lip plumper are, you probably don't need it!
I think too often girls have fear NOT to use a beauty product, because they don't want to look like someone stupid. But do you really think putting more unnatural chemics into your face and torturing it with more tools is really better?

Unfortunately too many girls behave like this:
1. Favourite make-up guru says you HAVE to buy item xy
2. You run to the store spending too much money for something you don't even know if you really need it

But I think you should better do this steps:
1. You notice that your skin/make-up isn't like you want it or like it should be (for example: you used powder every day and now your skin is dry)
2. You search for a product that fits to your personal needs (buying moisturizer)

Of course it isn't bad to try out new products. But you don't need everything. For example I don't make masks with quark and honey and put them on my face, I don't dive my hair in coconut oil, I don't use base coat when doing my nails, I don't do facial gymnastics... and I still have healthy skin and hair and look pretty ^_^

So please girls, don't feel bad because you don't use something everyone else does... you can't measure healthy and good-looking skin by the amount of products you use and how much time you spend in the bathroom!

The different styles of Sweet - DECO LOLITA

DECO LOLITA

Deco Lolita is a mix of Decora and Lolita Fashion. Some people are complaining that this style is just Decora with a Lolita dress, but that's not true! I will show you the differences in my following explanations ^_^

Hair:

In Decora it's normal to use your real hair in your natural color. Dyed hair is also okay but you don't wear wigs. However in Deco Lolita it's necessary to have voluminous hair, usually a wig in unnatural colors. For the best overfilled look you can backcomb your hair into two giant pictails.

Colors:

The preffered colors are popping colors like hot pink, red or vibrant blue, mixed with some pastel colors. In this way you create a very busy appearance.

Accessoires:

This is the most important fact in Decora: Wear as many accessoires as possible! You're not only wearing multiple necklaces, bracelets and rings, but you also overfill your outfit from head to toe, which could be many buttons on your dress, plushies turned into bags, a huge amount of pendants on the bag, several toys placed anywhere in the outfit, and even rhinestones and stickers in the face! 

But the hair decoration is different in Deco Lolita: while you wear a ton of simple hairclips in Decora, you choose less but bigger hairclips in Deco Lolita. Usually you wear a big headbow and place plushy clips, rhinestones, decorated mini hats and more bows around it.

Clothes:

In Decora fashion it's necessary to layer clothes, like wearing multiple skirts and shirts. But in Deco Lolita you wear usually one JSK or OP with a poofy petticoat and all-over print. You can wear several socks and leg warmers. For shoes you choose typical Lolita shoes like Mary-Janes instead of sneakers.

Makeup:

It's important to wear heavy makeup, especially if you are wearing a giant wig and several stickers in your face, so your face doesn't get lost between all the hair and accessoires. That means fake lashes, Circle Lenses and a popping lipstick color. But the makeup should still look pretty, don't look like a clown ^_~

Example for giant hair

The different styles of Sweet - OTT LOLITA

I want to start a new series: "The different styles of Sweet". For many people, Sweet Lolita is just every outfit with pastel colors, mainly pink, and cute accesoires. But as a big Sweet Lolita fan myself, I know that this style has many sub-styles to offer. Like Classic Lolita is influenced by Mori Girl or Dolly Kei, so is Sweet Lolita also influenced by other fashion styles. And in opposite to Classic Lolita, the Sweet style has it's own names for each direction ^_^

Of course you don't have to draw a line between the sub-styles, sometimes you even can't, but some people do and I want to help you to understand the differences. For me, it helps to create a good coordinated outfit if I can think of a particular sub-style while searching for accesoires, socks and so on.

My first style will be OTT-Lolita, the most used word to discribe an outfit which is not 'normal' Sweet Lolita.

OTT LOLITA

OTT Lolita is not based on other japanese fashion styles. Of course they use some elements from other fashions, but in general it's just a crazier version of Sweet Lolita.

Hair:

The hair is usually voluminous and/or in unusual colors. Curly fluffy pigtails with long hair is the most favourite hair style. The hair color can be everything, from blond and black to pastel colors to vibrant blue. Also mulitcolored hair is common. It's important that the hair color matches the outfit. To achieve this look, 99% of the OTT Lolitas wear wigs or half wigs.

Accessoires:

Even if OTT means 'over the top' aka 'too much', OTT Lolitas don't overfill their outfits with accesoires like you do in Decora Fashion. OTT Lolitas just use many accesoires to create a very detailed outfit.

OTT Lolitas love if everything matches together, that means if you are wearing a dress with pony print, you most likely also wear a pony bag, pony necklace, pony socks...It cost a lot of time to collect all the matching accessoires, so it's like the cream of the top if you can wear them alltogether.

Prints:

Print dresses are most used, because they give the outfit easily this busy, detailed 'over the top'-look. Also, the outfits are usually build around their print. But it is also possible to wear one-colored dresses and create the OTT-look through your hairstyle and accesoires.

Other Typical Elements:

These elements are not used by everyone and all at one time, but that are elements which are not used often in the other Lolita styles except Sweet Lolita.

~ leg warmers

~ two different colored shoes

~ shaped bags like strawberries, tea cups, shooting stars

~ plush bags like ponies, bears, bunnys

~ bunny ears, bear ears

~ hats with special shapes, like fur hats with bunny or bear ears, Hello Kitty hats, cake mini-hats etc.

Why do people want to dress mainstream?

♥♥♥

Not the fact that it's different makes it good, 

but the fact that it's good makes it different

♥♥♥

When you wear an alternative fashion like Lolita, you probably ask yourself why all the other people around you want to wear the boring mainstream fashion. One answer is that not everyone is interested in dressing super fashionable, and that's okay. But then, on the other side, there are so many girls who love to go shopping and create new stylish outfits, but still look kinda the same.
In this post I can't give an answer to that, I just want to write down my own opinion.

(picture by tokyofashion.com)

After I discovered Lolita, I really asked myself why so many people wear boring jeans. I even gave all my jeans to a thrift store because I was so bored of them xD But the longer I thought about the question, the more I asked myself: Do the people want to dress mainstream at all? Because in 'mainstream' fashion, many people feel weird if they meet another person wearing the same shirt like themselves, because only best friends do this. This is one indication that people don't want to look the same like others.

Another problem is, that you just can't dress very different, because in every bigger city you find the same stores: H&M, Pimpkie, Zara, Accessorize... there isn't much variation, and the stores who sell unusual clothes are often expensive boutiques. Of course, as a Lolita, you will say: "Why don't they shop online, I'm always doing this!" but to be honest, I hate to shop online! I really whish I could buy Lolita items in physical stores, because then I could try them on, check their quality and compare if they fit to other things in my wardrobe. Shopping online is also more expensive because of shipping and taxes, and if the item doesn't fit you, you nearly always make a loss, except the item is really sought after or from an expensive brand.

The last problem is something a Lolita always have to deal with: stupid comments and shyness. I think you have to read many studies, theories and philosophies about the mainstream mass to understand why people act like this, but it is a fact that many people don't do what they want because they have fear that other people think bad about them. Even I have the problem: On the one side I don't care about the opinions of others when it comes to Lolita fashion, but on the other side I have to live together with the people around me, so I also have to appear serious to them and that's hard in a pink pony skirt.

And a thing you also shouldn't forget, but many people forget it when thinking about this topic: As a Lolita, you might look very different from the general public, but you look very similar to other Lolitas! To create a really unique Lolita outfit is more than hard, and this is the same in mainstream fashion.
In a world, where all girls are wearing Lolita fashion, you would look mainstream. For me, that wouldn't be a problem, because I wear this fashion for its beautiful appearance, not to look different :)

♥ Now, what do you think about this topic?? ♥

♥ Please comment! ♥