4 Coords, 1 Dress

The last meet my comm had before the Covid crisis hit my state full speed was a meet to the local art museum during it’s monthly free day. Unfortunately a few days after that, things began to change for the worse, and meets for the next few months were cancelled. So, as a long time admin of my local community, I suggested that we start having bi-weekly themes: a new, revolving theme to change once every two weeks, to keep up morale and promote community participation to offer a distraction in these trying time. 

Our last theme was 1 item, 4 coords. Some members choose to choose items that that had been forgotten at the back of their wardrobes, but I chose one of my go-to pieces, a Moi Meme Moitie piece from 2010, my Cross Gather OP.

The first coord I did was something reflecting my regular, go-to styling. Something simple, casual, and comfortable. The main reason I wanted to use this piece for this challenge was because I wanted to force myself out of my comfort zone and do something different with something I wear frequently.

My second coord I wanted to do a more traditional take on a gothic coord I would normally do for a meetup. But, because this dress is so simple, I have never coordinated this dress like this, nor have I ever worn it to a meet up, since I tend to save my flashier dresses for meetups and save my simpler dresses like this for daily wear. 

For my third look, I wanted to be a little experimental, but still keep it lolita. I normally pair dresses with colors that are already apart of the main piece I am using. So, typically, as you can see in the other 3 coords, for this I would stick to black items and blue as an accent color. Here, I used a bunch of white items, but kept blue as an accent color to still pull everything together. 

For my fourth and final coord, I went a little not-typical-lolita. Since Lolita is my typical daily wear, sometimes I want to coord my items a little differently to suit all occasions. If the world was open, and if we didn’t have to worry about getting sick and could go out for date nights to the theater or a nice restaurant like we use to, This is similar to something I’ve worn out in the past.

And while those are my actual coords I went with, what I wish I could of done was 4 different coords surrounding one of my Sugary Carnival dresses, so here are my hypothetical 4 coords, if I had more than 3 items suitable to wear with my pastel ponies.

So, if you don’t know, 90% of my wardrobe is pure black. Another 8% of that consists of these pastel ponie. Why? I don’t even know. All I know is that after years of fighting it, I’ve given in and accepted my love for this pastel rainbow vomit print, and I now own it in every color but black. But, I don’t have a pastel friendly wardrobe, so my coordination options are few.

That’s why I decided to make this:

I call it “1 Coord, 4 Dresses.”

Because we have a large variety of Lolita levels from “novice” to “I was born wearing burando,” I want to encourage everyone to participate in my comm’s themes, which is why I made both actual coords, and hypothetical dream coords with items I don’t actually own. 

So far our bi-weekly themes have been a success in our community. I’m really interested to know what other communities are doing to engage with and support their members during these times? Also, if you have an idea for a future theme idea, let me know so I can add it to my list!