Lolita Blog Carnival : Your Most Worn Dress VS Your Least & Why

My wardrobe has grown to accomodate various styles and cuts, but there will always be pieces that get more usage than others. While it’s easy to pick out which pieces are favorites if you follow my coordinates on Instagram, in today’s post I go into detail as to why they’re top picks!

Warning: this post involves 6 dresses, 22 WIPs, and a lot of images. Best viewed on a desktop.

In a previous Lolita Blog Carnival post, I mentioned that I wasn’t much a fan of prints. So it’s a surprise that nearly all my picks for today are printed pieces!

My most worn dresses

Bodyline l546 – Venice Print

Bodyline l546 Venice print is a JSK I’ve worn over and over again. It is amazingly versatile, pairing up with black, grey, and pink. What makes this so versatile is the range of color in the print, and how simple the hemline is.

Above is a little graphic I made, sampling all the colors in the artwork. As you can see, that’s a huge palette of 10 colors! Since I primarily wear Classic, there is plenty of room for color variation when coordinating items: going a step darker or a touch warmer is no problem at all. As an added bonus it features the wardrobe workhorse ‘base’ colors black and pink- there’s even a touch of light rose in there, so it can pair up nicely with ivory.

The second aspect in its favor is how simple the cut is. There is virtually no decoration or added detail anywhere: all the focus is on the print. That’s actually a big factor in its versatility! What details it lacks, can be made up for by layering garments. Juliette et Justine, one of the most coveted Classic brands, places great emphasis on layers as demonstrated below:

Bodyline l329 – Heart Chiffon JSK

If I had to survive out of a suitcase for a week, I would take this JSK. In theory, of course; traveling without the necessary luggage space would be like traveling without oxygen.

If I really put my mind to it, I’d get maybe half a season’s wear out of this one piece. I only retired it from active wearing because variety is the spice of life, and the rest of my wardrobe needs some love too.

Because it is a neutral-colored solid, it goes with so many things. While this cut is more detailed than the l541 Venice Print, the accents are subtle (chiffon frills at the hem, lace frill at the bodice, thin lace running down the princess seams). The only ‘loud’ elements in the design are the bows, which were easy to remove.

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My least worn dresses

Bodyline l510 – Floral JSK (pink)

I actually have two colorways of this. The sax version, to my surprise, plays well with most of my wardrobe. The pink one however…

As a standalone item, this JSK actually has a pretty good color palette. There are multiple shades of pink and off-white, bits of green, and brown. If you detach the bright pink chiffon under-layer it is easy to wear a different color skirt with the pink JSK part.

Its weakness has more to do with the rest of my wardrobe: I really have only a handful of brown and green things. To top it off, the tiny repeating pattern is rather distracting; I prefer either larger prints, or those with large design elements at the bottom.

Infanta Rose Cathedral JSK and Powers and Thrones JSK I

I grouped these two dresses together because they have the same problem of being way too fancy for everyday wear. In my early years in the fashion, I was a huge fan of metallic prints; oh, the elegance! the high drama when it sparkled in the sun!

I still think they’re gorgeous. They’re just really, really hard to tone down.

Most metallic print releases have only two, maybe three colors in their palette. This is because the metallic ink is usually a screen print; in addition, limiting the color pool keeps the focus on the intricacy of the artwork.

Since there’s only a couple colors to work with, there is not much room to play around. I had the vague idea of using gold or silver jewelry to tie it in with other pieces, but that didn’t go very well. That led to the conclusion that peace could only be achieved by using gold or silver blouses or outerwear.

Fifty shades of gold and silver later, my opinion hasn’t changed. You can see evidence of my blouse-collecting obsession in my wardrobe posts [2018]

Second negative point is that I picked cuts that aren’t very versatile. The Powers and Thrones JSK is a prime example: the vest is non-detachable, and that means that it cannot be worn under blouses or the buttons will create very strange lumps in the fabric.

Drumroll please, for the one-hit-wonder of my wardrobe: the item that only ever got worn once, and exited stage left immediately after.

My least worn dress – Emily Temple Cute’s Biscuit and Cutlery JSK

‘Why,’ you may exclaim, ‘it’s gorgeous!’

Indeed it is beautiful, and it was so very, very, very hard for me to coordinate. I only managed one look out of it, and that was only possible because I had striped socks from Leg Love.

This was for last year’s ILD at Karen’s Kitchen, which has since closed. The various bits and pieces came from all over: the socks were marine-themed, the shoes had little plastic chips that looked like candy, the necktie was from my Dad’s collection, the rosettes were taken off an accessory from Carolina’s, and my only Sweet accessory at the time was the little cake brooch.

This coordinate drove me crazy.

Color-wise, there’s a nice range of hues to choose from. The problem is just that barely anything else in my wardrobe suits a dress with cookies around the hem. This dress deserved to go to someone who would treasure it, and shortly after ILD it went to a dear friend from the comm.

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Others posts on this week’s theme:

The Bloody Tea Party | Cupcakes & Unicorns | In Love with a Dream
Petite~Tomoyo | Roli’s Ramblings | Saxon Blues