Baby Ponytail - Indie Brand Review

It's been a long time since I published a blog entry!

I have some ideas floating around in my head (and several drafts already written), but I just don't have a lot of energy to put into writing these days. I enjoy blogging though, so I'm making a fairly small goal of publishing once a month.

A couple of months ago, I was contacted by Claudia, the designer for an indie lolita brand called Baby Ponytail, asking if I would be interested in receiving a piece from their (then) new collection, Mermaid's Castle in exchange for some publicity. The photos looked super cute, so I agreed!

There were some hiccups in production, but I finally received my jumperskirt last week - on my birthday no less~! It was nice timing haha.

Last weekend, I went downtown to the Portland waterfront with my friend Katie to take some photos in my new jsk~

I love that aspect of Portland's geography - the river cuts the city in half, which makes navigation super easy for someone like me who always gets lost haha.

We got really lucky with the weather that day! It's been raining almost every day since October, but it was dry and pretty warm - we even got a bit of blue sky!

 I wore my Lockshop Sylph wig because it reminded me a little of the mermaid's hair in the print!

Most of the rest of my coordinate is from Angelic Pretty, except the cardigan (offbrand/Gymboree), wristcuffs (Chess Story), and shoes (Secret Shop).

The print is so vibrant!

You can see my birthday manicure here! It doesn't photograph very well, because it's mostly just glitter and sequins haha. So sparkly!! 

We came across this garden in front of an office building with some pretty trees! I love how much I stand out against this background~

Keep reading for a full review~!!

♡Recent Purchases♡

I've been neglecting this blog recently...truth be told, I've been low on inspiration u_u

While I continue to search for that spark, here are my recent purchases within the last few weeks!

Room Tour

My blog has been pretty wordy recently, so I wanted to post something mostly pictures and less heavy content!

I also recently cleaned because I had friends over, so as someone on Tumblr requested, here's a short tour of my bedroom~

For fun, see if you can find all the Rilakkuma/Korilakkuma items - there are 22 (visible), if you count each Rement set as 1. ;)

The Art of Casual Cute

Getting dressed up in lolita is a lot of fun - but it's a lot of work and not the most comfortable, and it's really not appropriate for every situation.

Many lolitas then turn to other more casual cute Japanese fashions. There are a number of labels out there for styles under this very wide umbrella (for example, himekaji, otome-kei, Larme-kei), but they're all about being cute in a very wearable sense.

Ank Rouge

The transition between dressing in lolita and dressing casual cute can be tough for those who entered the general world of fashion through lolita. Lolita is a very structured, rule-centric fashion, while other fashions tend to be much more open-ended. For this reason, a lot of lolitas feel lost when trying to create outfits outside of the rules and confines of lolita fashion.

Lolita Posing 101

Something I hear often from lolitas is that they have no idea how to pose when a camera is pointed at them. They feel they look stiff or awkward or any number of unwanted adjectives.

Getting photos taken, whether by a professional photographer or with your camera propped up with a timer set, is an aspect of lolita that is difficult to avoid.

While I'm certainly no expert, I've had a lot of experience with posing in lolita, due to the fact that 1) I've been into lolita for a very long time, 2) I enjoy having photos taken of me when I'm wearing it, and 3) modeling, whether print or runway, obviously requires knowing how to pose.

I'm mostly going to cover lolita-exclusive posing, rather than what you can find with a simple Google search (this is a great article, for example), although I'll share some basic tips that I personally use all the time.