What Is Gothic Lolita?
Gothic Lolita is just one of the dozen or more derivative styles of Lolita fashion; it happens to also be one of the most popular. As you might have guessed, Gothic Lolita combines Lolita and Goth fashion; generally darker Victorian infused feminine clothing. It’s one of the many forms of fashion around the world that appeals specifically to women. You know, it is a bit off subject, but isn’t it funny that in every other species on earth, it’s the males that have the distinguishing features, colors, patterns, horns, and physical attributes that draw in the drab colored females. Humans are totally backwards; women wear the brightly colored feathers.
Lolita fashion grew up in Japan while Goth and punk fashion was growing up in the UK, Germany, and the US. There’s even the substyle; Elegant Gothic Lolita. Goth and Lolita fashion merged in the late 80s and early 90s. It combines the knee length Victorian inspired dresses, petticoats, and cupcake style skirts with the Gothic color palette and accessories; blacks, blues, purples, and of course, skulls, bones, crosses, etc., that are common in Gothic jewelry.
Gothic Lolita is morbid meets maiden, –lacy knee-length dresses and skirts, chunky mary-jane heels, and girly hair styles. But surprisingly, not the elaborate black and white makeup that often appears in Goth fashion. Most Lolitas use blacks and white for a neat, natural look. Heavy pale makeup isn’t as popular, and is even considered in bad taste among other Lolitas. As for where and when Gothic Lolita emerged as a style, it starts with music, like most of the fashion-oriented subcultures currently on the scene today.
The consensus view is that Gothic Lolita as a fashion began in Japan with Visual Kei bands; the music isn’t as important as the performance and the costumes. The idea is to put on a really good visual show. Auditory is half (or less than half, depending on your taste) of the experience. The scene started when bands like Malice Mizer began to promote the image, and continued when Mana, the cross-dressing producer of the band (and others, like Moi dix Mois) began to promote his ‘Elegant Gothic Lolita’ style.
Thereafter, eccentric Mana began his own fashion label, and has since distributed some of the most coveted EGL pieces. Other bands, fashion labels, –even the original ones, like Pink House and Milk sell EGL and GL styles, –not to mention the nine billion different web stores that sell Gothic Lolita fashions!
