Not exactly lolita-themed but...

The Mori Girl (literally Forest Girl) look seems to be gaining a lot of popularity lately and I personally do like this fashion a lot as well. Maybe it's the emphasis on a loose and flowy garment fit with earthy, natural colours (markedly different from the stricter structure of the desired lolita form), a necessary dictate of this fashion, that I especially like.

And the concept and idea behind the mori girl movement is mostly to appreciate and savour a slower pace of life, enjoying a quiet solitude, living life at one's own pace, reading, taking introspective walks in a forest...well, as someone who works from 8.30am - 6.00pm, 5 days a week, deskbound, I naturally find this proposed lifestyle choice quite seductive, hurhur.

There's a small emergence of a blending between mori and lolita fashions as well. h. Naoto Gramm for example! I find this offshoot of h.Naoto to be rather a mixture of mori, gothic lolita and Miss Havisham's secret wardrobe.

Incidentally, I dabble in photography...although dabbling is a misnomer. Basically, I have a Canon DSLR, a half-way decent lens and I like taking portrait photos and...that's it! So now and then, I drag an unsuspecting friend and get her to model for me. I have done a few lolita-centric shoots and I plan to do more but for last Saturday, I had an itch to do a mori girl themed photoshoot with Alanna of Macaron Hearts.

We shot at an old railway way-station that was built in 1903 and would be shut down permanently this year. It's a rather ramshackle old place with its own quaint charm, something you don't see here much anymore, in rather determinedly modern Singapore.

The rest of the photos can be found on my flickr album if interested.

Mori or loli? Or Mori Loli? I think it's great though, when folks can blend two fashion styles of their liking together successfully. For me, I like and enjoy these two as separate fashions ^_^

Giveaway Result!

Wow! Thanks for all the entry comments, it was great to see so many people entering!

For the winner, I used a Random Number Generator and there were 35 entry comments in all so without further ado, the winning number is...

comment no. 14 who is Mia! Congratulations!

Thanks to everyone for entering! I really enjoyed reading all the comments about your favourite brands and I'll definitely be doing another blog giveaway soon!

Tea-Tray in the Sky - 1st Blog Giveaway

I know many lolita blogs do giveaways and they look so much fun to hold, not to mention, is also a cute and non-invasive way to highlight one's blog so...yes, Tea-Tray in the Sky will be having its first Giveaway!

And the giveaway free gift is a new Chocomint bracelet =)

Giveaway Guidelines

* Just leave a comment here and tell me what is your favourite lolita brand and why.

* Deadline for the giveaway is 26 March, 8pm (local Singapore time).

* A winner will be chosen at random and the name announced on Tea-Tray in the Sky on 27 March, local evening time.

* I will request the winner to contact me with her address. My email will also be put up along with the winner's name for contacting.

* Bracelet will be sent via registered airmail and postage fees will be borne by me. 

And that's it! Hope everyone have a fun time posting and I can't wait to see who wins!

Weekly Alice

Oh dear, Weekly Alice seems to have become an As and When Weekly Alice, lol! I'm truly very sorry about this and I'll try to have more regular weekly posts.

For this week's spotlight on Alice, it's the 2009 miniseries 'Alice' which is a reimaging of the story and was broadcast on the Syfy Channel.

I've always rather liked exploring reimagings of classic tales. Syfy's Alice is set 150 years after the original Alice's visit. Though still clad in a blue frock, the Alice of this series is a cynical 21 year old karate instructor on a quest to rescue her missing boyfriend, so this isn't exactly your the traditional wide-eyed young waif who fell through a rabbit's hole in Victorian times.

Wonderland itself, 150 years later, has drastically morphed into a dysfunctional dystopia where the villainous Queen of Hearts has been kidnapping people from the real world into Wonderland and harvesting their emotions to package a much sought after drug.

Besides the butt-kicking adult Alice, the Mad Hatter has evolved into a scruffy, leather-jacket wearing, cool-cat hipster who helps Alice in retrieving her boyfriend. And maybe this series is where the recent rash of Alice/Hatter romances stems from! As the story progresses, Alice starts to realise that her lost love may not exactly be the right one for her...

The ending of the series is somewhat predictable but it's still a pretty nifty show with surprisingly excellent CGI effects. I highly recommend it for Alice-philes who might like modern retellings of their favourite classic tale and even for lolitas who aren't into Alice.

The complete DVD set is available on Amazon.

When disasters strike - the Sendai Earthquake

Like millions around the world, I've been closely following the news updates and footages of the Sendai earthquake and tsunami that struck last Friday, 11 March 2011. There's something fundamentally horrific and yet devastatingly compelling about a natural disaster that draws people together, especially when majority of the earthquake news footages are being filmed by ordinary, normal people living through it.

I don't even know how to describe it, watching news footage of immense, unstoppable black waves, filled with debris and cars, houses, engulfing everything in its path. I was briefly reminded of the Sept 11 attacks although one is a man-made tragedy while the other is nature at its most catastrophic. The similarity in both events for me was that it engendered feelings of disbelief that something of this magnitude has happened. Like the 2010 Chilean earthquake, proof of how cataclysmal the Sendai earthquake was, is that the full brute power of it has caused our planet's axis to shift by 4 inches and the coast of Japan to move by 8 feet.

As ever more photos are emerging of the aftermath, of survivors trying to locate missing family members, the raising death toll count, of Japan still trying to grapple with the very present danger of a nuclear meltdown, what can the masses sitting in front of the TV, computer screen, reading the tragedy from the newspapers, do right now? To be honest, nothing much except prayers and more tangible forms of support through monetary aids.

It's inevitable that as time passes, news coverages of the disaster will start to dwindle and disappear, and the shock and horror gradually wears off in the international community. So it's what you do now that's crucial and urgent.

There's quite a few organisations collecting donations and raising relief funds right now. Some would be:

American Red Cross
Red Cross International
Save the Children
Global Giving (accepts Paypal)

For locals, the Singapore Red Cross is also accepting donations: http://www.redcross.org.sg/Japan-Disaster-2011.phtml

It seems so sadly mercenary to talk about lolita buying and the Sendai earthquake in the same sentence but I believe every bit helps so here goes, Juliette et Justine is also having a fund-raising fair. 40% off sale items, profits will go to aid while 10% of profit of regular non-sale items go to aid.

Ye or Nay

One person's 'seriously?!' dress could very well turn out to be someone else's 'OMG, MUST HAVE!'. It's all a matter of perspectives, taste and style.

But sometimes, I really have to wonder what the brands, what the designers, are thinking of when they come up with items like this:

New on Innocent World's reservation page

Granted, this jsk isn't as head-scratching as some I've seen but still...that panel right smack at the middle of the bodice, it makes me want to grab my pencil and play some serious tic-tac-toe.

Jogging woes, dieting and how it relates to lolita?

WARNING: Some preachiness might be dead ahead.

I used to jog regularly but has since slacked off to a non-existent exercise regime lifestyle.

In a bid for a healthier body, I decided to start it up again and dug out all the old jogging gear (which mainly only consists of t-shirt, shorts and running shoes) yesterday, was about to change when I realised the soles of both my running shoes were flapping open and I was cramping slightly. The fates conspire against me?!

My recent jogging woes aside, threads on dieting or exercising or both to fit into brand dresses do pop up now and then and which always interests me for the different perspectives shown by the commenters.

While it's my dream to fit into that Size 0 Victorian Maiden dress that I've been coveting forever, realistically speaking, I'm too fond of my pasta and chocolates to ever have that dream realised. I'm just not that dedicated enough!

Furthermore, I'm not a supporter of dieting or exercising to try and fit into that one dress that is 2-3 sizes smaller. I don't think it's wrong, of course, as long as the other party does the dieting/exercising within reasonable boundaries. But I personally feel no dress is worth it. There will always be other just as beautiful dresses in your size and which you will be comfortable wearing it as well.

If one was exercising or dieting for one's health and to stay healthy and happy, then definitely! That is important and a damn good reason because it's your own future well-being that you're investing in.

If you're already healthy but just that you can't fit into one dress that is a few sizes smaller, and so you decide to diet. And alright, let's say you do succeed in losing weight and fit into that smaller dress, good for you. Then what if the next to-die-for dress that comes along is two sizes smaller now? Hence, you start dieting religiously again since you did it once before, why not just continue doing so?

When one starts dieting/exercising to be skinny enough to fit into a smaller-sized dress, when does it stop? Can you stop if you've already succeeded once and the heady victory has overwhelmed you? That, I think, is a very real danger, especially in our image obsessed society where the current beauty body standards are still that of a Size 0 model on a Milan runway. Where even online clothing shops elongate photos of their models to make them look taller, skinnier.

And I do know some young women who are already slender, well-proportioned with 25-28" waists, healthy enough, and yet, they still agonize and think they're too fat and they must get skinnier, slimmer, thinner, lighter, eat less, go on even more rigorous dieting and punishing exercise regimes. Being their friend, frankly, I do sometimes want to smack them for it, lol! Smack and yell, you're perfectly alright, you don't need to lose any more weight!

I would start exercising again and eat better for the reasons that I'm not getting any younger. Already, I can feel that my body isn't as healthy as it should be, as it could be. I don't want to have an old age where I'm bed-ridden with full of mysterious aches and pains or have a stroke at 45 and THEN be bed-ridden (this is one of my worst nightmares of ageism).

Exercise! Eat right! But do try to do it for the right reasons and motivations.

And I'm buying new running shoes this week.

The 10 Items / 7 Outfits Challenge!

Macaron Hearts issued a 10 items / 7 outfits challenge on her blog a few weeks ago. As I got home early from work today, I decided to give it a go and complete the challenge at one shot!

*which resulted in me being a sweaty puddle of goo at the end*

It was a bit of a mad rush for the last two outfits because my mum was on her way home and I didn't want her to look at me with one of her patented sideway glances and ask, 'why are you prancing around in the living room?'

And here are my chosen 10 items!

Item A: Offbrand pink cardigan
Item B: Meta blouse
Item C: Innocent World jsk
Item D: Mam cutsew
Item E: Wonder Rocket long sweater
Item F: Offbrand jacket
Item G: Liz Lisa hoodie
Item H: Meta Honey Picnic skirt
Item I: Offbrand pink boots
Item J: Yosuke shoes

I tried to choose my 10 items for as much wearable versatility as possible. Hence, the little black dress from Innocent World which ended up being used for 5 out of the 7 outfits, heh.

And now...the outfits!
(I might add, I'm not wearing any makeup whatsoever in my outfit photos as I didn't have time to apply!)

Outfit no. 1 - items A, C, I                             Outfit no. 2 - items C, B, J



Outfit no. 3 - items C, F, J                            Outfit no. 4 - items C, E, I

Outfit no. 5 - Items C, G, I                           Outfit no. 6 - items D, G, H, I

Outfit no. 7 - items A, D, H, I

WHEW! Ok, due to lack of time, I cheated a little and took the easy way out for outfits 6 and 7 by not changing the shoes, draping a different outer and just tucking out the Mam cutsew!

Sadly, I think my outfits aren't very imaginative in the least. I'm probably what one would call a 'safe' lolita in action, lol.

Quick notes on the outfits:

Outfits no. 6 and 7 aren't what I usually wear for my lolita style actually but it was fun to try and think of different ways to match the Meta Honey Picnic skirt with my chosen 10 items.

Outfit no. 3 is my version of merging work wear and loli, ahaha~

Outfit no. 1, 4, 5 is really more for casual loli

Outfit no. 2 is...erm...librarian loli?!