Back from Bath, London and Paris!

Ahoy! Back from the vacation and suffering some majorly post-holiday blues right now. It's just so nice to get away from everything and not have to work! But in order to afford nice holidays, one needs to work and therein lies the irony, lol.

England at this time of the year was lovely! The weather was sometimes cloudy, sometimes sunny and never went above 18 degrees celsius. Sooooo niceeeee.

Bath especially I loved. Not just because of the heavy Jane Austen influence there but the entire city is just really delightful and has so much history to it.

There was a hiccup to the early part of the trip when dum dum de dum, the airline lost my luggage and I practically arrived in Bath with the clothes off my back. Worse was I had to skip the Jane Austen Promenade Walk on the first day of the festival as my Regency dress was in that luggage. I was pretty crushed for the first and second day then. But such is life and the vagaries of the economy airlines that one decides to take =( The luggage was finally found and delivered to my hotel in Bath on the evening of the third day but in the end, I still missed the Jane Austen Festival in its entirety.

However, I couldn't leave Bath without wearing my Regency dress and bonnet and taking some photos!

Photos taken at The Kennard, which was the hoteI stayed in during Bath and which really was the prettiest little place as well!

The rest of the trip was spent in London plus a day trip to Paris. And, I did manage to find the BtssB store in Paris when I was there! I am rather proud of the fact that I managed to successfully navigate the streets of Paris, armed with a map, to find the store on Ledru Rollin, heh!


The store was empty when I entered but the shopgirl greeted me with a smile which was encouraging since one does sometimes hear about rudeness at the Paris shop offshoot. Dir en grey was playing in the background as well when I was there, lol. While I controlled myself and didn't purchase anything from the store (I was tempted though!), I was pleasantly surprised to find the store stocked with a good array of items. The shop is located in a rather quiet suburban area of Paris and the nearest Metro station is Ledru Rollin so it is slightly off the beaten track. But if you have some time to kill in Paris, I recommend tracking down the shop for a visit. Also, located near enough to the shop is Jardin des Plantes, which is a beautiful botanical garden with a museum and lovely for photos in loli finery as well =)

More on the sights of Bath and daily outfits worn in next post!

Ramblings plus an As and When Alice photo

Sorry for the intermittent postings for the last few weeks! I don't want to be one of those one-hit loli blogs that one sees so often popping up and disappearing within a few months although I can understand why that happens. Real life just gets in the way A LOT plus it takes effort to write as well. And write interestingly and well.

For me, it's a lot of real life going on. I'm buying a new apartment that hasn't even been built yet. The apartment flat will be built and ready in about 3-4 years' time. While I'm looking forward to a new house one day, this means the spending budget will be tight as the cash downpayment for the new place needs to be settled soon. Hence, no new lolita purchases since a few months ago and for the next few months as well as I've been madly saving.

Between a new house and loli dresses, I would naturally prioritise the first without much thought into it! But ah, it was still a little hard though, to go through the summer sale period and not be purchasing one or two brand-new dresses on discount.

Besides the new house, the trip to UK is finally approaching! I fly off to merry olde England next Thursday. The UK trip will include a one-day trip to Paris and I'm still considering whether to make a visit to the Paris BtssB store for fun. I don't know if it's worth the effort though as I'm only doing a day trip and I've heard that the BtssB shop person isn't very welcoming to tourists (but this is hearsay and I really don't know the veracity of snooty Parisian shop people at Btssb).

And for London, I definitely want to be hitting Camden Town for the second-hand clothing shops!

I won't be bringing any loli to wear during the trip. I will be bringing a few Naoto Gramm dresses to wear but that's it. Mostly due to the fact that I'm actually rather nervous of drawing attention to myself in loli in London. I would be more confident of wearing loli in Tokyo since yes, I've done that before and not to mention, Japan is the birthplace of loli fashion, lol. But I'm leery of being a foreigner, wearing loli in a Western setting and therefore, the chance of drawing unwanted attention...

Anyway! To make up for pelting boring aspects of my life at you, here's another Alice in Wonderland inspired photoshoot! The photo showcases an Alice inspired dress from New York Couture, an online shop that specialises in one of a kind outfits. While not loli, they do have some rather cute dresses up on their collection page.

I  love how the 'I have cramps' model-esque pose is now associated with couture.

Ye or Nay?

This could go either way. It probably all boils down to how one wears it and how it's accessorised with...so here I present Meta's latest Ye or Nay?

The Meta Dot Tulle A-line Dress (in pink, navy and cream)

The navy blue doesn't look half-bad and I'm always for the brands to come out with a-typical lolita dresses that isn't the standard cupcake form. However, the pink colourway is just so...shiny while the waist ribbon looks like it was last year's Christmas tree decoration. Not to mention, only those with slender arms could possibly carry off that sleeveless shift look. The dot tulle material, upclose, is pretty though but overall....more nay than ye for me...

Buyers Beware! And Dropped-Waist Dresses

I just had a buyer on egl_comm_sales who backed out of a sale after an invoice had been sent out already. It's going to be a rather 'duh' thing to say but yes, I HATE it when that happens. No matter how you state it, sideways, upways, in bold, in colour, in caps, on one's sales post to please not back out once an agreement to buy is set, there's always that one person who will tell you 'oh I changed my mind, sorry, la-di-da!'.

And in this case, the buyer or non-buyer, had the gall to tell me, 'oh I changed my mind. I decided the dress is too maid-o for me, la-di-da'. Hello? Photos of the dress in question was in plentiful supply on the sales post. Shouldn't you have thought about that aspect before you decided to tell me you love the dress and you must have it and please invoice me? Gah.

I'm sorry if I might offend anyone who thinks that the buyer is always right but heck no! As a buyer, it's one's responsiblity to ensure all the terms in the sale is agreeable first before deciding to purchase. Unless it's extenuating circumstances that requires a buyer to back out (and I don't accept changing one's mind due to buyer's regret or deciding it's too maid-o as legitimate excuses), then the buyer has an obligation to uphold her end of the sale by paying for the merchandise.

Sighs. I apologise again for ranting on about this here. Please feel free to skip through it. In the big scheme of things, a buyer who backs out is nothing too important or even unusual. It's just so...annoying! lol!

In other news, I am so totally in love with Meta's new dropped-waist dress.

I adore drop-waist dresses. They're so reminiscent of Victorian-era childrens' fashions. Just something very aesthetically pleasing, not to mention, a flattering fit as well, about them to my eye. If I could be sure this dress would fit me, I'll buy it in an instant!

No socks please, we're in our 30s

This self-taken outfit photo using a friend's iphone is so bad that I'm embarrassed to put it up. BUT it is the only photo of my coordi from last Saturday's loli get-together so here it is:

Just a simple summer coordi, really! Meta's Wonder Silhouette OP and a pink cardi with no socks *gasp* The older I get, the more unfond I seem to get of socks paired with a loli coordi...while I do know they're an integral part of a complete loli look, I tend to eschew them in favour of a more mature-centric loli ensemble nowadays. I'm not sure if I can be 40 and still carry off knee socks then, frankly!

For the loli meet, we went to Chris' Tea House, an off-the-beaten track little place situated in the heartlands. It could be they are trying to cultivate a quiet and condusive atmosphere for tea-lovers as no photography was allowed (we only found out this no photos rule when we arrived). No kids under 6 or so allowed too in the cafe! I did like the ambience and decor of the place but not so much on the service which bordered on incompetent for the staff who served us most of the time we were here.

Photos taken from the cafe's Facebook page

As you can see from the pics, it does seem quite inviting and a nice place to chat with friends. A plus point is they have pretty tea-sets and excellent scones. Downside is the no photography rule and bleh service. And I would still visit the place though, probably just not in loli!

Oh and we took our coordi shots in the cafe's bathroom and ONLY in the bathroom as we're a law-abiding bunch of lolis, hurhur.