EGL Throwback Thursday: Jan-June 2003
This TBT is a little bit different in that it's not one month, but the first half of 2003. I've been wanting to do much older months, but there simply wasn't a lot of different content being posted on EGL back then to really be able to do that. Most posts on EGL pre-2004 were just asking the same old questions again (usually about where to buy G&LBs) or were really off topic.
Let's start up with a brief questionnaire that was posted in early 2003 asking what people's favorite brands were and why they liked Lolita. Not a lot of people responded, but it's funny how a few people answered with brands that are now basically lost to time. What the heck is "Baby Secret Love"? This post also had a very drama-filled followup about the quality of "Westernized" Lolita items. This is a quote that's so great I'm just going to copy/paste it here, this is by an infamous ebay seller at the time named Rose and Thorn:
"Wouldnt I love to be able to make the quality of say Baby ssb, but NOBODY outside of Japan will pay for what it is really worth, or even close."
This was the most recently released Bible at the time!
EGL was definitely a different place back then, while digging around some old posts I found a few by this one particular guy who would be run out of the community for being a creeper, but back in 2003 he was totally fawend over. This post (and the other times he posted) also illustrates just how differently people talked back then. Just reading all those *giggles*, *huggles*, Glompies, "and such", and "wheeee!" just makes me want to gag. I totally typed like that too back then and I have pretty much supressed all memory of it until I dig through old EGL posts.
Even back in 2003 people were under the assumption that Lolita was goign to die off, which is so weird to think about now because at this point practically nothing in the history of Lolita even happened yet besides some Jrock bands wearing it. There was only 7 G&LBs published by this point! From that post here's a pretty fun prediction about Lolita not needing to change and contemplating that one day it might be absorbed into regular Goth fashion. Related to people's weird fears in 2003 about not being popular in Japan, here's a post about chunky shoes no longer being popular in Japan! For those of you who maybe weren't there for the dawn of Lolita: chunky shoes were like the only shoe to wear with Lolita. I don't think we were aware that we even could wear other styles of shoes besides chunky platforms. I totally love the note in this post how all the pictures of Japanese fashion she can find are from 1997!
In 2003, Cyber Lolita was talked about a lot.
2003 was when Lolita was making it's first big debut in America and places like Hot Topic were starting to pop up with weird "Lolita" type merch. Here's some post about Lip Service making something Lolita inspired and people generally getting their bloomers in a bunch about it while simotaniously getting their bloomers in a bunch over other people's buncy bloomers. You can view an archive of the LS line in question here, and the particular dress they're talking about is this one, which is probably more accurately Lolita and better made than anything anyone on EGL cobbled together from thrifted clothes at the time xD Here's a similar post about something Hot Topic did at the time and called Lolita. Here's another choice quote that really sums of EGL back then:
"Plus, for the most part, we Lolitas make our clothes. Maybe not from scratch, but there's effort behind it. I'd hate to see wannabe Lolitas wearing clothes right off the rack, with no thought as to the Japanese rockers who make it a beautiful fashion: Mana and Kana. (lol a rhyme XP)"
Here's an old post asking people to define Lolita, because no body really knew what it was back then xD
And here's a post asking what Country Lolita is! At the time "Country Lolita" was kind of used as an interchangable term for "Sweet Lolita".
Remember a few years back when there was talk about EGL moving off LJ onto a forum? Well, that's not the first time we planned to do that! This is also notable because the first comment mentions codes. Does anyone else remember when you needed a referral code to sign up for Livejournal!?
Here's an early post talking about the idea of more casual Lolita styles, notable because someone suggests looking into Angelic Pretty for some ideas of what less frilly Lolita looks like!