This post is a bit late because I unfortunately don't have a functioning laptop right now and I had to dig out an ancient Windows XP desktop to do this! It's literally like I went back in time to find these posts xD Today's TBT is October 2006, which I chose pretty much just because it was the month that Novala Takemoto appeared at PMX, marking probably the first big Lolita event in the US. Do you notice a theme with these old posts? The theme is Novala Takemoto, we basically didn't have any other celebrity until Misako came around in 2009. I actually found this old post asking about Misako with a ton of comments saying "Oh, that's what that girls name is? I see her everywhere!"
Back to the topic of Novala, people were super excited about this event and there were tons of posts about it, from who's going to what to wear and more. One of the things I really like about digging through these older posts is seeing how excited everyone is for events!
As far as trends of the time, there are a ton of posts about AP's Melody Doll set, Baby's "Red Ridding Hood" set, and parasols. Here's a post that I thought was pretty funny of people being a bit shocked to see Baby sell parasols. This was still the era of Bodyline being a shady costume shop, as you can see by this post asking if Bodyline was supposed to be a cosplay shop.
This was sort of a hard month to dig through because this was back in the era where a lot of people could easily buy brand and Lolita clothes, but there wasn't a separate sales comm yet, so maybe 2 out of 3 posts were sales posts, and there was no set sales format yet so I couldn't even tell if it was a sales post until I clicked on it!
There are still some great outfit posts kicking around from this time! Check out this gorgeous handmade plaid outfit, this meetup of pretty much plain-clothes "aristocrats" and a really fantastic black and white dress set, and this meetup with a variety of different styles. 2006 is one of my favorite old school years xD
Of course, it being a year, any of them, people on EGL were terrified of Lolita becoming mainstream, and this fear was heightened because (does it ever need a real reason?) Novala's visit was talked about as being a test to see how US markets responded to Japanese designers. So, of course, EGL had to have a great big discussion about how awful it would be if Lolita went mainstream.
Here's an older post discussing current and past Lolita trends and I think what's most funny about it is that it practically could have been written yesterday. Sale old same old!
And finally, here's the longest post in the world about baby's Bunny Bear. I just don't even know what is going on in this post! But people seemed to just take it in stride and it manages to have 50 comments, none of which are "what the heck is going on here?"
Where were you in the world of Lolita in late 2006? I didn't really re-join EGL until late 2007, but in 2006 I was buying clothes from F+F's ebay shop and lurking around dreaming of one day being a real Lolita xD because I wasn't really a part of any Lolita comms at the time (2006 was still the BJD years for me!) so I really had no idea who Novala or Misako was or wtf Bunny Bears were and assumed that all brand was made to fit a 24" waist.