/cgl/ - Cosplay & EGL

>>9872268

I believe the original lolita culture is long dead. What we have is something else now, sort of echoing the past. I don't think it's just lolita, I'm also interested in gothic fashion, and in general that's going a similar way. In the past alt fashion people found a way to bond over their way of dressing, the music, the mentality, it wasn't very polished but it was for themselves. I feel like today everybody is just much more united by social media, the standard for what looks good is sky high, and we all can instantly browse every dress from every brand. Its not really mysterious and revolutionary when you can buy anything and look at everyone else's outfits in the world. Much more of our lives are public, so we struggle with perfectionism. Because of the way social media works, we see the best of the best and the most perfect lolitas, as opposed to digging around in the dark and finding random lolita blogs.
Dressing a certain way was also to express that you were in the "club". Maybe that you liked the music or mindset or aesthetic or whatever. Now we can do all that with our Instagram page, and there isn't much need for the mentality or music when we all agree we have wildly different tastes in other aspects. We can also just go to meetups or cons and find lots of like minded people. People can get so much stuff easily on the second hand market or from China for a fraction of the price that the original brands were in Japan, we don't really have to save up for it as long as we have some kind of income. Not that I hate lolita culture today, or social media, it's just different to the original culture, and it's a byproduct of lolita becoming global and more popular than it ever was just in Japan. Globalization makes things homogenized, but also ultra accessible, which is good. Rant over.
Tldr.. I think it's dead in it's original form, but hopefully it will keep going forever so I can continue to buy my cute dresses.