#l489

Today I truly felt like Mana and was reminded of why I fell in love with Lolita fashion in the first place. It's my dark dream. My ethereal wish to walk through this Earth with an air of melancholy and magic that almost no other person possesses...! It's my joy. My passion.

I think my favorite Bodyline JSK is probably L489 because it’s simple but beautiful and there are a ton of ways it can be coordinated. As far as printed pieces go I’ve always liked  L345 because I think the roses are beautiful and I love that they’re so vibrant that they stand out even on the pink dress.I think L579 is really cute too! It’s really popular and there are so many little elements to the print that you could coordinate it in a lot of cute ways be it very simple or elaborate. I could help you coordinate it but I would like to hear your thoughts and ideas about it first.

Bodyline L489 JSK in Black and Red

So, I just graduated my undergrad and I just moved to Connecticut. I don’t really know too many people so apparently I needed a hobby. The Rose Ribbon Embroidery JSK was a very expensive limited release piece. I personally see them come up for sale pretty regularly for either really cheap or really expensive. No matter what, it won’t fit me. What will fit me however is Bodyline’s L489 which I just bought in pink. They’re really not that similar. The ruffles on the Bodyline JSK only are on the sides while Baby’s go all around and are trimmed with lace. Speaking of lace L489’s is terrible, scratchy, white polyester lace while baby’s is coloured cotton. The tops have completely different detailing and one has detachable waist ties while the other doesn’t. Most notably though Bodyline’s JSK is made of polyester while Baby’s is velvet. I can take inspiration from Baby’s JSK and make the Bodyline one something better though. This all may change when the JSK actually gets here but I plan to unpick most of the lace. At least the bit at the top, I might keep the lacing down the skirt and try to dye it. I would like to remove the ruffle from the top but I don’t have a good enough idea of what the JSk looks without it. From there I would re detail the top with better quality lace. It’ll be pretty easy to dye a bunch of lace to a matching color. I don’t think I can replicate the the top ruffles so I’m not going to try. If i do unpick the lace from the sides that gives me the perfect opportunity to add lace under the ruffles. On the Baby JSK these are sewn into the seam (you can see in the side view above) is which would mean a lot of seam ripping but hey at least Bodyline doesn’t line their pieces. The biggest part of this project is trying to embroider the skirt. Looking at the piece from the movie and the released version (see the last 2 photos above) the embroidery is quite different! It’s to be expected but the movie version is much more detailed with 10-20 more ribbon roses. Also the leaves and vines seem to be a completely different type of stitch! I’ve tried Embroidery before without much success but I have a pattern to work off of at least. I think it’ll be kinda fun and I’ve got time to practice. I have a lot planned for this! If all of this goes horribly wrong it’s nothing I wasn’t to prepared to possibly ruin. It’ll suck but oh well. Surprisingly enough (or maybe not if you know me) this all goes back to my (bright pink) Rose Ribbon Bonnet because I still have absolutely nothing in my wardrobe that matches it. Hopefully this will! Also, this may be touching close to replica territory which is not my intention at all. It is just something I wanted to try to do for fun. I very much admire the people who make or alter their pieces @sanakanin especially. She does amazing things with her pieces and was very nice when I asked about the JSK. (All photos are not mine! Anything that isn’t a stock photo or a screenshot I took from my copy of Kamikaze Girls is from: https://egl.circlly.com/auctions/btssb-rose-ribbon-embroidery-jsk Or http://egl-comm-sales.livejournal.com/19495057.html)

Keep in mind that you don’t have to live with one coordinate for it forever. You could use any of those options at different times so it really doesn’t matter all that much what you use for your first one. It’s  simple enough dress that you could wear it with a lot of different things. Maybe you’ll find a bow that you like to wear it with this time but later you find a cute flower accessory so you decide to wear it with a flower theme and do a flower crown at another time. Or you might decide you want a pair of rocking horse shoes so you might choose to wear it with a more old school look with a rectangle headdress later. You can also base it on whether or not you want to give it a theme or how elaborate you want your coord to be. If you want your coord to be more simple you could use a small bow, if you want your coord to be more elaborate you could wear a bonnet with flowers and bows in the brim. There really isn’t one right answer.

I think they’re really cute. They strike me as great options for what you’re looking for because they’re so simple and easy to coordinate.

I would definitely not do l257 because I feel the two different sets of polkadots would be really busy. Of the remaining options I think I would say L489 is probably my favorite. The others have a lot of different layers of details and while 489 does have some detail, it comes more from simple ruffles without the extra lace and stuff. There’s a sort of simplicity to it that I think would make it work best with the cape.