Can you intro­duce your­self to us, please?

Of course! I’m Laura, 17 and live in the UK. I own and cre­ate all the prod­ucts for 8th Sin Cre­ations, an online store that sells hand­made jew­ellery, acces­sories and cloth­ing for alter­na­tive lifestyles, Lolita included!

How did you get into Lolita and where did it lead you?

I got into Lolita fash­ion after I dis­cov­ered manga at my local library. After I got addicted to any­thing Japan­ese, I nat­u­rally found myself immersed in Japan­ese fash­ion and found Lolita. I fell in love at first sight as I thought it was the fash­ion style I was born to have – I’ve always wanted to be Goth but cute at the same time. Even­tu­ally it lead me to set up my online busi­ness of sell­ing jew­ellery, acces­sories and cloth­ing because I wanted alter­na­tive fash­ion to become more avail­able to everyone.

What inspires your drive for the fashion?

When I first dis­cov­ered Lolita fash­ion, it was per­fect for me because I love all things cute and slightly creepy. It’s just so dif­fer­ent to “nor­mal” fash­ion styles out there, as is all alter­na­tive fash­ion styles. I love how Lolita fash­ion is inspired by Vic­to­rian and Euro­pean dress but it has evolved so much since the 80s to a point where you can only just see the inspi­ra­tion. It’s become so pop­u­lar over here in the West and it has become Japan­ese girls emu­lat­ing Euro­pean girls emu­lat­ing Japan­ese girls now!

What is your favorite brand and why?

Either Alice and the Pirates or Inno­cent World have to be my favourite brands. I love the clean, crisp look of their designs and the Classic/Gothic style of their clothes. As much as I am a Gothic Lolita, I also love Clas­sic Lolita in the darker colours, like navy, Bor­deaux and choco­late.

Where does your unique style come from? What really makes it you?

I take all the fash­ions that I am inter­ested in – Gothic, Lolita, Steam­punk, etc and mix the all the ele­ments together. I am obsessed with learn­ing every­thing there is about a topic so thank­fully through the years I have learnt a lot. When I was younger I used to read trendy fash­ion mag­a­zines like Cosmo and Glam­our so I know how to piece together an out­fit and the basics like that to apply to alter­na­tive fash­ion. I guess what really makes my fash­ion style me is that I give all my out­fits a cute twist and that I really don’t care what is in fash­ion at the moment or what peo­ple think of me.

What’s the name of your busi­ness and where can I find it?

My busi­ness is called 8th Sin Cre­ations and you can find the offi­cial web­site at www.8thsincreations.co.uk. I’m also on Etsy, Tum­blr and Face­book. I’m on a cou­ple of other social net­work­ing sites like Vam­pire­F­reaks but they never really worked out for me.

What inspires  your designs?

I cre­ate items inspired by all the fash­ion styles I’m into. I’m inspired a lot by Japan­ese street fash­ions like Lolita, Gyaru and Dec­ora as I think there isn’t much avail­abil­ity for West­ern girls to buy items like that. I’m also inspired by vin­tage designs, pretty lace and street fash­ion snap­shots as it has a true rep­re­sen­ta­tion of what teens and young adults are wear­ing right now. My prod­ucts aren’t just for one fash­ion style – for exam­ple, Lolita – I want peo­ple to be able to incor­po­rate my items into their own fash­ion style and make it their own.

Can you tell us what lead you to design?

I guess it was because when I started mak­ing things, which was when I was 15, I didn’t have much money. I wanted to be a part of these unique and lovely fash­ions but I couldn’t afford lots of clothes or brand acces­sories, so I quickly learnt about wardrobe sta­ples I can wear again and again and to make my own acces­sories. Also some of the things I think up don’t exist quite yet so I have no choice but to make them myself!

Any advice for loli-newbies or first time loli-oriented busi­ness owners?

For Lolita new­bies, I sug­gest going into Lolita forums and web­sites to actu­ally talk to peo­ple who wear the fash­ion. That way you can quickly dis­miss any myths, stereo­types or wor­ries you may have as the peo­ple aren’t actu­ally like that. For Lolita-orientated busi­ness, I would say that you have to prac­tice, prac­tice, prac­tice! Lolita is a high qual­ity fash­ion style and the most dis­heart­en­ing thing is to receive a com­plaint about your item or be told they aren’t good enough to sell at places. So when you first start mak­ing items, treat your­self! Make them for your­self at first, then when you get good at them and iron out any crafts­man­ship kinks and learn lit­tle tips and tricks to make craft­ing eas­ier, then think about sell­ing them. I don’t actu­ally sell any clothes on my web­site at the moment as I’m wait­ing on an adjustable tailor’s dummy to take pro­fes­sional pho­tographs and to ensure my clothes are of high enough qual­ity to sell.

Can you intro­duce your­self to us, please?

Hi every­one~ I’m Oli and I own a very inde­pen­dent shop called Lemontree11.

I’m cur­rently a stu­dent major­ing in Fash­ion Design grad­u­at­ing in the spring (yay!). I really love to make clothes, dress up, get crafty and draw. I also have a Lolita web comic called, “The Totally Non Fic­tion Life of a Lolita.” Its a cute comic that por­trays the good and bad in lolita

http://nonfictionlifeofalolita.blogspot.com/

How did you get into Lolita and where did it lead you?
I think it was from when I bought my first art­book called Chocola 2000 which was form Digi Charat (I was in mid­dle school). At the time, I just thought they were gor­geous out­fits with so much detail. I really didn’t think much after that because I wasn’t really into fash­ion till I turned 16 and got in gen­eral “Hara­juku fash­ions.” How­ever, when I got into VK music, I would browse a lot of the VK style cloth­ing online (and even the ita cloth­ing that were hand in hand in these shops), but not buy them. Black was just not my color at the time. So I was a bit sad­den how all these cute clothes had details and col­ors that do not suit my per­son­al­ity. Then I dis­cov­ered BJD (ball jointed dolls), they wore such adorable cloth­ing, it made me wish I was a doll. When I got into PGSM (Live Action Sailor Moon) I began to fol­low more pop cul­ture events in Japan(looking up japan­ese mag­a­zines like kera, sev­en­teen etc), and at the time Nana Kitade was becom­ing rather pop­u­lar and even saw an ad for Kamikaze girls, there I soon dis­cov­ered the fash­ion term Lolita. Finally a style that was edgy, but suited my tastes and personality!

What inspires your drive for the fashion?

Peo­ple, their muses, and art. I think I look at peo­ple for ref­er­ences the most. Some say that cre­ativ­ity is gone, i think it’s just been either evolved or mod­i­fied to suit todays tastes. Just like how 90s fash­ion is in, we mod­ify it so that it would look good in 2010. I try to do the same thing where I work with some­thing basic and make it my own. I will NEVER say that I came up with the design 100 per­cent, because I always have a ref­er­ence or inspiration.

What is your favorite brand and why?

LoL it con­stantly changes.
When I started lolita fash­ion Mary Mag­da­lene was the Holy Grail of brands to me. It was just so classy and beau­ti­ful. The more I began to get very involved with Lolita and vol­un­teer­ing for events, I began to wear more sweet items, and Angelic Pretty became my favorite brand.

Today, I think Emily Tem­ple Cute is one of my favorite brands. They take sim­ple con­cepts and co-ord it very nicely. Their ads always win me over, more than any other brand.

Where does your unique style come from? What really makes it you?

To be Hon­est, I think I’m still dis­cov­er­ing my style. Many of my friends say I have a style, but I don’t see it. I wear what I want, or what i’m in the mood of wear­ing. When my taste changes, or as I grow older, I think my style will change to suit my matu­rity. Although at the moment, I’m really lov­ing Magenta Greens, and other bolder colors.

 

What’s the name of your busi­ness and where can I find it?

Lemontree11 is the name of my shop. At the Moment its on Hia­tus, I am work­ing on recre­at­ing my vision and cre­at­ing a more steady line. Though do fol­low my blog because I know the minute my shop reopens, I will announce it on my blog!

http://lemontree111.blogspot.com/

What inspires your designs?

Hmmm, any­thing really. Mostly any­thing cute. When I work on my Fuzzy bows for exam­ple, I think of a theme. What should be the high­light of my bows, stars, bun­nies, bears, those are usu­ally my themes. I also imag­ine, what sort of per­son would wear these items. Though I am always sur­prised how much bet­ter my cus­tomers wear my mer­chan­dise. They are so stylish!

 

Can you tell us what lead you to design?

The more I sew the more con­fi­dent I became in believ­ing I can make any­thing with­out spend­ing too much. I really like bows, and wanted to make some unique bows that were inspired by chocomint. I didn’t want to make a replica, so I began to develop my bows, to have a spe­cial touch, in other words, a bit of myself in each piece.

My bunka bear and bun­nies, were inspired by bunka dolls. I’ve always wanted to make a bunka doll, but I fig­ured mak­ing acces­sories of them would be more con­ve­nient, then I added, what if I made them into bun­nies and bears, wouldn’t that be even cuter! And that’s how it came to be.

Any advice for loli-newbies or first time loli-oriented busi­ness owners?

Loli-newbies: You have it so easy now, many of the “rules” are much more laid back from when I first started, which is great. Also lolita gar­ments are so much more acces­si­ble, so its much eas­ier to obtain with the right resources, so always do your research. Also browse all kinds of mag­a­zines not just the Lolita bible. That way you will be inspired by not only things in lolita fash­ion but many things out­side the fash­ion that you may want incor­po­rate into lolita. Lastly, be con­fi­dent, wear lolita because you want to not because its pop­u­lar or to become pop­u­lar. In the end, dress­ing up should be fun, not a chore!

Loli-Oriented Busi­ness Own­ers– As much as I want to say cre­ate items because you want to, don’t for­get the busi­ness aspect. The major­ity of shop own­ers who own phys­i­cal shops close down due to poor man­ag­ing. In other words they did not fig­ure out how to pro­mote, orga­nize, and profit from their busi­ness. When mak­ing your cre­ations, write down how much you spend on sup­plies, and labor, and fig­ure out your prices from that. Don’t sell some­thing at a low price to just sell, there is no point in sell­ing some­thing you are not prof­it­ing form. You might as well keep it for your­self. That being said, you don’t want to cre­ate some­thing and sell it and be of poor qual­ity. remem­ber you are basi­cally sell­ing your rep­u­ta­tion on each piece. You want to be rep­utable, so make sure your items do not break down eas­ily. If they do, fig­ure out new ways to keep them in tact. Lastly, lis­ten to your cus­tomers, they know what they want, and will help you tell you what works and what doesn’t sell.

(Sorry this was so late! I’ve been doing noth­ing but run­ning around for Christ­mas with fam­ily and work­ing. I haven’t had time to just sit at the com­puter and blog these past two weeks. Hope­fully it slows down a bit. )

Can you intro­duce your­self to us, please?

My name is Clau­dia and I own a cute only shop. I’m mar­ried and have a 2 year old son. I love fairykei, lolita fash­ion, and most of all cute things.

How did you get into Lolita and where did it lead you?

I got in to lolita last year. I wore my first out­fit on Anime Expo 2010.

What inspires your drive for the fashion?

My inspi­ra­tion comes mostly from cute things. I take one theme and go with it.

 

What is your favorite brand and why?

Oh god. I have to say Angelic Pretty. Well, first of all I love all their sweets prints. The dress are so col­or­ful and pretty. The laces are so unique. I love there how they trim their laces.

Where does your unique style come from? What really makes it you?

It usu­ally comes from fairy-Kei. I add pieces that fits my per­son­al­ity and what makes me happy. Mostly my art­work inspired my wardrobe.

What’s the name of your busi­ness and where can I find it? My name of my busi­ness is KawaiiGoods.Com

What inspires your designs?
My inspi­ra­tion comes in my dreams. If I have a dream about space I sketch it and from there. Fash­ion inspires me too. I just go through the trends of music of what’s hot now and make prod­ucts that relate in cer­tain seasons.

Can you tell us what lead you to design?

about 4 years ago, i saw a cute site. I really don’t remem­ber the name. I notice she would draw cute char­ac­ters of mon­keys, bears and so on. So it lead me to make my own cute characters.

 

Any advice for loli-newbies or first time loli-oriented busi­ness own­ers?
My advice for loli-newbies is to be your­self. Also, it’s good to have a awe­some friends with you when you go to lolita mee­tups. For busi­ness own­ers my advice is to be patient. Patience is the key to build a per­fect business.