Spring Break Part 2: A Lolita Fashion Makeover and Starry Parfaits

Our second full day in Tokyo was spent doing lolita shopping. Lolita fashion (NOT the book) is a super cute style of fashion in Japan.

The Wikipedia article about it is pretty good: "Lolita fashion (ロリータ・ファッション Rorīta fasshon^?) is a fashion subculture originating in Japan that is based on Victorian-era clothing, but the style has expanded greatly beyond Japan. The Lolita look began primarily as one of modesty with a focus on quality in both material and manufacture of garments. The original silhouette is of a knee length skirt or dress with a "cupcake" shape assisted by petticoats, but has expanded into various types of garments including corsets and floor length skirts. Blouses, knee high socks or stockings and headdresses are also worn. Lolita fashion has evolved into several different sub styles and has a subculture that is present in many parts of the world."

First we started our day off in Shinjuku at Marui Annex, which has several lolita brand stores. My favorites are Baby the Stars Shine Bright and Angelic Pretty. The clothing is expensive, but it's still a lot of fun to look.

Photos aren't allowed in stores, but here are a couple of pictures from some of my magazines so that you can see what the brands are like:

I didn't buy any clothing, but we did shop in a store with a bunch of artwork post cards. I bought a few postcards and a button.

It was raining, and we weren't really thinking about it, so we didn't get any pictures outside of Marui Annex. So we have no pictures from our morning in Shinjuku.

We decided to eat at Shakey's, a pizza buffet, for lunch. We first went to the one in Shinjuku, but the line was long so we decided to try the one in Harajuku since we were going there next anyways. It worked out well because there wasn't a line at that location.

I looked up Shakey's on Wikipedia the other day and learned that it started in America. I'm not really surprised!

The slice on the left was strawberry chocolate chip marshmallow pizza. Yuumy!

After lunch we went to Laforet (another department store with several lolita stores) because we had a reservation at Maison de Julietta (click the name to visit their English site), which is a super awesome lolita makeover place. I found it when Lauren and I were looking for places to try on kimonos. I was thinking about how there should be a place to try on lolita clothing and take pictures. So I did a Google search and was super excited to find a place! I emailed them and got a reservation even though it wasn't that far in advance. I've heard that reservations on weekends fill up really quickly though. So if you want to do it, I suggest doing in further in advance just to be safe. Also, I emailed them in (probably horrible) Japanese and one of the replies was in English, so I think you can probably just email them in English. It took them a few days to get back to me so don't worry if it takes a little while.

In Laforet there was a Disney thing going on. There were four themed areas set up for taking pictures so we of course took advantage of that.

We took pictures and looked in the lolita stores while we waited for four o'clock when our reservation was.

The makeover was soooo much fun! It was my favorite thing that we did during our trip!

We started out by picking out our dresses. As soon as I saw the super frilly Baby the Stars Shine Bright dress I pretty much knew that would be the one. So princessy! Then I changed into the dress, picked out a wig, and they did my makeup. While waiting for the photographer to be ready, one of the girls working there took several pictures with my own camera.

I just looked this dress up on Baby the Stars Shine Bright's website and found out that it costs 60,480 yen including tax. So expensive! But the details on it really are amazing.

Then, the photographer (he was really awesome!) took my pictures while Lauren was getting her hair and makeup done. Then Lauren and I had a few pictures taken together and then Lauren had her single pictures taken.

Lauren's dress was also Baby the Stars Shine Bright.

Our photos were available online 10 days later. We only got three free downloads and extra photos were 1,000 yen a piece. That seemed really pricey to me so I decided to just get the free downloads. I was able to capture the others on my screen. They're not as good of quality, but they're not horrible. But the actual downloads will be better for printing out I think.

At the end when we paid we each got a really cute cookie. The taste was bland, but I actually liked the crunchy icing though I think Lauren thought it was bad.

I definitely recommend Maison de Julietta if you're interested in trying lolita fashion. Name brand dresses are a couple hundred dollars and then for the blouse and shoes and and everything it would get really pricey to buy a complete outfit. The makeover was still a bit pricey (a little over 10,000 yen, but I thought it was worth it) but it's way cheaper than putting it all together yourself. Plus you get your makeup done and a professional photo shoot. They took about 30 pictures of each of us.

After our super kawaii makeovers we walked around and took a few more Disney photos before heading over to Takeshita street.

It was almost six o'clock by then and the street was a lot less crowded than it is during the day.

We found a random side street that led to a restaurant and didn't really fit the surroundings.

Lauren and I visited the capsule store. Well, that's not it's name, but I don't know what it is. They sell a bunch of boy band and teen idol merchandise and have a bunch of gachapon machines. Lauren and I both did a Matsujun capsule machine and got horrible keychains.

So much quieter than during the day!!!

We went in Bodyline (a low-end / knockoff lolita store) and Closet Child (used lolita clothing) before eating dinner. We went to Caffe Solare, an Italian restaurant that we had been to during Lauren's last visit to Japan. We both got regular spaghetti with big chunks of mozzarella. I would usually go for something a bit different, but... cheese!!!

We didn't go to McDonald's then, but I liked the sakura stuff.

Stores were closing in Harajuku so next we went to Ikebukuro to go to Bookoff. But first we saw Milky Way Cafe and decided to get parfaits.

The parfaits are based off the zodiac, but there are 13 so I was confused. I looked it up and it's a thing that didn't originate in Japan, but it became popular here.