⊹₊♔₊⊹How I Discovered EGL Fashion (Thanks to My Haunted AF House)⊹₊♔₊⊹

Do you live in a haunted house? Do you ever wish your house ghosts did something useful like pay rent or do chores? What if I told you my house’s ghosts inadvertently helped me discover a Japanese fashion that would totally change my life? 

Well, for my second blog post I decided I wanted to talk about how I discovered EGL fashion- all thanks to my obsessions with anime, Alice in Wonderland, and my extremely haunted house. So, without further ado, this is how I discovered EGL fashion, or more accurately, that time the stupid ghosts in my house helped me discover a niche Japanese fashion by terrorizing the hell out of me.         

I suppose it’s best to start from the beginning. For my whole life I’ve been able to sense paranormal entities, ghosts, energy, or whatever else you want to call it. I know this sounds like an absolutely insane claim, and I can assure you that I’ve been to mental health professionals and that I do not have anything that would cause me to hallucinate paranormal activity. Because of this ability(?), I’ve had an unusually high amount of encounters with the paranormal, some being not too bad and some being utterly terrifying. Unfortunately for me, my childhood home also happens to be extremely haunted, so growing up I had a lot of creepy experiences. I tried to tell my parents what was going on but was totally dismissed, which only made it worse because now not only was I experiencing something extremely terrifying, I was experiencing it alone. So how does this relate to discovering EGL fashion? 

Most of the time I was able to cohabitate with the ghosts in my home and they were reasonably if not totally ignorable, but for whatever reason sometimes one specific ghost would make its presence incredibly obvious, usually at night after I’d gone to bed. I could always tell when that ghost would show up because I’d start feeling physically watched despite nothing visually being there. Despite nothing ever physically trying to bother me, it was an incredibly creepy feeling nonetheless so on those nights I’d grab my pillow and sprint to the other side of the house where my parents’ room was. However, since they were very much at the time still firmly under the impression that I was not experiencing anything truly paranormal, I knew if I tried to wake them up I’d get sent back to my room, so I’d go to sleep on the couch and just lie and say I had a nightmare in the morning when they asked. 

It was on one of those nights where the ghosts were particularly active, so I grabbed my things and ran to the couch where, shocker, I couldn’t sleep because I’d just been bothered by a paranormal entity. At the time I was around 13 years old and Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland had just come out. Between that and reading manga like Pandora Hearts, I was totally obsessed with anime fashion and Alice in Wonderland aesthetics. As I tried to fall back asleep, I decided to look up anime fashion on my iPod to try to calm down and get some inspiration for some DIY projects. After some scrolling, I came across a grey lolita JSK with card suits on it. I instantly fell in love. I adored how it looked like something someone from Wonderland would wear, and everything from the ruffles and bows to the voluminous, almost gravity-defying skirt gave the dress that fantastical “anime” look I was so obsessed with. At this point I was also interested in gothic fashion so the grey x black colorway totally sold me.
Here is the dress in question:

While in hindsight it isn't the best JSK ever, teenage me was hooked. Compared to the boring and simple clothes I was so tired of seeing in my small town, this dress was everything I’d ever wanted. It was detailed, gothic, frilly, and just utterly adorable in contrast to the bland clothes I was tired of wearing. I needed to find more of the style, so after looking into the image I discovered lolita fashion and stayed up far too late looking at photos and doing more research. I learned about petticoats and lolita brands, watched videos on YouTube, and even told my mom about it, explaining that the fashion had nothing to do with the book. She was highly supportive of me being interested in a doll-like, modest fashion and before long I used my savings to buy my first dress: a red plaid patterned punk lolita JSK. It wasn’t at all a good first dress- my mother may have been supportive, but she wasn’t willing to let me buy a dress off a Japanese site so I had to pick something off of a more accessible platform… like eBay . Despite it being totally ita, I loved my dress and wore it proudly until I slowly learned more about quality and my sense of style and was able to save up for more legit pieces.

If you’re wondering about how I’m doing now in regards to the ghost stuff, I’m doing pretty well. I can still absolutely tell if something is haunted, but my parents seem to more or less believe me these days, and since I’ve moved out of my childhood home I don’t have to deal with the ghosts too much as my current place isn’t haunted. Over the years I’ve become quite fascinated with Japanese folklore, hearing people’s personal stories about encountering the paranormal, and ghost tours/“ghost hunting” at haunted locations, mostly because I’m able to explore historic locations with fewer people around, even if it feels a little silly when you’re pretty certain nothing’s there

And that, my friends, is the story of how the ghosts in my haunted house inadvertently helped me discover lolita fashion. Fifteen years later and I still absolutely adore EGL and the lifestyle it has helped me create. I’d like to think my fashion sense has improved since my first try at EGL, especially now that I have adult money and can buy things straight from Japan!

If you’re still reading, thank you! I’m using my blog to talk about EGL life, 2010s anime nostalgia, and all sorts of other things relating to Japan, so if that interests you please consider friending me! Until next time, stay spooky!