Experiments in Ouji: Leakey's Bookshop

This is more content from last year that I should have uploaded then, but didn't have time to do. It's a fashion post, and I guess analysing my outfits probably won't be of interest to everyone, but I'm trying to chart my journey as I improve at Lolita, Ouji, Aristo and other Japanese street fashions, which are a bit more structured and have a degree of expected polish that I'm not quite achieving yet. 

[Last year] My friend Luna hosted a meet up for the local Lolita community as part of her birthday celebrations, and I thought I would try wearing Ouji. For those who don't already know, Ouji is the more 'masculine' twin to Lolita fashion, with the name Ouji-Kei meaning 'Prince-Style'. I find this a little more comfortable and practical to wear than Lolita as it doesn't involve skirts with lots of petticoats. I'm wearing

☠ a cheap wig from eBay*

☠ 'Blood Moon' pendant from Alchemy Gothic (second-hand)

☠ Punk Rave jabot

☠ Punk Rave waistcoat 

☠ Bat lapel pin I bought second-hand

☠ Spin-doctor blouse

☠ Fair trade velvet wrist-warmers from 'FarFetched' in Inverness

☠ Red & black lace gloves (can't remember where I got them)

☠ Alchemy Gothic bracelet, can't remember the name of the bloody thorns set. 

☠ Belt from a charity shop 

☠ Vintage Marks & Spencer's trousers

☠ Boots from a charity shop.

☠ Nemesis now dragon cane. 

*bought cheap so I didn't feel bad messing it up with my first attempt at wig styling.

Not a vampire, not a library!
First set of photographs, taken by my Lolita friends.

There are two sets of photos, one set taken on the day, but which suffered from poor lighting as the book-shop is deliberately a bit dingy to make it less glaring for shoppers, and the second set taken a little bit later, when I was re-working the outfit. I asked permission from the chap who runs the shop if I could have photographs taken on the upper gallery, where there's usually fewer shoppers, and is a quiet and aesthetic part of the shop. Please check ::here:: for a pos tshowing the interior of Leakey's as a whole, and ::here:: for the Leakey's FaceBook page.

I changed which jabot I wore between the two sets of photographs - I liked the volume of the large Punk Rave one I wore in the second set better than the smaller hand-made one I wore in the first set. 

Second set of photographs of me at Leakey's

I definitely like where I am heading with the clothes, but I think it is my hair and make-up that is letting me down. One thing I have struggled with quite a bit for Ouji is my hair and make-up. It's quite a different style to that which I'm used to, and I can't use my 'natural' hair for Ouji because the bright green hair and purple fringe doesn't suit the aesthetic. I tried wearing a short-haired wig. The wig was a bit cheap, because I wanted to have a go at styling it, and I haven't styled a wig like that before, so I didn't want to spend a lot of money only to ruin it. If you look between the two sets of photographs, you'll see that for the second time I wore it, the wig started to slip off the back of my head - my natural hair is long and voluminous, and it was too much hair for the wig, and my natural hair was pushing it off. I didn't realise this until after the photographs were taken, sadly. I have two short term options: re-dye and re-cut my natural hair into something more ouji-friendly, or get better wigs, and get someone who knows what they are doing to style them for me. The long term option is to learn to style wigs better myself, which I intend to do, but as I don't wear wigs very often, I probably won't get regular practice. 

I think this shoes the problems with the wig best

I asked for some advice on an Ouji forum, on hair and make-up - and the other criticism (and a valid and constructive one) is that my eye-makeup could have been better blended; I agree - I did it in a bit of a rush, and it's quite different to what I would normally do, so I should have taken more care and blended it better. I also think the contouring I did the first time around was something I should have done again the second time around. The wig in the photo-above is very much awkwardly sat on my head, with the bulk of my natural hair sitting under it awkwardly. I'm getting my hair cut a lot shorter in summer, anyway so perhaps my wigs will sit better on my head then. 

I like how the outfit turned out. The blouse with the gathers midway down the sleeves and slight puff at the shoulders sits nicely with the waistcoat - I'm quite happy to have found a combination of cuts like that, where the waistcoat is just narrow enough at the shoulders to let the puff of the sleeves stand above them. I'm not completely sure how much I like that specific jabot with that blouse, as the jabot really requires a collared shirt to look best, and the blouse I was wearing actually has a neck-bow under the jabot instead of a collar; I left the bow undone to avoid bulk under the jabot and tucked it into the shirt, which was a bit awkward, even if not outwardly visible. The waist-coat originally had crosses on it, but I don't feel right wearing crosses as just a fashion statement, so I took all the cross  charms off the chains and replaced them with bat-charms and skull beads ands suchlike. The boots didn't originally have trim on them, I just got two types of upholstery trim and glued them to the turn-downs at the top of the boots.

The cane is from Nemesis Now, and is a lovely dragon - he has one red eye because I chipped the handle and the eye was damaged, so I put a little glass gem in the damaged eye. It's pretty, but it's not the best support because the handle is brittle, and I think if I had to lean on it too heavily, it might crack or break. I have anterior ankle impingement, partly caused by my hypermobile ankles, and partly caused by my over-wearing of very high heels (and falling off them, partially because I'm dyspraxic and thus really clumsy...), so often if I'm walking around a lot, I'll have a cane because my ankles can really hurt sometimes - effectively my shin bones and ankle bones are pinching. I've been told to wear completely flat shoes (hence the boots) and I've got physio exercises to do at home, but I'd like to save up some money to get physiotherapy privately and regularly. Anterior ankle impingement apparently can get worse to the point where you get bone-spurs or a kind of arthritis, and I don't want that! I'm probably being a little too paranoid about making it worse, but I'd rather be paranoid and overly careful than get careless and make them significantly worse.

One thing that was mentioned on Closet of Frills was that straight legged trousers is more Aristocrat than Ouji, and that puffy shorts are more suited to Ouji - in summer, when the weather is warmer I will definitely be wearing such shorts! 

Edinburgh City Part 7: Edinburgh Castle (Interior)

In yesterday's post I covered the castle's architecture and exterior with a series of black-and-white photographs. Today I'm going to show a few photographs of the interior. In colour, to show the rich warm tones of the decor - I guess an antidote to how grey and bleak the weather can be high on the castle crag. 

Royal Palace

A big warm fire! Just not with much actual fire in it.

Apparently the room above is part of a suite of rooms which are still, to this day, used as state function rooms. I wonder if dinners are served here, or if antique furniture is brought out for people to sit around some grand table. One thing I observed was that, apart from the paneling and built-in furniture, there rooms were quite bare of tables, chairs, cabinets, etc. and I wonder how much more homely and also how much grander the rooms would have been when they had chairs on corners, tables, beautiful items on display, etc. Some of the rooms have portraits and paintings on display, but most do not. I wonder if this is because for a long time the castle was used as a military fortress rather than as a royal residence. 

Gilt panelling with fluted

I'm sure all the polished wood and gilt, as well as the polished brass plates behind the 'candles' (now replaced with electric lights designed to look a bit like candles of you squint sort of side-ways...), are all part of a carefully thought-out attempt to give the rooms a sense of brightness and warmth. My interior photography, especially with a point-and-click camera and inadequate lighting, does not do the richness of the wood justice; I presume it's all oak, and the grain has been polished (or oiled?) to perfection. 

Great Hall

The great hall was the heart of most castles, and even Edinburgh Castle, so modified for changing times over the centuries, still has its. Most of the hall is decorated with the contents of an antique armoury; swords, halberds, armour and suchlike cover every wall, some in mountings that almost seem like they're part of an actual armoury if it wasn't for the elegance of the wood-work, and some arranged in fanciful patterns on the walls. Somehow it made me think of Raven, and his collection of knives and swords (I have my own collection, too, but his is more expansive!) but this collection of matched weapons was clearly meant for a lot of guards rather than one man! There were some miniature cannons, too - I'm not sure if they were actual weapons, or symbolic decorations. The armour below is part of this display of militaria (and there's one of the mini-canons!). 

I apologise for the blur and camera shake!

Of course, the hall was not built as a military museum or an opportunity to show off a vast number of swords. People would have met here, feasted and banqueted, got tangled in the complex webs of high society and politics (very much the same thing in the times of monarchy and feudalism) and suchlike. Even dressed in my Gothic Lolita frills, I felt under-dressed for the venue (despite all the other tourists in their casual, ordinary clothes...) and sort of wished I was wearing something a bit grander - in retrospect quite a silly thing to think!

I want to sit by this window with a warm cloak and good book!

I like this window. I like the geometric pattern for the leadlights that is not just rhombuses of glass, and I like the stained glass heraldry inset, as it is colour, but not overwhelming colour that will reduce some of the light coming in (as can happen in churches, and partly why later Gothic architecture had such an emphasis on huge windows; it maximises the light AND allows for glass that does not have the clarity of modern glass, and also for stained glass). Maybe it was the weather, maybe it was reading the accounts of past resident royalty who thought the castle a cold and drear place, but I was acutely aware of how light worked in the building that day.  I quite like this nook, too; the way there's private seats in the window bay. 

I wish I had captured a few more photographs of the great hall, especially the amazing roof beams and the screens and ornately carved panelling. It is a really splendid room and I wish I had more to show my readers!

I find interiors like this and that of the National Portrait Gallery very inspiring, but it's hard to channel that inspiration when I don't live in a grand house with high ceilings and I do not have seemingly inexhaustible wealth to fund such grand things. Maybe one day, with enough time and enough patience and enough skills learnt, I could learn enough crafts and spend enough time decorating to have something splendid, but it is really nothing but a dream.