My Experience at Leeds Alternative Market by Leeds Festival of Gothica

Today I joined Leeds EGL Community at the Leeds Alternative Market. They had a stall at the market, which featured several Gothic and Lolita Bibles, as well as some other books relating to lolita fashion. It was a really exciting day for me, not just because I got to think hard about my coord, but also because I would be meeting another online friend from the lolita community. I'd been really worried that the storm would end up cancelling our plans, but as a great relief, the trains were running and everyone made it there safe.

After much thought, I eventually decided what to choose for my coord for this. I realised that being on my feet the whole time while wearing heels was going to be way too tiring, and that I probably wouldn't want to switch between different shoes. So I went for my most chunky boot kinda outfit that I'd planned in order to just wear my New Rocks.

This outfit was made up mostly of the Atelier Pierrot X Heli-X Collaboration items. I ended up not wearing the cape from the set, since it was fairly chilly, I wore my coat instead. Despite being made up of modern items, I wanted to go for a bit of an old-school gothic feel with this coord, so I stuck on the striped tights and then balanced them in with the white rosary.

I wanted to bring my LaLuice Bunny Bag on yet another adventure, so this was the bag I chose. I added a red bow from my Physical Drop lace romantica dress, so that he could match. This meant that he was extra handsome today. A truly stylish bunny.

I ended up heading off a little earlier than most people, but I managed to grab a few pictures with my friends, so I was really happy, since now I have some photos to remember today by.

One of my friends mentioned that she was looking to print some of her pictures off and I thought that this was a really inspiring idea. I think it would be really cool to make a lolita meetups photo album that I can flick through in real life, and I was actually talking about it with my nan a few weeks ago, since she asked me whether I had been putting one together for my lolita meets.

Unfortunately, last time I wanted to put together a photo album, I couldn't find one with the kind of quality I want from my photo albums. My older family all have really high quality old photo albums from decades ago and I just love how heavy they feel and how high quality the paper is, but it's so incredibly expensive to find a photo album with this level of quality nowadays. Perhaps this could be a project that I start to put together next year, though.

Here are a couple more pictures.

I had a lot of fun looking around the stalls in a group. There were a lot of interesting things to look at, my particular favourite items were the vintage and antique furniture (such as the mirror in the picture above), however I also really liked some handmade capelets that I saw. I also enjoyed looking at a lot of the old jewellery, since there were some really interesting pieces.

The item of the day for this market meet was definitely the corsets from the stall in the picture above - in the time I was there, at least 3 people bought corsets from the stall there. And I don't blame them, since the corsets were beautiful - even I was tempted by a purple corset with some gorgeous beading on it.

Random items from stalls, which I took photos of

I took a few photos while I was walking around, of items that caught my eye. I didn't take pictures of everything I liked - since after a while I started feeling really worn out, and didn't want to take any more pictures - but I collected quite a few cards as I went around.

I think one of the items I was most excited about here was the gore-sages. They weren't called that on the stall, but they were corsages with a gore theme. I thought they would look incredibly cool with a guro coordinate. The person who made these also made a lot of other accessories, such as bags that appeared as though they were made of flesh. There was also what appeared to be a gory wedding dress, which was seriously cool, and felt like much better execution than the H.Naoto bloody wedding dresses (though a very different style). You can see just the corner of it in the picture there.

Another thing I photographed was the sword earrings. The person in the group knowledgeable about ouji fashion, mentioned that these kinds of earrings work really well when worn in an asymmetrical style as part of a coord for ouji coordinates. Since I recently purchased a pair of shorts from HERHUM, I thought it would be a good idea to start collecting inspiration. I know I can put together a basic coord in this style, but I wanted to also think about ways in which to make this kind of style really shine. So far my biggest inspiration for this sort of style is this picture of Satsuki from the Atelier Pierrot Instagram account.

All of the people I met at the market were very friendly, although I find that people on stalls at markets where people sell their own handmade goods are usually very friendly, this time there was not just interaction with people on the stalls, but also a lot of interaction with people in between the stalls, who were also quite friendly. It was a really welcoming experience but now I can definitely say that I've worn out my energy for talking to people for the rest of this weekend.

Oh, and if you noticed that my hair is a lot shorter at the front since my last entry - yes! I cut it. I generally prefer to keep this hair short, since I prefer how it looks and it bothers me when it starts to get into my eyes. However I hadn't been keeping up with cutting it for a while. I'd been due a cut so since my plans were cancelled last night, I just cut it then. I know a short fringe like this isn't to everyone's taste but it is just how I like to have my hair, and I felt like it was a nice style for an alternative market.