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The search of Eternal Rose Garden and Otome Nostalgia lore!!
When you're doing something creative, ideas can come in many forms. I separate them into two (well, three):
1 -Ecstatic visions, 2- those that arise from a dialogue with the world, and 3- those that are a mix of both.
Ecstatic visions appear "out of nowhere." Sometimes you're in a car, at the supermarket, and an image pops up like a tiny green shoot in spring. It's nothing concrete; sometimes it's just colors, textures, or words. But they appear like a flash in your mind, and from that flash, you grab your notebook and put it down. It's like those thoughts you have before going to sleep, which always seem brilliant but almost never are. And the same thing happens with the ideas for prints that the gods deliver to my brain: many times they're awful ideas. And of course, I'm not so presumptuous as to believe they come to me out of nowhere; I simply don't have a good memory, and then things get stored in my head and come back to me at a random moment.
That's why there's a second category: dialogue. I consider dialogue ideas to be like a historical conversation with yourself and the world. It might seem like copying, and I suppose everyone draws the line differently on what constitutes copying versus inspiration. For me, the idea for Otome Nostalgia was a mix of both, because the ecstatic vision that originally came to me was probably—in bad taste, with a certain cultural appropriation of Japan and its history, or at least a lack of understanding of the subject.
The image that appeared one day, while I was organizing shelves in the warehouse of the store where I work, was the concept "Hiroshima, 1960." It stemmed from a visit I'd made a few years earlier to Hiroshima, where I had a friend, accordionist Izumi Goto, who ran a small kissaten café in true Ghibli style called Organza. (Side note: the Black Cat Cabaret necklace from Gurotesque Melancholia is also inspired by my time at Organza.)
Organza was frequented by Lolitas and people from various subcultures, including burlesque performers, and they engaged in a wide variety of activities, from live music to nude model painting. It was a bohemian scene that captivated me far more than the polished Tea Parties hosted by big brands in luxurious cafes. Being Hiroshima a small city, the subcultures blended together more seamlessly.
That place had a profound impact on me, especially since I visited it when I was 17 with some older Lolitas from my city, and it was foundational in shaping my way of life, or at least my understanding of Lolita fashion.
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Foto Google Maps
At Organza, there was an entrance staircase (like in so many Japanese establishments that are either underground or upstairs due to lack of space) and the hallway walls were covered with posters from the Showa era and various lolita shows. They were broken and dusty, and with the nostalgia that lingers around Hiroshima after the events of World War II, they came to mind as those prototypical urbex images I associate with disaster sites, like Chernobyl, for example. And the image of an urbex room came to mind, filled with posters like those and dolls in 1960s fashion. Keep in mind that Sumire didn't exist here yet, and I brought any concept to the horror side of it to fit into Violet's vibe.
Then I thought about it more and realized it might be in bad taste or romanticize decadence and nuclear disasters—topics that are honestly best left unmixed with fashion. But honestly, Asylum doesn't have much better taste, but.... well.
The ecstatic vision lingered there, thinking, "Damn, girl, you're edgy..." but the feeling of a 1960s Japanese children's bedroom remained as something floating around.
And that's where I come in with what I call the dialogue. At that time, we were experiencing an incipient old-school lolita revival that began a little before the pandemic (around 2018, when I was designing it), and when I say dialogue in design, that's what I mean. Seeing that the community was in a moment of reflection and reclaiming the past, I thought, okay, but how does that reflection and reclaiming reflect in my case, in lolita fashion? And that's when the Japanese girl's room from the 60s became MY girl's room.
When I started with lolita, there was a kind of denial that lolita and manga had nothing to do with each other (a bit of a black-and-white view of the subject), and I really needed to make peace with the otaku girl, because I suppose that to differentiate itself from the otaku concept, lolita, with a certain snobbery and fear of being labeled as just wearing a costume, rejected the term in the 2000s. But the fact is that for me, some shojo manga were vital in my desire to be a lolita.
Otome Nostalgia became the print in which I tried to find the eternal rose garden, the girl who adored the rococo because she had seen it in Candy Candy, Georgie, and the Rose of Versailles. The girl who wanted to be Utena, Sakura, and Magical Doremi.
Inside the print, there are some specific references from those anime, and also more niche things like the fake Lacrosse Club poster, which comes from my favorite childhood anime: The St. Claire Twins (who played lacrosse). If I owe Violet Fane's preppy boarding school aesthetic to anyone, it's because that series shaped my identity, a purely feminine world at a time when the world was trying to define us as girlfriends, daughters, or future wives. And I always say that Lolita fashion was the refuge that allowed us to have a purely feminine world at an age when I couldn't bear the thought of wanting to be attractive to men; it was armor. But in reality, the ingredients that wove that armor—childhood, beauty, and softness—were already present in the manga.
There are a lot of toys in the print. I've seen most of them in Japan in old-fashioned candy shops; there used to be more, but I don't think there are many anymore. These kinds of shops are called "Dagashi."
And they usually have very cheap toys that look very retro.
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I also have very fond memories of Pose Dolls, dolls that were very popular in the 60s and captured that passion for the Rococo style, often wearing skirts with enormous hoops. The first one I saw was at the home of a Lolita much older than me, and it was the first realization I have of my Lolita journey: "Hey, Lolita is much more than just Lolita; the love for the Rococo in Japan goes way back." It comes from an overpopulation of women because so many men died in the war, it comes from the domino effect of wanting to make content for those waiting women, it comes from the wave of feminism that Ryoko Ikeda or Moto Hagio were part of (the so-called 24 group), and therefore, it also comes from queer culture (Moto Hagio made the first Yaoi, Ryoko Ikeda was part of the Communist Party or Ryoko Yamagishi made the first Yuri) so for me lolita was like the final commodification of that root, but for me they are ideologues, although indirect/unconscious ideologues.
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These series were so popular that magazines started making small furokku, or gifts, a tradition that continues almost to the present day in magazines like Ribbon/Nakayoshi. For me, those are indirectly the first Lolita fashion items, because they sometimes made bracelets, purses, and other little things that, as a child, shaped how I wanted to dress. Lolita fashion extended that possibility, so with Otome Nostalgia, I wanted to extend the possibility of dressing up with items that might look like a magazine furokku.
And since I needed to express all of that, I realized. Okay, but what does it have to do with Violet Fane, which is sometimes super creepy, sometimes very Western-centric… It even has steampunk or very, very gothic elements—isn't it too kawaii?
Some people have told me they see the connection between all my collections, but honestly, I didn't see it at the time. That's why I decided this idea deserved to start with Sumire. Because there was so much beauty left for me to explore, after so many years in the haunted house of Violet Fane.
And that's why I dedicated Sumire to talking about the things I feel shaped Lolita fashion, instead of bringing my own special interests from outside into Lolita (like Lovecraft or Victorian asylums). So it's not that Sumire is exactly a Sweet brand and Violet a gothic one, but rather that Sumire nourishes from our own history as Lolitas, and Violet has a Lolita base to which I've tried to add external elements.
There are still many important themes in EGL history that I want to explore, and I also have many other special interests that might ridiculously blend with Lolita fashion, so I hope I can continue designing for many more years! Thank you if you read this and make it possible!!
What do you think about this? Tell me about your favorite shojo manga... do you agree that the authors are somehow part of the Lolita scene, or not? I need to know if these are just my own thoughts!!
Magdalena
Violet Fane
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