Reykjavík Grapevine - 11.10.2013, Qupperneq 25

25 Culture
B O R G R E S TA U R A N T  P Ó S H Ú S S T R Æ T I 9  1 1  1 0 1 R E Y K J AV Í K
T E L : + 3 5 4  5 7 8  2 0 2 0  I N F O  B O R GRESTAURANT . I S  W W W. B O R GRESTAURANT . I S
“Out of this world!!!”
“It certainly was the best of the many places we dined in Reykjavik!”
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MADE IN ICELAND www.jswatch.com
With his legendary concentration and 45 years of experience our Master
Watchmaker ensures that we take our waterproofing rather seriously.
Gilbert O. Gudjonsson, our Master Watchmaker and renowned craftsman,
inspects every single timepiece before it leaves our workshop.
THE FRESHEST FISH ....AND IDEAS!
SKÓLAVÖR!USTÍGUR 14 - 101 REYKJAVÍK - 571 1100
A"er years of study,
strings of awards and
having led kitchens of
some of Reykjavík’s most
esteemed restaurants,
Gústav still sees him
self as just a kid from
up north, with a life-
time passion for fish.
of art to remind yourself that there are
narrow-minded idiots out there and
that you rise above their ignorance.”
For the Iceland Lolitas, approval
isn’t a real problem, but finding each
other was a convoluted process. When
Sigga was studying abroad in Japan,
she posted a message online, be-
moaning the fact that she didn’t know
any other Lolitas in Iceland. Mya, who
was actually living in the U.S. at the
time, saw the post and quickly con-
tacted Aino: “I told her, ‘Quick! There’s
an Icelandic Lolita who’s lonely and
abandoned!’”
“It was a match made in heaven
when we started talking,” says Sigga,
a former fashion design student now
studying Japanese at the University of
Iceland. Things progressed easily once
everyone was in the same country: the
community has now expanded be-
yond an online group and has regular
monthly meet ups in member homes
and local cafes.
“The only trouble here in Iceland,”
says Aino, reminiscing on her favourite
group outings in Finland, “is that we
can’t have picnics.”
“Maybe if we had a big tent we
could have a picnic,” Sigga suggests.
“Lolita camping!”

Making the cake
Lolita, which takes its inspiration from
Victorian and Rococo aesthetics, be-
gan as a street fashion in Japan in the
1980s, and has since gained worldwide
popularity. While there are many dif-
ferent styles of Lolita—including Sweet
(a frilly, child-like aesthetic), Aristo-
crat (a more “mature” style, with long
skirts and corsets), Classic (English
garden party meets Lewis Carroll) and
the Gothic (dark, rich colours, puffed
sleeves, and elegant, Victorian-styled
details), which the Iceland Lolitas’ pre-
fer —Mya is quick to point out that it
is absolutely possible to “do it wrong.”
Aino, Mya, and Sigga obviously
share an aesthetic, but their own taste
and stylistic preferences are clear.
For instance, while Mya and Sigga
are wearing “brand” clothes, Aino is
wearing a frock of her own creation:
a pinafore dress made from black
checkerboard fabric with all manner of
cakes happily striping across it. To this,
she’s matched a sheer tie-collar shirt,
opaque black lace tights, and a pair of
white patent leather Mary Janes. A tal-
ented seamstress, Aino loves unique
and textured fabrics and makes most
of her own Lolita clothes. Her dresses,
along with made-to-order bonnets
from the U.S. and stacks of elegant ki-
mono, fill a large wardrobe standing in
the entrance of her apartment.
Contrasting with Mya’s demure,
cream-toned outfit, Sigga is dressed
in black from head to toe. Her own
pinafore has a Victorian-style tie bod-
ice and is patterned with dark red and
pink roses; she’s tied a modest black
lace headdress (much like a wide,
rectangular headband) atop her hair.
Both she and Aino are wearing hair-
pieces—clip-on bangs they bought
online from a Korean wig company
and which, they show me, comb quite
indistinguishably into their real hair.
As the ladies explain, although Lo-
litas each have their own styles, there
are a whole host of rules—strict rules—
that one must adhere to in order to be
a proper Lolita. The basic elements of a
Lolita outfit, I discover later after some
intensive Googling, include headwear,
a bell-shaped skirt or jumper which
covers the knees, a blouse, bloomers
and/or petticoats, high socks or tights,
and closed, rounded-toe shoes. “Co-
ordinating a Lolita outfit is a bit like
making a cake,” explains the website
lolitafashion.org. “You can take away
or replace a couple of ingredients, but
if you take away the butter, the sugar,
and the milk, it just stops being cake.”
When I ask how they get their skirts
to be so poofy, all three women stand
up, as if on cue, and lift their skirts to
display ornate petticoats and bloom-
ers. “This is the only time you’ll see
Lolitas do this type of thing,” Aino
laughs. “If someone has a really good
poof, sooner or later, there’ll be a Lolita
peeking up her skirt.”
Forget Nabokov
It might be tempting to see Lolita cul-
ture as nothing but dress up, but Aino,
Mya, and Sigga all see it as something
legitimately meaningful and deeply
integral to their growth as individuals,
and if the name “Lolita” brings to mind
over-sexed underage girls, á la Nabo-
kov, think again. (I’m told that this con-
notation simply didn’t occur to the first
Japanese practitioners.)
Lolitas vehemently eschew modern
fashion trends, which they perceive as
being unnecessarily revealing. “It’s a
modest style that lets you be super, su-
per feminine without looking cheap,”
explains Aino. Additionally, Lolita basi-
cally reverses Western female beauty
aesthetics, exaggerating the hips, and
minimizing the breasts. “The dresses
tend to flatten you on top,” said Aino.
“It can be difficult for Western women,
we tend to be quite boobsome. But if
your breasts are too obvious, you just
look like a ‘50s housewife.” Where
modern fashion focuses on sexiness,
Lolitas instead devote themselves to
elegance, both in fashion and daily life.
Tucking away another pancake
and cream, I’m reminded of Oulipian
constraints: poems composed accord-
ing to mathematical equations, books
written without using the letter ‘e.’ Lo-
lita culture is beholden to all sorts of
rules and formulas and internal scru-
tiny, but it is also fanciful and playful
and, as they freely admit, incredibly
hermetic—replete with acronyms and
terms and status symbols which are
virtually unintelligible to the uninitiat-
ed. The three women cheerfully bandy
about sentence-length brand names
and spritely vocab while describing
coveted haute couture dress styles,
which many Lolitas rabidly track down
as collectors’ items. I’m left with the
fashion equivalent of a sugar high,
dizzily grasping at the kaleidoscopic
words and phrases as they float by:
Baby, the Stars Shine Bright. Puppet
Circus. Vampire Requiem. Twinkle
Mermaid. Alice and the Pirates. Sug-
ary Carnival. Revolutionary Revolution.
Colorways. Fragrant Rose Memories.
But, lest you think Lolitas are in
any way exclusionary, the ladies also
point out that they welcome men as
well as women. One of Lolita’s main
celebrities is a man: Mana, a Japa-
nese musician and designer who has
his own clothing brand and coined
the term “Elegant Gothic Lolita.” And
there are plenty of regular “Brolitas,”
as well—both transgendered women
and also men “who just really like to
wear dresses.” Provided that you are
an earnest and rule-abiding member,
Mya says, you’ll be accepted in the Lo-
lita community: “If you’re doing it right,
we want you.”
“Coordinating a Lolita
outfit is a bit like mak-
ing a cake, but if you
take away the butter, the
sugar, and the milk, it
just stops being cake.”