January is wardrobe month, the time of year when most lolitas take time to photograph and document their wardrobes. Of course, I couldn’t do something nearly that simple, so I decided I’d aggregate data for the 2021 releases from Angelic Pretty, Baby the Stars Shine Bright, Innocent World, Moi-Meme-Moitie, and Metamorphose Temps de Fille and see what trends I could find. You know, just normal Sunday morning things. If you’d like to see the data, you can check out my Google Sheet here.
There’s a lot of info to go through, so I’m breaking this up into a few different blog posts. Up first: Angelic Pretty and Baby the Stars Shine Bright.
Disclaimers and caveats: I do not own most of these pieces and cannot guarantee the sizing information is accurate. I may have missed items that weren’t in Lolibrary.
Method: I entered every item in Lolibrary from 2021 in the OP, JSK, and skirt categories. I excluded sets, and instances where a single release had multiple colors with separate entries. I copied the name of the item, the measurements, the price, and the link exactly as it appeared in Lolibrary. In cases of obvious error, I looked up the specific info on the brand’s website.
Angelic Pretty
Total pieces released: 114
JSK: 54
OP: 53
Skirt: 7
Lowest price: ¥15800
Highest Price: ¥330,000
Average: ¥ 28682.83186 (removing the obvious outliers)
While I knew that many people had complained about Angelic Pretty’s constant releases, it was astonishing to see the sheer amount of pieces they released in a year. 114 releases in a year means they were releasing roughly 2 dresses a week for every week of the year! That’s a pace that even the most dedicated lolita can’t hope to keep up with.
Moreover, Angelic Pretty’s released contained only 3 releases for busts 120 cm and above (3% of their releases), and only 22 pieces for busts 100 cm and above (20% of their releases) while they had about 66 items with 80 waist and above (58% of their releases). Angelic Pretty isn’t known for being size inclusive, but even so, size range seemed surprisingly low.
My takeaways from these numbers? Don’t get too caught up in the FOMO of an Angelic Pretty release, because they release waaay more dresses than any human could hope to wear or own. You can count on spending above $250 in if you want the average AP piece, so make sure that you’re budgeting correctly for one of their releases. Lastly, their limited sizing means that their larger sizes will be more sought after. Given the blood baths that still happen with AP releases, it seems like despite their shortcomings, they know exactly what they’re doing.
Baby the Stars Shine Bright
Total pieces released: 84
JSK: 54
OP: 24
Skirt: 5
Lowest price: ¥18,480
Highest Price: ¥418,000
Average: ¥36,193 (removing the obvious outliers)
Thought it isn’t captured in the data, Baby’s releases this year also included lots of rereleases in the form of special sets. There were multiple versions of the Karami and Baby Doll as part of lucky packs or special sets. Given the popularity of these pieces, it seems like Baby will continue to rerelease them as long as people keep buying them.
While Baby released a lot of pieces, they were still far below Angelic Pretty in total releases. Also interesting to note that the most popular cut for them was a JSK. It’s sad that not every release gets a skirt release, but I think they just don’t sell very well. Baby released one piece with bust size over 120 cm, and only 16 pieces with bust 100 cm and above.
Bottom line? Baby’s releases happen pretty frequently, and their average price is higher than AP’s by nearly $100. If you want one of their releases, make sure you’re budgeting around $350. Baby also has limited options for busts over 100 cm, so plus size lolitas may need to pay for alterations or have more luck with indie brands or Metamorphose.
If you found this research helpful, please consider supporting me on Kofi.
Yes, I love data posts like this! One because they appeal to my own data nerd, but two – because now we can point to tangible numbers to say that brands target certain sizes more than others. And that’s before we get into the advertised size vs real life fit. I am now curious how Meta and MmM will fare, they’ve both done more in that regard (or, at least with MmM, appear to).
As a writer, I definitely find these sorts of posts don’t come naturally to me, but I agree that’s it’s helpful to have actual data when we want to talk about trends in lolita fashion. If you ever have a data driven project you’re interested in, please let me know! I know having a few people to do data entry would speed up the process.