Lolita taxonomy is hard. By documenting and verbalizing the styles we love, we preserve them, give ourselves bases from which to experiment, and make them easy to pass on. Even though lolita is an incredibly organized, well documented fashion, there are still major disagreements as to what deserves to be a substyle and what's just a theme. For those unfamiliar with lolita terms, a substyle is one of the major divisions (usually gothic lolita, sweet lolita, and classic lolita, the big three), while a theme is a set of motifs that coordinates can use (sailor lolita, country lolita, and military lolita, to name just a few).
Bittersweet lolita, punk lolita, ero lolita, and old school lolita are all points of contention that seem to never resolve. In this post, I'll discuss bittersweet and punk, and next post, I'll discuss ero and old school.