Oldschool is a Substyle Now

And I'm mad about it.

In 2021, I wrote about how old school isn't a substyle and I stand by that. However, I think that oldschool (which I'm spelling all one word for contrast) has morphed into its own subculture within the style.

Oldschoolers are a distinct subset of the lolita community; they follow different brands, talk in different chats, and adhere to different coordination philosophies than other lolitas. Oldschoolers often wear their oldschool style near exclusively, and I've seen coordinates torn to shreds for imaginary sins like mismatched sock lace. I've also heard oldschoolers reject recent styles out-of-hand, merely because they're recent. 

Notice that I use "they", not we; I still don't consider myself an oldschooler, despite wearing mostly dresses from older releases and styles. Really, I just don't feel comfortable classifying myself like that. 

Part of my discomfort stems from my age-- many oldschoolers are significantly younger than I am, and though I deeply appreciate their company when I happen into it, I don't feel drawn to spaces where I'm one of the eldest. It's especially uncomfortable when younger people historicize people who I actually know, people who still dress alternatively but in ways that oldschoolers wouldn't necessarily agree with. The oldschool community all-too-often canonizes the living through their photos as fashionable flies-in-amber, rather than engaging with them as the dynamic and multifaceted humans that they actually are. 

Another slice of discomfort is the nostalgia-poisoning in old school. Many oldschoolers stand by the byword of "quality" without interrogating what it really means.  

The fact is, lolita in the allegedly halcyon days prior to 2006 was kind of terrible for a lot of people. I'm not even going to start on the arguments over size, gender, and race inclusivity, because they've been discussed at length by people infinitely more qualified than I. No matter how skinny, pretty, or pale someone was, the fact is, brand simply wasn't something people could get without either going to Japan or directly contacting someone there.  Metamorphose was the first brand to start shipping overseas, but attitudes towards online shopping were a lot more suspicious before the rise of Amazon, and shipping would still take agonizing weeks with spotty-to-nonexistent tracking coverage. These challenges are what made Bodyline so popular-- with regular affordable stock and an English storefront, it felt like a lot less of a gamble than sending your payment to a shopping service, and certainly less intimidating than giving a LiveJournal stranger your real-life address. 

Even if you did get your hands on GLB-certified Burando, the quality wasn't guaranteed. Early brand releases used coarse upholstery florals, commercial quilting prints, and even the reverse side of special occasion fabrics alongside the more familiar twills and velveteens. Many of my dresses from the 1990s have design quirks that would be unacceptable today, like dark navy lace on a black dress or unreachable back buttons instead of a zipper, and they're not necessarily lined or constructed particularly well. I've heard a lot of negativity about the quality of Chinese brands in the past few years, but after getting my hands on dozens of main pieces from different years and countries, I can firmly say that it's well-considered material, consistent construction, and thoughtful design choices that make a piece quality, not nationality or age. Enshittification does mean that the cheapest clothing has gotten cheaper and worse over time, but taking into account inflation and different median wages, lolita quality for price had stayed remarkably stable. 

However, all these points are ignored by the most devoted acolytes of oldschool. The ideal of oldschool is an essentially contemporary one, a reactionary faith that can only exist as a rejection of current lolita trends outside of the oldschool microcosm. Distinguishing features, like camisoles, low poof levels, raschel lace, and UTKs, are emphasized not despite their unpopularity in other styles, but precisely because of it. 

I'd be happy with this if it ended there, with acknowledgement from this subset of the community they have imagined together an aesthetic ideal inspired by the past, one that exists on level with other ideals like deco lolita or OTT classic. But there's a pervasive sense of purity or historical 'correctness' that infests oldschool lolita discourse. 

I've found that some people in the oldschool sphere have codified the earlier, more experimental phase of lolita as oldschool and branded who don't adhere to it as incorrect in their interpretation. I can think of no better way to kill the ingenuity of fashion than this. I am very particular about what I qualify as old school because I like style taxonomy and giving people more tools in their lolita toolbox, but I'd never claim that a given style is objectively better or more correct than another, just that it fits my own criteria. Obsessing over creating accurate interpretations of the past is great for historical reenactors, but building one's own present and future on it seems counterintuitive. The past is another country and it doesn't accept your passport. 

Despite my personal qualms with it, and my personal insistence that I mostly wear old school classic, not some generalized oldschool, it's pretty clear that the idea of oldschool has gelled into its own substyle-level bloc. I'm no prescriptivist: I see when I'm outnumbered. Just like any defined substyle, though, I hope people let their ideals of oldschool lead them towards a greater appreciation for themselves and the fashion, rather than to a place of judgemental exclusion. Oldschool is a substyle now, and as a wearer of older lolita dresses, it may be coming for me. But that doesn't mean I like it.