First up is one of the comfiest pieces in my wardrobe. I love wearing this dress. In fact, I think the outfit I coordinated with my doll, Ben, is one of my favourites of this year. I wore it for a lovely day out to a garden centre & sewing shop with my parents. I took my sweet boy Ben with me too, and we had fun taking photos of him, looking at the wool display and eating dinner with us.

The outfit Ben was wearing is a little sailor set. My only sailor collar items are in dark colours that wouldn't match, but I always think this OP has a nautical feel to it. I wore toy box themed socks, because Ben is a doll. The necklace I chose is a rubbery owl that I've had since I was a teenager, as Ben always wears a cute bear necklace I made for him from a tiny eraser.

I really loved matching my outfit to my doll and would love to do this more often. I did it with Ben a few times this year. Don't tell the others, but he's my favourite.

The second coordinate with the OP was one I threw together at the last moment for a picnic in a friend's garden.

I had planned to wear something entirely different, but it was one of those high pain days when everything I put on was hurting, even things that were usually comfy. Thank goodness for this dress. Meta to the rescue! I was so close to either staying at home or turning up in my pyjamas.

Everyone attending was going for a maid theme that day, so I followed suit by wearing an apron. I kept it simple with the rest of the coord, defaulting to my summery combo of straw hat and strawberries.

Interestingly, although these two coords are very different, I have coorded this dress with red and white every time.

2002 is my favourite year for Meta. I don't know why, but I swear every item they released that year is just so good!

This JSK is great for cooler weather, as it's long length keeps your legs cozy, so I first wore it early on in the year on a date with my girlfriend. This is sort of my default look for this JSK; beige blouse and rectangle headress. It's fun to experiment with coordinates, but sometimes it's nice to keep things simple and easy. When you're a lifestyle lolita, it's not always about making the flashiest coordinates, it's also about making the fashion easy to wear in your daily life.

The second look is almost the same, but with one important addition. If you zoom in, perhaps you will be able to see that I'm wearing a bread brooch!

Me and my best friend have had tickets to see Les Mis for years now, but it was pushed back and back because of covid until finally we got to see it this year. It had been so long since we'd first bought the tickets that they were yellowing!

I put together this coord especially for the show. I'm wearing red, like the flag, and naturally I thought I was hilarious for adding a bread brooch to my look. My friend has the same brooch so we wore them together. We got them in a Peppermint Fox lucky pack several years back.

The show was the most amazing thing I've ever seen on stage. It had been so long since we'd booked the tickets that we'd entirely forgotten we had front row seats! We were so close we could smell the pyrotechnics and see the tears on Marius's face. We laughed, we cried. We both wanted to go right back inside and watch the second showing! If it's ever back in town, you better believe we're going again!

Next up we have a skirt. I don't wear skirts as much as I'd like, as I often find the waistbands too uncomfortable, but this one is one of my favourites for sure- it's just so pink!

The first look I only wore for five minutes around my house. I was experimenting with randomly generating coordinates using a python programme written by my girlfriend (and a tiny bit by me, but I basically just copied her.) It's not exactly how I would have styled it myself, but I do love it paired with the sporty Emily Temple Cute cutsew.

The second coord is another of this years favourites. I stumbled across this amazing My Melody x D collab T-Shirt on Closet Child CD for only 700 yen and I just had to have it! D is one of my favourite bands, and I love My Melody too. I knew at once I had to wear it with a lolita look. The hot pink music note skirt matched so well, it was a no brainer.

In my late teens, I used to go to lots of Visual Kei concerts and would have just loved to wear something like this, so I put together this coordinate with my teen self in mind and added lots of band merch into the mix. I felt so happy wearing this look, and so like myself. It's funny how much I've changed since I was 18, but in other ways I haven't changed at all.

I wore this look to have tea with a friend I used to go to those gigs with, as I knew she'd appreciate the vibe.

What did I say about 2002 Meta? Here's another wonderful piece.

It was a birthday present from my dad this year and has quickly become one of my favourites. I liked how it looked with my berry cardigan so much that I wore basically the same coord twice, just with different shoes. Long live outfit repeating!

Gingham and berries will always be one of my favourite combos.

Let's take a break from Meta for a bit and admire this lovely Gobelin piece handmade by my friend, Kath, before she started R R Memorandum. This dress is so comfy, I first wore it to just lounge around the house in.

Because of the lovely thick fabric, it's also a good winter peice, so I bundled up in multiple layers for some Christmas shopping. I was really happy with this coord, I thought it was both fun and frumpy and I was the perfect temperature in the frosty weather. I had a great day, shopping with my best friend, and I even found a second hand furby as a treat for myself, which I'd been hoping to find!

Time for the first AP piece on the list. I had been after this dress for years, when an online friend sold it to me in 2020. With one thing and another, they were unable to post it to me until this year and I was so excited to finally wear it! It fits like a dream and it's one of my favourite prints.

For it's first coord ever, I paired it with red and pink to bring out the berries in the print. As always, I just love berries!

I got a bit more experimental with the second look. It was for a picnic with my local comm and I don't know why, but I felt like exuding a pokemon trainer vibe, so I worked in my Pikachu backpack and socks and added various Pokemon pins to my hat. I enjoyed imagining myself in the Pokemon anime dressed in this outfit.

I really enjoyed this coord, especially the layered socks. I'd like to layer up socks more often in the future. I was also really comfy in my new sandals!

This poor AP sailor OP had a terrible accident when I first received it. It arrived to me in perfect condition, but then I washed it and it bled badly. It took me many many hours to restore the lace to it's former white from the hot pink it became! A silly mistake on my part. I was really excited to wear it for the first time after I nursed it back to health.

It's debut outing was to go to the first opticians appointment I've had since I was ten. Guess what? I need glasses now! The optician said he liked my 'costume.'

With the sailor collar, tie and backpack I was going for a retro school vibe and I felt really cute. This year, I've been enjoying hats, particularly berets, and I think they look especially good with sailor collars. I want to get a beret in every colour!

For the second coord, I paired it with a different hat- a fluffly leopard one I got from a charity shop which is so cozy in the winter. I like how leopard print looks with pretty much everything, and I think it looks really cool with the red of the dress.

I can't believe I forgot to take a photo of my final coord of the year! It's the only coord I forgot to take a photo of, but I promise I wore this dress twice this year too.

It's first coord of the year was from way back in March for bubble tea with some friends. I think it was on this day when I brought with me a hilarious notebook I'd found from when I was 11 full of photos of Katie Price aka Jordan, who I was obsessed with at the time. I'm sure it was for totally straight reasons. There was also drawings I'd done of topless mermaids, a photo of me and my family hanging out on someone's birthday and a dress up doll drawing of Ginny Weasley- quite the mix! I also brought with me a yearbook I'd made of my OCs from a science fiction story I'd written at about age 14, full of drawings of all the characters and yearbook messages from them. Everybody thought the book of boobs was hilarious and the book of OCs was really cool, we had such fun looking through them and laughing.

This OP is so comfy, but also quite thick, so I can only really wear it when the weather is cold enough. I paired it with my handmade pig bag, for a fun vibe.

The second coord that I forgot to take a photo of was worn to a family Christmas meal. I must make a flatlay to document it, because I wore the headdress Vix made me for our pokemon swap and it might be my favourite I've done so far with this dress.

Finally we have a sort of triangle of overlapping pieces, which I decided to group together because of how I coordinated them. I guess they make a sort of caspule wardrobe between them.

First of all we have a new piece to my wardrobe, Meta's Alice OP from 2001. I knew as soon as I got this dress that it was going to become a favourite. The cut is just the same as my ultimate dream dress, but with different lace. It's just got that perfect old school Meta vibe that I love and it's so versatile. It came with the matching white apron, but I mixed it up by coordinating it with a differnt apron both times. I'd like to wear it without an apron next time, to show off the lovely button down front.

Next we have the ever popular Metamorphose Short Sleeve Maid OP from 2006, one of my most worn dresses last year too. One of my favourite things to do with this dress is to layer a cutsew over the top of it and have the collar showing out the top. I just think it looks so cute and it's loose waist makes it a comfier way of doing a cutsew coord without wearing a skirt.

And last on the list is my awesome gloomy bear apron that I made earlier this year. As you can see, I have worn it over both black and white OPs and it goes great with both. Black and white is one of my favourite lolita colourways, I always feel so comfortable in it. I love the little pops of red with the black and white and I was really excited to first of all wear this apron with the matching gloomy bag, as this bag is what inspired me to make a gloomy apron in this colourway.

I still haven't made the arms for either of my gloomy bear aprons, but they look cute without them too.

If you made it through the enitre blogpost, congratulations! I hope you enjoyed this look back over my style this year. What were your most worn dresses of the last year? I hope 2023 brings you all health, happiness and fun coordinates!