How Long it Took me to Build a Complete Wardrobe (52 Lolita Challenge)

So here we have it: what I consider to be the single most loaded question in this entire challenge. Because it entirely hinges on what you consider to be "complete". Is your Lolita wardrobe complete when you have your first full coordinate? Enough items to wear Lolita every day for a week? A month? Or when you have gotten every single item off of your wishlist, and find yourself completely satisfied with every single dress you own, and feel no need to buy any more?

A picture of my wardrobe circa 2013. It has more than doubled in size since then!

Personally, I find mine to be somewhere between those last two--enough items to wear a Lolita coordinate for about two weeks without repeating a dress/main item, and when you don't feel any need to buy any more dresses/have completed your wish list. And according to that self-definition, I still have quite a ways to go. My wish list still has quite a few dresses I want to track down or make on it.

But I can't imagine that I'll ever entirely "complete" my Lolita closet. I think that there will always be something on my wishlist to buy--some print that just came out that I can't live without, some basic that either got worn out or I never purchased in the first place (*cough*underskirts*cough*). So I don't know if I'll ever be able to consider my wardrobe truly "complete".

If the question is hinting more at when I had built up a wardrobe with enough clothes to do a few different outfits, had all my basics, and so on--then I'd say it took me around six to eight months. By the end of that time, I had a small collection of blouses and JSKs, as well as a few different accessories to mix together to form different outfits. But even then, I don't think that it was quite "complete" by my standards!

So I guess the tl;dr is that it took me about six months to get to the point where I had a workable wardrobe, but I don't think that I'll have a truly "complete" wardrobe for quite a while yet, even though I've been in the fashion for about three and a half years now!

The post above was a response to the Lolita 52 Week Challenge made by the ever so delightful Caro over at FYeahLolita.