Ask Miss Caro-chan: Making OTT Sweet Work in a Classic/Gothic Wardrobe

Yay! My first edition of Ask Miss Caro-chan. I am hoping to do this one a week, maybe twice a week if I for some reason start to get too many questions. I have gotten a few, some that require a quick answer, some that require a longer answer, but I'll try to be answering them in more or less the order that I received them in. The first question comes from Wonderfinch, and she asks:

I recently snagged AP's Miracle Candy jumperskirt, and while I think it's absolutely adorable, there's one tiny problem: it's way too sweet to fit in with my normal wardrobe! I don't want to have to go out and buy all-new clothes just to wear with this one dress, but I really like the dress and I want to hang on to it. Any tips on making an insanely over-the-top sweet dress work with a wardrobe that's more classic and gothic than anything else?

I have the same problem! I always give in to OTT Sweet impulse buys, I have since padded out the Sweet Lolita areas of my wardrobe, but for a while I was pretty much stuck with two pink dresses in a sea of Gothic Clothes. There are a few things I have learned though:

• Start hunting for white in your wardrobe. Even the most hard core Gothic Lolita is bound to have a white blouse or two, maybe you just don't think things like long sleeved pirate blouses are very sweet, but try coordinating one with an over the top sweet dress, provided the blouse isn't too angular and masculine looking, it should work with a Sweet Lolita dress.
• Try coordinating the OTT dress with cream or off-white. Most Angelic Pretty dresses have a pastel rainbow of colors hiding in the print, so if your dress has a creamy yellow color in it, or even gold, try to use that as an accent color. Cream blouses and tights are usually a staple in a Classic Lolita's wardrobe.
• Make use of any detachable bows the dress has. Spread out the amount of frou frou in your coordinate by using any detachable bows from the dress in your hair or on the neck of your blouse.
• Do you hair in a very Sweet Lolita style. Try something like hyper-hairsprayed pigtails or poodle pompoms. The fancier you make your hair the more you can get away without having the dresses matching headpiece, which is usually the case with impulse buys.
  
• Do your makeup a little bit Deco. Big sweet eyelashes, a little bit of glitter eyeshadow in a coordinating color, and maybe even a rhinestone or two near your eyes will all help to add some sweetness to the outfit.
• Buy some small accessories. You don't have to go out and buy AP's matching plastic bracelets, but just a few over the top rings and bracelets from places like Claires. It will only set you back a couple bucks, but it could be just what you need to finish your look.

I think that if you have a relatively full Gothic or Classic wardrobe you could definitely pull of completing an OTT Sweet coordinate with it. The only thing that might prove difficult would be shoes and purses, if you have white shoes and a white purse (or cream/off-white if that is the color you are going for), awesome. If not, it might take a trip to PayLess or Walmart, because honestly, if all you have are black shoes, it's just not going to work out.