Gothic & Lolita Bible 38

The 38th Gothic & Lolita Bible has been out for a little bit now, but it's finally been scanned and put up online (You can find it here). As I have mentioned before, I haven't bought a G&LB in a long time because they have become pretty much impossible to find in my area. We used to have a comic book shop keeping them in stock, but they seem to have stopped some time last year, probably because I was the only one buying them!

I whined about the glamor shots on the covers in my review of volume 37, commenting on the fact that they really take a bit of the magic of the mook away from me and so I was a little disappointed to see yet another glamor shot on the cover of volume 38. But, I've still got my fingers crossed for the day they start putting art on the cover again! I liked this volume a little bit more than I did the previous one, there was nothing that really blew my mind, and the patterns really sucked (There was what I think is an apron and a whole lot of Christmas ornaments) but there were lots of lovely coordinates and photos. I'll share a few of my favorite of them with you here. Click the thumbnails for bigger pictures.

In this volume's photo shoots I've noticed a lot of huge curly, multi-color wigs. This is something they've done for years in photo shoots, so it's probably not supposed to be "the next big thing", but I certainly did notice more gigantic curly wigs in this issue than in previous. Something else I noticed, which could possibly just be chalked up to the fact that this is the Winter volume, is a lot of more classical outfits. With the exception of an ultra-pink Mamicimam ad that featured a girl wearing an outfit that looked like it was made completely of pink stuffed bunnies, there were hardly any OTT Sweet outfits. Even Angelic Pretty's ads in this volume were very subdued.

The street snaps (the last 4 pictures above being street snaps) also featured a lot of Classic Lolita and quite a number of girls that looked like they stepped out of a 2004 issue of G&LB. I'm, of course, talking about the old school style. There were a few Sweet Lolita's snapped, but they were all generally tame.

Is it because this is simply a Winter issue, where colors are a bit darker and styles are a bit more Classical, or is it because of the rising popularity of the Dolly-kei style and a general disinterest in the uber-pastel OTT Sweet Lolita trend that has been the style to wear since about 2007?I can't really say until I see the Spring issue. If the photo shoots and street snaps go back to cotton candy colored wigs a mile high and prints that would look right at home painted on a nursery school wall then, oops, never mind, seasonal trends as usual. But if the next Spring issue features dusty pastels and lighter floral prints, then maybe Lolita trends are finally taking that turn for the Classic that everyone (well, most everyone) has been predicting and hoping for for the past couple of years!

One final thing I'll leave you with from this volume is this ad, for cheapo contact lenses.

That's probably the least cutest pose since the duck face. WTF are these girls doing with their mouths?