Anonymous asked: at the risk of sounding n00bish, what is an 'Ita'?
Long response ahead! And don’t sweat it, anon, asking questions is far less noobish than assuming things.
Ita is derrived from both the end of “Lolita” and the word “itai” meaning “ouch”; an Ita is a Lolita who is supposedly dressed so badly that it hurts to look at them.
There are lots of definitions for “ita”. Some consider an ita to be someone wearing clothes that aren’t burando. Some consider an ita to be someone with a bad coord (like, nothing matches, or your’re wearing an OTT Sweet wig and decora’d out… while wearing a Classic JSK). The stereotypical anatomy of an ita is thus:
- no petticoat
- no blouse or a not-loliable blouse
- badly made JSK/OP/skirt with bad lace (scratchy, chemical, raschel, doesn’t match etc)
- An equally badly made rectangle headdress
- Unmatching stockings/socks, every day socks (like tube socks and such), or no stockings at all
- Bad shoes
- Bad lace choker, sometimes with a bell on it
- Armwarmers/legwarmers
- Anything made out of bad costume satin or bad velvet
- Optional: Animal ears/tail
But note that some of those things can be coorded well: a lack of petticoat is acceptable for extremely casual styles or otome; you can work a blouseless situation or alter a blouse to make it loliable; you can alter a badly made item by changing the lace on it or taking it to a tailor to make it nicer looking (by tailoring it to fit you, adding a lining, replacing badly inserted zippers and such); rectangle headresses are great if they don’t look like a maxi pad with some lace on it; you can coord nicely with bare legs, although I’d still recommend pantyhose to give you the bare look but even skintone; shoes with a spike heel or Converse shoes can be hard to coord, but it is possible; and animal attributes can also be done, but they are associated with the “catgirl” type that often dresses in pseudo-Lolita in anime, which in turn gets filed under “cosplay Lolita”, which isn’t considered “real Lolita”.
A quick Google Images search gives me a few results for a stereotypical ita:
(Things that are ita here: bad lace, fishnet knee-highs that make it look more like a fetish outfit than anything else, uncoordinated black lace gloves, and a bonnet that looks like a smushed wedding cake falling off her head. Yes, it’s from Kera, but brands aren’t always right.)
(The lace is bad, the skirt is too short, the socks are uncoordinated, the blouse/bustier doesn’t match well, and that hairbow is not really elegant. The shoes would look great in other coords, though, I love them. If she were to wear this outfit and just say it’s her style, then great; but if she calls it Lolita, it’s not really refined enough to be punk/ero. A couple of changes could be made: bow clips, a less pattern-crazy blouse, simple stockings and an underskirt to add length would make this a great Punk coord.)
(Bodyline is sometimes hit-or-miss. The lace is bad and there’s so much of it, the headress doesn’t really match the outfit terribly well, bow overload towards the top… and BOOB HEARTS. Seriously, what IS that?!)
honeyed has a fantastic series of entries about what’s ita on Bodyline and what isn’t, and how not to be an ita on her fyeahlolita blog, and she does a much better job at describing it than I do :)
