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my wardrobe is slowly building, so i'm pretty sure that most of my clothes that i consider normal lolita might be considered casual... but i did try out casual lolita and it was pretty fun! i wore my pink loli skirt with a grey cheshire cat alice t-shirt with grey striped stockings, and of course a pink bow in my hair! thinking back it's almost as, if not more dressed up than my regular lolita stuff, even if it's still considered casual, lol

Most of us post photos of our "hardcore" outfits 'cause those are the ones we take the time to photograph. XD;;

Going casual isn't quite so worthy of documentation, unless it has some super special twist or new accessory. Anyway. Casual lolita is perfectly acceptable for a daily basis! I'd recommend it just for the fact that it's far more convenient than anything else.

As for funny experiences, I've had a few.

The first time I went out in full-blown lolita, my sister-in-law asked if I was going to a polka concert. Later, the owner of the coffee shop I went to meet another local lolita in asked me if I was "one of them Irish dancers" and told me that he thought it was "just lovely." When I met another lolita later, a girl shouted out the window that she liked our hair, and two young men in urban wear told us that they really liked our outfits as we were leaving a thrift shop.

Most recently, when I went to see the Dark Knight, a girl came up to me in the bathroom to question me about the clothes that two other girls and I were wearing. We had a group of about ten lolitas, and she asked a lot of questions about all of us and the style. I really wish I had gotten her name or number, she was very nice [I was just super excited to get back into the movie theater, haha]. The next day, oddly enough, I went out with another couple of lolitas downtown in the "gay" district [lots of alternative lifestyle shops, porno places, and clubs] to seek out a really awesome bakery. Some little girls asked if I was a princess, several shop keepers in various boutiques asked us questions and offered items they thought would look "SO CUTE!" with our outfits [we actually bought a few rings at one place] and two shop keepers in "Tokyo Unique"/nonno [a Japanese accessory and magazine retailer] asked if our clothes were custom and chatted with us quite a bit.

The only negative experience I had was when we were taking this photo:

A guy driving buy started shouting and catcalling, stopped his car and the works. He drove off when we yelled "THANK YOU!" really loudly. You can tell from the photo how thrilled we all were. <_<

I prefer casual Lolita to full-out Lolita, since I'm very sickly and I get overheated easily. sad

I have more skirts than anything else, because they're easier to make and I'm more likely to find a skirt around here that would work with the style. I scour thrift stores and second-hand shops to find old-fashioned clothes that I can use or alter, and I make skirts. I'm going to start dressing up tee-shirts to make cutsews, but I haven't really tried it yet.

[Right now, I'm wearing black and white stockings, a black bell skirt with white polka dots, a white shirt with black polka dots, a black long-sleeved vest with pink and white polka dots on it, and a black headdress with white polka dots. It sounds weird, but I like it a lot.]

I get a lot of crap where I live from what I wear. Generally, I try to shrug it off, but I get it a lot and it does add up. I think the worse time was when my aunts and uncle decided to gang up on me and make fun of me at Easter, which only ended when my grandmother told them off and went on and on about how lovely my clothes were.

The most recent incident was on Friday, when we decided to go to a local sports/trivia bar for dinner before going to an arcade/fun park. There was a table of people who kept making comments and pointing and laughing at me, but we ignored them and had a lovely dinner. Later that evening, the man at the gokart track was very kind and complimentary about my clothes (oh, yeah, I went gokart racing in Lolita xp ), and several children came up to me and were very friendly.