Welcome back to Sery’s dressposting~ We are taking a look at Hoshibako Works’ collaboration with Zun to produce Touhou Project lolita dresses, specifically the Alice and Marisa ones since they’re my favourite characters. As I do so, I’ll go over how lolita coording should try to capture the essence of a character without simply cosplaying them. This is also a special issue where I am coping with the fact that I cannot afford these dresses despite really really wanting them. I’m sorry for the mess you are about to read.

Before we begin, some context for what the hell a Touhou is and why I care. Touhou Project is a Japanese bullet hell video game series developed by Zun that has a pretty huge cast of basically entirely female characters and some pretty incredible music. While I can’t go over this series in much detail here, I’ll be giving little explanations of these two characters before I delve into their dresses so as to contextualise them and I will be drawing from official art to compare to.

I really like these games. I suck at them, but I find them very fun. Plus I have a pretty strong attachment to the cast and a not-insignificant amount of the music I listen to on a daily basis is doujin-band covers of their OSTs.

So, beginning with Alice Margatroid. She is the Seven-Coloured Puppeteer, a magician who controls dolls as her primary gimmick power to fight other people and do daily chores with. You can even see a replica doll in the background of the photos of her dress! (Though unfortunately I don’t think it’s available for purchase or else I would get one as a cope) As a character she’s generally a bit of a loner and a bit blunt towards people, but generally still caring. Essentially a cold exterior, but she warms up and opens up to some people, becoming more vulnerable and showing that she’s got a little bit of a cowardly streak.

Design-wise she has been pretty set-in-stone when it comes to the official look: She has a simple blue dress over a white short sleeved blouse, with a white capelet on top. Then as accessories she wears pink: a ribbon around her waist, a scarf tied into a bow, and either a lace hairband or bow in her hair. And all of these details barring the shirt have some amount of spiky lace. Occasionally in some other official media like manga she swaps the short sleeves out for long ones and a few other minor alterations, but generally this is how Alice looks.

It’s a design which, frankly, is basically almost a lolita coord as it is. All that it is missing is a petticoat to get the right shape language. (notice how it doesn’t poof out that much on the skirt, instead it mostly follows her shape. Although some artwork of her does give it sufficient poof.) Yet Hoshibako Works didn’t simply replicate the actual design for this collaboration, instead they made some pretty key changes.

The biggest and most notable being the capelet. Rather than have it be just plain white cloth with a lace trim like the character art, they made the entire thing lace and gave it a very lovely rose motif. Why would they do this? It’s because a good lolita coord isn’t meant to be 1 to 1 accurate to the source material. The goal is to capture the feeling of a character without actually copying them. And ultimately as a design, Alice’s capelet is the most striking part which your eyes will be drawn to. But when translated to the real world, if it were accurate to the game it would become a lot less striking compared to the rest of the outfit. This is for a few reasons. The first is that the pure white of the capelet, regardless the black outline, would blend into the white and, in this design, long sleeves. This would leave that looking like a block, and while that can certainly work for a look, it would also draw attention away from the capelet itself which would be a mistake when trying to represent Alice. The second is to do with detail. Many of the smaller areas of lace such as around the waist would draw a lot of attention due to being the most visually interesting spots. By making the capelet fully lace, we solve both issues by making it both not solid white and also the area of the highest detail by far on the whole dress. It becomes the focal point, and captures the most important parts of Alice’s design super well.

Similarly, an Alice by accuracy would have to contend with the way her design switches between scarfs and bows depending on the exact artwork. Here they decided to go with the bow, and it makes sense. It allows them to make a much more elaborate look (just look at how many loops it has) and, more importantly, it’s a much more distinctly lolita appearance, allowing the overall outfit to stay in that realm of lolita design.

Of course, this is also an outfit, so the capelet is removable. And by god it is such a beautiful and simple dress underneath. I love the way that it’s laced up so much. I’m not too keen on the fact that it seems to be an OP when Alice’s dress is clearly a JSK and blouse combo, but I also don’t mind because this is such a pretty one that it works anyways.

The last thing of note is then the bow tied at the waist and it’s just, so, so pretty. I don’t have anything to say, I just love it.

Moving on now to Marisa. She is an ordinary magician whose main gimmick is using love-coloured star magic. Big gremlin energy, I love her so much. Her entire thing is being a little menace who goes around solving issues, stealing books and just hanging out. She’s also my main character in these games and has been on the banner of my account ever since I made it.

(As a small tangent, she and Alice are tied for my favourite character, I can’t really pick one. Marisa is the one I get more joy from and I try to replicate her aesthetically (side braids go brrrr) but Alice is more me-coded in terms of both aesthetic and personality, or at least I feel she is.)

In terms of design, Marisa actually differs a lot from game to game. Unlike Alice, she is one of the main playable characters and so she will get new art every game. Her basic outfit is very set, it’s a black witch outfit made with a black skirt and vest, with a white blouse and white apron.

The accessories are where it mainly differs, as she will usually have a bow on her hat and braid, but the exact colour of the bow changes in every single game and she will occasionally add extra accessories like scarfs, capelets, or pendants depending on the game. Plus her actual outfit will occasionally change slightly with things like embroidery being added.

Much like Alice, the dress based on her differs quite a bit from any of these depictions. Among the official ones I looked at the closest I could find is this one above, which comes from the artbook Who’s Who of Humans & Youkai - Dusk Edition. This is mainly because it’s the only design that includes this particular victorian style of collar which the dress itself replicated. Of course on the other hand the vest here is absolutely not the same as the dress’s, but still.

(Tangent, while I was looking for official Marisa designs I discovered this one which Zun illustrated for the old official site and honestly I love this, I kinda want to make a coord based on this specifically. The capelet especially looks so pretty and I want something similar. Although the skirt is kind of a mess on this illustration, oh well, I get the idea and it’s cool to me.)

So, now to look at the dress itself! Like Alice, it matches the basic design but differs a lot on details. A particular choice which I find very important for this dress is that they decided on plaid black and white for the accent colour used by the bows. This is really interesting since it’s not one which has been used by an official Marisa design before and I think it’s actually really pretty. It makes it striking and unique for her character while still entirely fitting in the realm of things she’d wear, and it helps to avoid the problem of picking a specific game’s design only to have weirdos (me) critique it for not being their favourite. (Phantasmagoria of Flower View’s purple btw, it’s the one I included a photo of earlier.)

Construction-wise I’m… kind of confused more than anything else. I think it’s an OP? But if so that’s a huge shame because I’d have much preferred it being separate pieces for the blouse and skirt. At least the apron is removeable, since it’s just tied at the back. But idk, I could have absolutely seen myself (in the world where I could afford it) using the skirt or blouse separately for coords but as is they’re stuck being just for this one look which will always feel very Marisa-ish to me. It’s just a small shame.

Similarly, with the apron, I’m not really convinced by the pockets. It’s something which certainly fits her character, she’d love to have easy places to hide small trinkets she steals or ingredients she’s collecting, but I’m not sure it’s really doing it for me aesthetically. I have warmed up to it a lot since I first saw the dress though, so maybe I’ll come around to it eventually.

Going back to the full outfit, the details are incredible. The collar has some lovely little embroidered stars on it,

and those motifs are continued down with the buttons.

This use of the stars as a detail continues down even into the lace and it’s so adorable.

It’s a really lovely way to, once again, bring in the feel of Marisa without being 1 to 1 accurate. She’s a star-based magician, so giving her star themed detailing is the best move and brings in a lot more of her character than you’d be able to if you just replicated her in-game outfits.