Early 2000's Lolita Online Shops: Victorian Maiden

As I stated on the homepage, the layout and graphics of my site are heavily inspired by many lolita online shops in the early 2000’s. I am a huge fan of the graphics used in this period and they evoke a huge sense of nostalgia in me. To be honest, I'm pretty disappointed in the modern web design of many of these stores, since they have far less character and charm to them now. As I planned my own site, I researched a lot of these brands and took note of their web-design evolution through the wayback machine! I thought I would share some of my screen grabs with you, in case they might inspire you as well~ Since these posts take me a bit of time to put together, I am going to make a separate entry for each brand.

The first brand I researched was Victorian maiden, a core Classic Lolita brand established in 1999. The concept of the brand is that of an a "elegant and coquettish Victorian style" suitable for modern women. The screengrab below was their second web design launched in 2003. I didn’t include the debut website because the majority of the images were not archived, so a lot of the site elements were missing.


I find it so funny that they thought it was a good idea to go with a white font against a pale yellow background. Overall, the actual layout is very well done (compared to other sites around this time) and I love the wine red accent color.

Then in 2007, the website would undergo another major revamp. This layout is very typical of many other brands in this era, with the rotating pictures in a large banner at the top and the navigation bar being either above or beneath it. If you recognized on my own homepage, I used the design of the section header and made some of my own! One thing I love the most is the usage of the corner ornaments in both the logo and site body. I think it really helps to tie everything together.



Around 2013, for their 15th anniversary, the site underwent a dark theme change. The overall design and structure of the site stayed nearly identical. One thing I really miss about old lolita sites are their mini banner graphics. They were always very unique and had such cute designs! I also think they add a lot of eye candy to the site.



Finally around 2022, they would launch the version of the website that is still being used today. In my opinion, this is one of the better modern sites since they didn’t entirely abandon the ornamental embellishments and I also like the damask background. However, I really dislike how the main layout basically consists of huge rectangles stacked on top of each other.