It has been a little while, school has been keeping me busier than I expected so I couldn’t do the once a week posting I was planning, but I finally found the time to write this up. Unfortunately in the time it took this dress ended up filling its ressrvation slots so you can’t buy it anymore, but that hasn’t stopped me before.

This dress is Avenue Denfer’s Return to the Darkness! Like a lot of the ones I’ve been covering lately, it comes in two versions, a OP or JSK and blouse combo. Both are utterly lovely so I’ll be covering both individually after I go over the shared details I like. Starting with the colour, both versions are in green or purple. I like the purple a lot more here, it’s a lot more gothic and so it better fits the intent of the dress. But I think the green might have a lot of potential as a classic if you wore a white blouse instead of the black ones, and green and white is one of my favourite colour combos. Unfortunately the set blouse is only in black, so there’s no example photos of this idea.

Next up is the jacquard patterning on the main dress. Both colours and versions use the same design, and I love how it brings in butterfly, candelabra, and other gothic motifs while remaining very subtle thanks to being a jacquard weave and not, for instance, a print. I like the butterflies the most, especially due to how they tie into…

The butterfly brooch on the bow! I love this, it’s so cute yet still very gothic feeling, it’s the exact thing I love so much about lolita in general. And since it’s only the one part of the dress, it keeps it still feeling classy overall while bringing in that cute little focal point.

Beyond the butterfly, this photo is also an excellent segway onto looking at the OP version of this dress. And what a good segway it is, I adore the lace on this one. It’s so pretty. I overall prefer the OP of the two versions specifically because it uses the lace so much and so well.

In particular I love the little lace sleeves on top of the actual dress sleeves. It looks fantastic and brings in the draping which is both pretty and effective at deemphasising shoulders. It’s the stuff that I love in capelets, although not to quite the same extent.

On the JSK version of the dress meanwhile, the blouse adds a ton to the look, particularly with the jabot on top of it. And due to its nature as a JSK set both the blouse and dress are usable for other outfits. And this works in its favour since they are both very versatile and could be used effectively for a lot of different looks. Like the white and green I was thinking of earlier, but one could also mix the blouse with a blue dress or whatever else one might dream up with it. It’s all up to taste.

I would have posted an extra pic to end this off but I hit the limit and don’t feel like waiting to add another pic. Needless to say I like the dress and it’s very pretty. I hope anyone who read this enjoyed it or maybe even felt a bit inspired by the look!