We rolled out of bed at about 7:00 am to another hazy, mild summer day. The temperature and humidity both mounted slightly compared to yesterday but remained bearable rather than sweltering.
After mediocre continental breakfast at the Travelodge, we moseyed through Chinatown to the Palais. I saw a very cool mural at the intersection of Avenue Viger Ouest and Rue Jeanne Mance.
Otakuthon started at 10 am, and we attended our first panel of the day: “Accessibility in Harajuku Fashion.” It was hosted by Cherilyne Labelle, whose cohost Jake Laplante was unexpectedly absent. Despite doing the entire presentation singlehandedly [“The only hand I have!” Cheri joked], Cheri covered a huge range of ways to make Harajuku fashion adaptable to different body shapes, weights, abilities, sensory needs, and budgets. She focused on adapting fashions for disabilities because she has a congenital limb difference, but she also gracefully covered shopping for trans and gender-nonconforming body types, which Jake would have covered from a first-person perspective. I loved her opinion that your clothes should fit you, not the other way around. In other words, clothes should be adapted to one’s body as it is. One should not adapt one’s body to a piece of clothing.
Photos show the screen outside the panel room, a typical arrangement for a panel room, presenter Cheri wearing a lovely yellow romper with a pink tulle overskirt and holding her coffee but not drinking it even though she repeatedly remarked that she needed to, Jake and Cheri’s social media information, some slides of Harajuku fashion that I really liked, and a list of brands, compiled by Cheri and Jake, recommended for inclusivity.
For lunch we nabbed some tuna onigiri and buns filled with red bean paste and covered with sesame seeds from Coco. Not shown because I have documented equivalent lunches in previous years.
We finished lunch at noon and had some time before the next interesting panel, so we tried to make a systematic circuit of the artists’ alley in the dealer room. The hordes thwarted us, mostly by forming small clumps of people who just stood in the middle of the walkways, not doing anything. This was really frustrating. Sometimes people swarmed sales booths so madly that I couldn’t get near the booths. I decided that, if I could not approach a booth or if it did not immediately capture my attention, I would not persevere against crowds to seek it out.
Our next panel was at 2:00 pm: “How to Plus-Size Lolita Fashion,” hosted by Alice Bruel-Joncas and Marguerite Girard. Sharing their personal experiences about finding and altering Lolita styles to fit bigger bodies, they also interviewed Darling Teatime, a local tailor specializing on Lolita. Darling Teatime’s social media information appears in one of the photos below, as does a list of brand suitable for fat people. Echoing the message relayed by Cheri, the hosts of this panel emphasized the enjoyment and confidence derived from wearing clothes that one likes and feels good in. They too said that the clothes should fit the person and not the other way around. We enjoyed this panel and, as a wonderful bonus, saw many people in Lolita garb, so I got quite a few pictures of people’s elaborate outfits.
We returned to the dealer room for a few quick circuits and then attended our favorite panel, “Lolita Toot and Boot 2025 Edition,” hosted by friends Sofie Lamontagne-Cumiford and Alice Brunel-Joncas, from 4:30 to 5:30 pm. They showed us slides of Lolita dresses released this year, and we all yelled out whether we liked them or not and why. The hosts kept up silly, sweary banter with each other and enjoyed gesturing at each other and audience members with their pointers. Pictures below show Sofie analyzing an outfit on one of the slides. There are also some outfits that I liked: Metamorphose de Fille’s Cyber Neon Girl dress, especially the one on the left, and Lady Sloth’s Twisted Tartan JSK [or jumper skirt, a sleeveless dress]. The Cyber Neon Girl dress appeals to my love of Gothy black combined with my flair for obnoxious neon, and the Twisted Tartan is just playful and fun. It reminds me of Mattel’s Monster High doll fashions in all the best ways: a relatively simple concept, but playful and striking.
I took a panoramic series of shots from approximately the same location outside the Palais where we sat yesterday to demonstrate the extent of the hordes just a little over 24 hours later.
We bought dinner from the IGA. We seemed to be the only convention attendees in the store, as everyone else descended upon the restaurants of Rue de la Gauchetiere and other places in Chinatown proper. I picked up a chicken sandwich and some decent salmon onigiri.
After dinner we attended a panel called “Boystyle for Everyone.” Boystyle, the masculine counterpart to Lolita clothing, romanticizes European royal/Victorian/Rococo style. The presenters, who had clearly not practiced, merely read their slides aloud and did not engage the audience much. I left after 45 minutes, during which they were literally reading a list of links to clothing retailers. I took photos of some slides just for some basic information about the style as well as two substyles that I liked.
Back in the hotel room, we cranked down the air conditioning and cooled off. I organized and prepared photos for a while but turned in relatively early. I got an extra comforter to sleep under, so I was warm enough, but I didn’t sleep well because the quality of the mattress was poor.