honey cake hell

washing your lolita can be daunting and nerve-wracking to newcomers and seasoned wearers alike. there's enough horror stories out there about bleeding prints and ruined dresses to make one second guess getting that jumperskirt wet -- but it's important nonetheless! just like any kind of clothing, your lolita needs to be carefully washed and freshened up between wears to keep it in good shape. it takes a little extra care and time than the average t-shirt and pants, but it's worth it to keep your precious things in good shape. there's a lot of amazing resources on the web to help you with laundry, so there's really no excuse to not wash your clothes. doing something like that can be far more catastrophic than a bit of bleeding.

especially if you intend to give that dress to someone else.

here's a funny little story from april. be warned that there are some grody photos in this one.

much like almost everyone and their mom, i love honey cake! it probably needs no introduction. it's an adorable dress with a big reputation and it's become pretty iconic over the years. its popularity even led to a re-release with extended sizing years later in 2019, making it much more accessible than it once was. good stuff!

 

while i think honey cake is amazing in all its forms, the pink colorway is, to me, peak honey cake. this is perhaps the best it's ever been. my love for it is so great that i consider it one of the few dresses worthy of the dream dress title. (according to my spreadsheet, it sits at a comfortable third place, just after melty cream doughnut and chess chocolate.) unfortunately for me, several factors have made this dress difficult to find and turned it into something of a white whale for me. the 2019 re-release completely ditched the pink and mint colorways for the round cut, so while the ivory and yellow colorways became more accessible, the same could not be said for my favorite colorway. if i wanted my preferred cut and color, i'd have to find a 2011 JSK - not really an easy task. on the rare occasion i've seen this dress show up, it's obscenely expensive, and when it isn't, it's usually because it's damaged in a way i can't put up with.

so imagine my surprise when, while looking for something completely different, i find a not too-terribly priced listing for one.

 the photo looks good. there's even some detail shots. the lighting is kind of weird and uneven, sure, but i don't see anything glaringly obvious. the item is tagged as having no flaws, and the description states that it's "clean with no stains." always good to hear! the price, considering that it's a 2011 honey cake, really isn't that bad, and it's within my fun budget for the month. international shipping and customs might kick my ass, but when's the next time i'm going to see this dress in such nice condition, right? and my birthday's coming - i can use that as an excuse for basically anything.

 so, having made up my mind, i get the dress and wait for it to arrive alongside my other finds.  

a month passes and i have spent that ENTIRE time making plans for honey cake. i make coordinate collages, i think about what events i want to wear it to, i talk about it incessantly to my partner, and i come up with a cleaning regimen to keep it as intact as possible - wear it infrequently and only take it to the dry cleaner. i would never let it touch water and certainly never wash it with my amateur plastic bin + shower stall setup!!!

(VERY UNWISE!!!!!)  

 

when my package finally arrives, i'm elated. i open it up right away and get to checking my things. i got a few small things like socks and headbows from other sellers, all of which were in great condition. each item makes me more and more excited for the main event, which is waiting for me at the bottom of the box in a re-used plastic amazon bag.

 

but when i open it, my excitement turns to confusion. there's several pieces of long hair on the dress. it happens, i guess, but i'm suddenly gripped by unease. i unfold the dress and find that the pink fabric is blotchy with grody yellowing. the white lace has ceased to be white, and there are distinct dark yellow stains on the neckline and the armpits, and a leftover handwritten shopping list in the pocket. and, finally, as if to add insult to injury, the straps of the dress have been lengthened with several inches of rough backpack-strap material and haphazardly sewn directly onto the back shirring.

 

my excitement and joy turns into bewilderment and denial. there is no way someone sent me this. surely i had to have misread the listing -- did i not see where they disclosed stains? did google translate botch something? did i just not look closely enough at the photo?? did i miss a footnote where they cheerfully announce that they roll all packages around in a puddle on the sidewalk as a complimentary gift to the buyer??? on the original listing, here's no indication that anything's wrong with the dress. the uneven lighting has hidden the stains from view. the detail shots are solely focused on parts of the dress that still look good. the several inches of backpack strap have been very purposefully tucked away behind the dress so you can't even tell an alteration had been made. it's starting to dawn on me that i've paid a premium to receive someone's dirty laundry, complete with dishonestly hidden amateur alterations. nice...

i don't know how to restore a dress in such a state. i've avoided buying horribly stained and damaged dresses because i just don't have the skillset to fix them. i'm perfectly good at keeping a dress clean, but saving a dress from a state like this is completely foreign to me. i ask around online, hoping and praying that something can be done about these old stains. i am pretty much universally met with the advice to put it in oxyclean soup -- an extremely simple task that scares the shit out of me anyways. this is an older AP cotton dress with red dye on it, a combo that, if handled incorrectly, could cause horrible mayhem and wreck the print. i immediately start fearing the worst, worrying that i'll pull out the dress after a few hours to find that i've completely destroyed the print and reddened the poor honey bears.

 

but the alternative is just having a disgusting filthy dress soaked in someone else's sweat stinking up my closet and ohmygwad eaeoouuughhhhh can you imagine.  it's time to face my fears whether i want to or not. "if i totally fail," i tell myself, "i can sell it on lacemarket to someone stronger than me."

 

armed with the advice of the online lolita community and the oxyclean soup recipe from this incredibly helpful post by bug lolita, i head into my tiny bathroom and start making soup in my washing bin. six gallons of hot water, six heaping spoonfuls of oxyclean, and five hundred color catchers. (give or take twenty.) i say a prayer to whatever god is listening that honey cake will survive the war, and drop it in the soup. in about five seconds, i am hit by a concrete-thick wall of fart. the soup absolutely reeks of the absolute worst pit sweat i've ever smelt cranked up to the max. this is one of the scariest things i've ever experienced lowkey. i've never physically felt a stench SLAP me until now. it was so real. it was so violent. i cannot stress enough how powerful the stench was - so utterly rancid that it felt like a tangible presence. disgusted and mildly terrified, i leave the room and shut the door, keeping it quarantined in the #stinkzone and preventing my curious cat from slapping it for fun. every 30 minutes or so, i go in to check on it and poke at it. after the first check in, the lace has already started to visibly whiten... but the stench has not let up. i'm not sure whether to be more relieved or grossed out lol.

 

after two hours, the stench starts to disappear, and the yellowing continues to lighten up. by hour three, i find that it doesn't really stink at all anymore - thank god - and the dress is starting to look at least kind of good - but it's hard to tell for sure, what with all the foam and bunched up fabric. hour four comes, and my timer rings. her time in the soup is up. carefully, i take it out, and......

 

i can SMELL this photo.

JEESUS!!!!!

that's not my gray bathmat showing through. the oxyclean soup has turned into a completely opaque gray sludge. this is perhaps one of the worst things i've ever seen in my entire life. following this, i dispose of this wretched concoction and prepare to finish up the dress. it's already looking so much better, thank GOD, but the oxyclean soak is only the first part, if important. i do a few more rounds of just regular washing and rinsing to make absolute certain that it's free of 1 - gunk, and 2 - the all the detergent and bleach i replaced the gunk with. after that, i dry the skirt specifically in front of a box fan just to be absolutely sure i don't cause any print bleed. then, at 11pm, i hang it up to dry fully. (did i mention that this process took pretty much all day?)

once dry, it looks like this. already so much better!!

 

but i'm sure you've already noticed that i have yet to address the other glaring issue -- those damn backpack straps. please make no mistake, i'm totally pro-alteration, just anti-lying about your dress's actual condition when selling it. also anti-using children's backpack straps as your material of choice. i just think it's a bad idea.

i will not take credit for this part of the fixing. i am historically terrible with a needle and thread and have never been able to use one competently despite my best efforts, so i asked my dear friend wyrm if he could help me out with removing the straps and affixing new buttons, since the owner seemed to have thrown the old ones out. because he is very nice, he lobbed those things off and sewed on some plain white buttons to replace the missing old ones.  

 

thanks to wyrm's boyfriend for holding it up for the photo, hee hee hee

lord above!!!!! it's so much better. here's some close up before-and-after shots:

not too different from far away, but when you get in close...

while there were some small stains i couldn't get out with the oxyclean treatment, they thankfully weren't of the bodily fluids variety. (small pen stain on the collar and on the bottom of the skirt - invisible if you aren't specifically looking for them.) what i was left with was an almost perfectly intact jumperskirt, ready to be loved, worn, and regularly washed. i was also left with more confidence in taking care of my things and being willing to take off the kid gloves when it comes to keeping them clean. to think that at the beginning of this journey i was going to make this a dry-clean only dress... it'll be a gift that keeps on giving.

 

 

 

oh hello lolita blogger and why are you writing this even?? 

it's not really a unique story, i think most people who buy lolita secondhand have ended up with some nasty undisclosed stains that required hours of oxyclean soaking to get rid of. there are way worse stories out there than this one, but this is the first time it's ever happened to me, and with a dream dress, no less??? i guess this is up as a testament to how totally not-scary it is to deep clean old clothes. also as a testament to how important it is to wash your clothes!!!!! even if you don't plan on selling your things, you owe it to yourself to take care of your hygiene and make sure your clothes are nice to wear.

 

also this story is really funny. still not over the backpack straps.

 

wash your gotdamn clothes DAMN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!