Hello Lace

Hello Lace

Screenshot of hellolace homepage in 2012
Available in	English
Founded	16 June 2010
Dissolved	2015 (inactive from 2012)
Twitter	hellolace
Current status	Closed

Hello Lace was an English-language website that documented lolita fashion items. It was known for having a very aesthetically pleasing layout, the ability to browse all entries for a brand on a single page as images, and for its informational pages. Hello Lace is now defunct, and the URL hosts malware.

History

Hello Lace was released by LJ user Boxx2Genetica on Livejournal on June 16, 2010. The release notice read as follows:

"Hello! I'd like to present a project I've been working on since last year: hellolace. Some of you may have been aware of this, as I have been contacting quite a few people for submissions. The initial idea was to make a more updated and less opinionated resource for lolita information, then I decided to make a lolita items database that everyone could benefit from. Lastly, I thought it'd be nice to have a gallery of beautiful inspirational lolitas and other things. While Daily Lolita works as such, Livejournal isn't the most organized place.

Right now it's in beta, meaning it's unfinished but viewable. Many pages are already written, but need some touchups before I post them. I've decided to post this now, as with the appearance of the amazing girls of Lolibrary, I didn't want my months of work put to waste. The girls at Lolibrary are of course welcome to take part of the information and images I post as well.

INFORMATION

I've tried to write a more objective view of lolita fashion, which may not be everyone's cup of tea. Styles are referred to by their Japanese names, and the "guides" are just overviews of each style and its contents. The style overviews will include more rare substyles, such as Pirate Lolita, Fairy Lolita, Deco Lolita, etc. The information written also differs between the Western and Asian versions of lolita fashion at certain points.

This part of the site is very incomplete at this point, and a lot is to be added shortly.

LOLITA ITEMS DATABASE AKA THE WARDROBE

I decided to do a gallery-style database, with each item displayed as a thumbnail leading to a new page with the official information of the item. Everything is translated from Japanese, and while I've tried keeping everything as accurate as possible, if you spot any mistakes you are more than welcome to send me a note about it through the contact form. All items have all official stock photos I've been able to gather. In worst-case scenarios, I have gathered images from official blogs or second-hand sites.

All items are databased, listed by brand and type, and sortable into years. You can also use the search box to search for a specific item if you know its name. Right now there's pretty much only AP up, but I have several thousand files of several hundred items to be added still.

LOLITA INSPIRATION GALLERY

The inspiration gallery currently features lovely lolitas I have encountered. If you think you could be an inspiration to other lolitas, feel free to contact me! However, notice your photos must keep a certain quality. I will most likely post a list of guidelines for this on the website later on.

Note: If you are one of the lolitas I've contacted and you don't see yourself in the gallery yet; don't worry, I'll post up the rest of you soon.

I am also working on a second part with inspirational hairstyles suitable for lolita.

GRAPHICS

I will also have a section for lolita-related graphics for everyone's enjoyment. So far it's just 100x100 icons, but if anyone has suggestions, feel free to share.

Well, that's it for now. Feel free to share your comments, opinions and suggestions (if there is something you'd love to see on the site). Thank you for surviving this wall of text!"

By July 1, 2010, the site had 337 items listed, with 270 of them being Angelic Pretty dresses.

On July 20th, 2011 Boxx2Genetica posted to EGL requesting 1-5 people to help as contributors. Hello Lace used a closed model where only staff members of the site could submit content. According to the request post, wardrobe staff members were expected to use the custom admin panel that was slated to be finished around August/September 2011 to update their brands weekly. They also were expected to either be fluent in Japanese, or be able to do translation using dictionaries and translation apps (which were not as advanced at that time), and have an image editing program they could use to edit thumbnail images. A list of staff members was posted on the credits page, but by 2011, this only consisted of two names: Stanzi1791/Marleen, a contributor, and Hiroko the host and initial developer. Those two staff members and the site owner Boxx2Genetica/Linda are the only publicly announced staff members. The staff members names were not associated with the entries in a public facing way, so even though some of the the posts imply the team may have been larger, there is no public record of how large the staff was. In 2012, Christina (Blogger at Ramble Rori) was added to the list as a programmer.

On November 20, 2010, Boxx2Genetica posted to EGL seeking a PHP/MySQL developer, as Hello Lace's previous developer was not available for personal reasons. On January 6, 2011, Boxx2Genetica posted to EGL seeking worn item photos to add to items listings, which would be a new feature.

On April 29, 2011, Boxx2Genetica posted to EGL looking for French and German translators for a V2 of hellolace that was in development. The new version was intended to feature translations of the website content into other languages including Dutch, French, German, Dutch and Swedish. This would not have included the wardrobe, which held the item listings. Around this time, there was also a shift towards writing the name as Hello Lace, instead of hellolace.

On July 6, 2011, Hello Lace announced that they had started a twitter with the first post being from July 2, 2011. On July 16, 2011, Hello Lace started to record items from Enchantlic Enchantilly.

On July 20, 2011, they posted to twitter that they were looking for more contributors, and stated that they had staff to cover the classic brands. On August 1st, 2011, they announced their attached forum via Twitter and LiveJournal. The forum would become the easiest way to contact the staff about errors in listings, or questions however, despite it being advertised on the site homepage, it was generally not used much with less than 200 topics being made through out it's lifetime. They also started a washing information list on the forum using information copied from EGL and asked for people to contribute via the forum. However, there were only 17 contribution replies over the life of the feature. A similar post to EGL was more successful and outlined that the plan was to add this information to the Wardrobe listings in a future version.

On August 14, 2011, they tweeted that they had just added the 6,000th wardrobe entry. On August 15, 2011, they announced that they would start archiving h.Naoto items.

On September 5, 2011, they tweeted that they were taking a short break, followed by a tweet on September 20th, 2011 indicating that the site would go on Hiatus until the design change. At this time, there were 6137 item entries. On October 3, 2011, commenting on items was shut off.

In June of 2012, Boxx2Genetica made a post to EGL about Hello Lace's status:

As you may know, hellolace has been inactive since last year. The reason is, as some of you may know, that I have been re-designing some aspects of the site, such as the layout, wardrobe and information pages.

I've been focusing heavily on improving the wardrobe for you all, taking your suggestions and complaints into consideration. Lolibrary has quite a few nice ideas implemented, but I wanted to go beyond that. I want to let you browse items by color (i.e. only display the green colorway thumbnails), find items with specific patterns (polka dot skirts, anyone?), search by size or easily find the 3 items in the huge database that happens to have a print with cherubs on it. And that's just mentioning a few things I had planned.

Something like this is not doable with the current MySQL database, or code. That is why I need a skilled (MySQL, PHP, Ajax) and trustworthy programmer to help me design: a new MySQL database, an administration panel with a register/login system to maintain it, a wardrobe search and code display it all. This person will need a lot of time on his/her hands. I think it goes without saying it would be a volunteer project.

If I'm unable to find a programmer soon, I'll probably add the new layout (it was finished a long time ago), the revamped pages and either remove the wardrobe section or keep it static for the people who still wants to access it.

At this time, people asked in the comments about why Hello Lace and Lolibrary didn't collaborate. The official public statement from Hello Lace was:

Well, we have different ideas of the websites we're maintain for one. Lolibrary is open for the public, mine is not. I don't know the skillset of the owners of Lolibrary, nor do I know if they'd prefer to work on hello lace rather than Lolibrary. It'd be rude of me to assume they'd abandon their site for mine, or that they should adapt my ideas of the perfect site. Maybe they love Lolibrary as it is now. There's also the option of creating a brand new site, but then we're back to square one where no one knows us, and where is Lolibrary and why is hello lace's wardrobe section gone?! Everything on my side is also already created and planned out. All I need is someone to work their magic to put the wheels in motion, so to speak.

In September 2012, they switched from twitter to tumblr, but made few posts to the tumblr, which was moved sometime after July 2015.

In October of 2012, Milanoo sent them a cease and desist letter for defamation due to them having listed Milanoo as a scam site, however neither party was based in the US and the cease and desist referenced US law.

On November 2, 2012, they refreshed the layout of the site. At this time the wardrobe section got the first new items in more than a year with the total count increasing to 6,284 items at it's peak around March 2013. Many of the new items were from Moi-Meme-Moitie.

In February of 2013, they reiterated that they needed a developer to finish the site, and contributors to populate the site with entries as Boxx2Genetica no longer had time to maintain the site. On July 13, 2013, they officially put the site on hiatus, due to being unable to find a developer.

Between March 8, 2013 and May 6, 2013, the total number of items decreased from 6,284 to 6202. At this time, there were still Moi-Meme-Moitie items listed. Then, between August 10, 2013 and August 29, 2013 Hello Lace silently removed the entire Moi-Meme-Moitie section bringing them down to items 5688. A new MMM database website run by Stanzi1791/Marleen (lolibrary user tiphona) appeared around 2015.

Screenshot of HelloLace on Dec. 12, 2015

In February of 2015, Hello Lace was hacked and malware was added to the site. The site was hacked again in October 2015, and Boxx2Genetica posted the following closure message to their twitter on November 20th, 2015:

Thanks everyone for visiting hellolace throughout the years. As of today, it's officially closed and will not be returning. I lost my interest in Lolita fashion a long time back, and I no longer have the time required to maintain it. If you need to look up items, you always got http://Lolibrary.org. :) Have a good one, everyone!

When they closed, there were 5,688 items. The V2 version that was planned was never completed or released.

External links

• Tumblr
• Wayback Machine site archive