Today, there’s a shout-out to La Carmina from Susie Bubble, one of my favorite dress-up artists. The Guardian recently named her blog (Style Bubble) one of the world’s 50 most powerful – and deservedly so. Susie’s frequent entries about indie and vintage fashion put her that awesome zone between fervor and OCD. Her playful personality especially comes through in her style diary (where she uses a timer to capture her current outfit).

In the post, Susie admits she wouldn’t know Mana from Kana: “It is rather unfortunate though that I’m not a personal fan of Lolita fashion in most of its strands and variations (I’d refer people to La Carmina for more information on gothic Lolita, a site I’ve stumbled upon that seems expert in its field… seeing as I’m ill equipped to educate people…). Mainly because a) the aesthetic somehow looks a little wrong on my 5″7-8 body and b) I’m not really into playing into stereotypes – a girl from Hong Kong dressed in full-on Lolita costume traipsing around London giggling innocently and batting my eyelashes would just spell disaster in all aspects of daily life for me, probably more so than if my daily uniform consisted of a 1 foot high feather hat with a vintage Thierry Mugler suit and Alexander McQueen heels.”