About Elegy

Elegy is inspired by the darker side of life and things that aren't conventionally 'pretty'. The phrase 'fit for a funeral' comes to mind - the beautiful corpse adorned with a myriad of flowers, flowing tresses, and of course clothed in a gorgeous dress. 
The creepy, mysterious woman who stares out her window all day - could she be a witch? She does keep odd hours and all the stray cats gather in her yard.
The freaky girl with dark lips clad in black, a petticoat-supported silhouette,  and platform mary janes. That's her: the witch, the dead girl, the freak. That's Elegy. 
(Or at least my inspiration and aspirations for this brand of mine.)


Miss Chubi, Chubi, Chubisaur, or simply Carmen - this is all the same chick who runs this madness. She and she alone is responsible for this nightmare known as Elegy - all the sewing, design, pattern-making, web design, emails, social media, photo editing, etc. is done by her. So, apologies  if I don't get back to your email right away, I have a lot of tasks I have to fulfill on any given day and my inbox is probably my greatest source of stress and it sometimes gets the best of me.

Elegy was born out of an experiment: could I successfully sell the things I make?  A recent college dropout, I was hating my retail hell and couldn't stand the idea of going to work at the BIG BRAND HEADQUARTERS down the street one day. I had to do my own thing and find my own way. Somehow.
The first chapter in this experiement was opening an Etsy shop. But of course I wasn't going to actually bare my soul and throw out into the world what I really, truly wanted to create, so I began by making silly backpack purses based off licensed characters such as pokemon and such. I made my first sale ~2 hours after opening my shop, and that verified this desire of mine.
The second chapter was moving onto... clothing. The first garment I actually sold was a really ugly cherry printed blouse with bright lemon yellow sleeve cuffs. I labelled it as 'Lolita', although it truly wasn't, but it had ruffles on it and that''s Lolita right?? LOL, boy was I wrong. But I did sell a garment, and that really sealed this idea in my head - that maybe I really could make and sell clothing and do this thing for real.
The next chapter is where I start to move into Lolita. Now, I had a really good repeat customer, and she began having an interest in Lolita fashion, and one thing led to another and before I know it, she's commissioned me to make her a Lolita skirt and then I'm neck deep in EGL groups and Livejournal Lolita guides, to make sure I'm doing this thing right. And I've fallen head over heels and been bitten by this beautiful bug called Lolita. I feel so deeply in love with this fashion that I couldn't stop there after one commission. So I kept going. I put up the commiissioned skirt for regular sale, and then made another  skirt, then a pair of bloomers, and it was all downhill from there. 
I eventually moved off Etsy, migrated to a handful of different web/e-commerce platforms, and now I'm here. The newest iteration of my website (as of 1/2016), and I'm not planning on going anywhere soon.