How did you find out about BJD and how did you get the first doll?

I went to a lecture on them given by someone in a local doll club. She passed around a Luts msd, and the minute I held that doll I knew this was what my creative heart had been yearning for all my life. I went home and signed onto Den of Angels (which the lecturer had mentioned during her talk) just as soon as I walked through the door. This was back in 2006 and I’ve been right here, happily collecting every day since. I purchased my first doll second-hand from someone at a doll meetup shortly afterwards.

 

I was on VampireFreaks and saw a profile with a Mana cosplayer who had a few Volks dolls about 2004 maybe? I knew I wanted a doll when I started researching about them.

 

Saw a Doll Chateau Gladys out of the blue in 2022 while looking at Japanese miniatures/kitbashing. The style in those is often cyberpunk or steampunk, so she fit right in. I had no idea these dolls existed.
When I mentioned a strange lanky doll someone immediately said "Doll Chateau" and I went down the rabbit hole.
And after a couple years now I'm finally getting their Youth body for a hybrid, so it looks like I've gone full circle.

 

Well, I saw volks beatrice when I was a younger person into Umineko, and always loved how BJD looked. But a few things happened recently- I have a friend into BJD, and I'd been telling her how pretty a character I like would be as a doll. And she found a lutsdoll sculpt she thought would be perfect for his face, so I bought it when I got a job ) and then, I went down the doll chateau rabbit hole... another brand she introduced me to......

 

I found bjds on YouTube when i was 13 or 14. It was some unboxing video. My first doll came when i was 16 and it was Song from Resinsoul

 

I was in Japan in late 2000 and while I was there I bought a copy of a magazine called The Gothic & Lolita Bible. There's quite a few issues out though it's not produced anymore, but especially in those earlier issues they would do street snaps of random people in their outfits and dedicated a handful of pages to them. In this issue there was a tiny picture of a girl wearing a red gingham dress holding a doll that was wearing a miniature of the same.

I thought at first it must have been something specific to some sort of anime, etc. but after some digging and digging and digging I discovered Volks and their Super Dollfie. At the time Den of Angels was just a Yahoo! Group and I joined there. It took a while, but eventually my first doll was an FCS F-08, and I got her through a proxy in Japan, which was really the only way in those days unless you went and purchased one of the standard dolls.

 

It started it when I was in my 20's. I had a friend that found bjd on the internet and she bought a boy from Volks. He was a really famous sculpt 20 years ago and I loved him. However I could not afford a doll to myself so it was all at that time. However, in 2020 I found customiced Bythes and I love them. From there I found again bjd and at that time I alredy could afford one so I bought my fist one that was an Iplehouse Aria. And since them here I'm collecting dolls and loving them

 

I found out about bjd from a Halloween lolita meetup. Then I obtained my first bjd by buying a face up head ddh-01 from freyacchi who completed a faceup on the head that I was completely enamored with. Then I needed to obtained a body so I had to consider the age range of the character that I was developing in my head so I decided on the ddp body from volks. Finally I purchased the body from yahoo japan using a proxy service because at the time the ddp body was a japan exclusive.

 

I don't remember what specifically I first saw that was bjd-related since it was so long ago, but I'm certain it was because I was looking up pictures of other customized dolls. I used to be super obsessed with doll customization videos when I was like 8, and every so often after that the obsession would come back and I would look up a bunch of stuff lol, but I didn't find bjds specifically until I was ~13. I didn't get any until a couple years ago though, when I got my first one secondhand.

 

How it all began...

I wanted a Miku doll but back in 2020 they weren't easily obtainable. I decided to buy a Dollfie Dream standard model then buy her Miku Miku hair.

Here's Towa being unboxed. I had no idea what I was doing really. But she's now 4.5 years old and in fabulous condition. She has many sisters now (and 2 brothers).

She was a great emotional support doll during the dark days of 2020-21. Her first sister didn't arrive for another 18 months, simply because I wasn't sure who it should be.

 

I'm still wondering which bjd selling site I saw around age of 9... Very pink, with some tan dolls on promo photos (with pink background too as I remember?). My mother says she bought me doll from her friend because "I told her all about those ball jointed dolls". But I can't find the roots of this! I thought it was her friend that started all of this for me Hope to solve this mystery one day! Web archive is my friend in this journey ♡