I wanted to touch up on a few things:

“In Japan, this culture is more influenced by Lolita-looking anime characters than the actual Lolita novel.”
It isn’t, anime characters are inspired off of Lolita fashion and it’s influences, the Victorian and Rocco Eras. Lolita started in the 70′s and is said to be not only influenced by J.Rock/Visual Kei bands of the time, but also brands and designers of that time as well, i.e. Pink House, who’s designs are not particularly Lolita (but can probably work into it), but very old-fashioned and natural.

“…similarity between them and Vladimir Nabokov’s precocious character is a girlish sense of style.”
This is wrong, I was actually pointing out the character differences. Lolita the character was a tomboy who was a active, normal growing girl. The image of Lolita the Japanese style is of an elegant girl from the Victorian and/or Rococo era. Something that screams elegance, gracefulness, the style itself concentrated on quality, and modesty of the designs.

“Elle and the Guardian both described collections from last month’s fashion week as very “Lolita,” and new It girl Katy Perry rocks ’50s-silhouette dresses, heart-shaped glasses, and mary jane heels every chance she gets – and she has gotten a lot of chances, from MTV’s red carpets to runway show front rows to magazine covers.”

Katy Perry does indeed rock her look as “Lolita”. Not the Japanese fashion style. As far as I remember reading there was a small “Lolita trend” back in the 80′s based on Nabokov lolita. The examples I saw from that source were inspired by 50′s fashion (the time of which Nabokov’s story took place) so yeah.

etc

And Katie Perry is not even recognized as a Lolita by most members of lolita fashion communities. She might strive for that “young, innocent, yet seductive and sexy” look, but that is Nabokov’s Lolita and should not be even mentioned to an actual Japanese lolita.