Can You Buy Lolita Fashion From AliExpress?

This is related to LovelyLor's "Can you buy lolita fashion from ____" series. Back in mid-May this year, I came across this dress on one of the lolita fashion sales groups that I follow on Facebook. It had this gorgeous pastel gradient sky and the print had moons and stars and featured a cat in an astronaut suit with planets and a little cat-UFO. It was hard to find any information on it, but I found it for sale on AliExpress. At the time I was on a AliExpress binge, buying random cheap cute things like crafting supplies, washi tape and stickers, so I thought, why not lolita? Except that most of the stores selling lolita fashion aren't the official brand's stores themselves, they're mostly taobao resellers and the like. But as a sort of experiment, and the dress was only $40, so I thought, why not? Let's see how bad it really is. A week after I submitted my order, it didn't go through and I was refunded. The seller contacted me so I bought it again and it was shipped around the end of May.

Expectation:

This was the original photo I saw, credit to Gloria Chong on Facebook.

And this is the official seller's photo from AliExpress. I got it from a store called "Meow Girl".

Reality:

It arrived about 3 months later in a thin plastic bag as an envelope and inside, the dress was pretty wrinkled. I decided not to edit the photos so please don't mind the crappy lighting. As you can see, the dress certainly isn't as blue toned in real life and more of a grayish blue at the top. It came with a few loose threads but overall you can tell it's the dress in the photos.

I was thinking the hem was going to be a organza fabric but it was just some scratchy mesh material and looked much worse in person. It definitely had to go! The dress was lined, at least. The material was thin but the print was decent, not blurry or anything. It had non-removable waist ties and full shirring at the back. Shoulder straps are not adjustable. 

   

I gave it a good iron and it looked a bit better! My mom helped me replace the hem with some extra lace I had lying around which I had hoarded when I had suddenly wanted to make my own wrist cuffs but I quickly gave up on that idea... luckily it was just enough, and it kind of matched the lace on the bodice. I took off the buttons and re-sewed them on because they were kind of loose, too.

And here is a worn photo! Excuse the lighting again! I could've added more filters to make it look more like the image above but oh well. The blouse and bag are also from Taobao, shoes are from RoseMarie Seoir, tights from ManiaQ and necklace and wrist cuffs are from Angelic Pretty. For reference I'm 167cm and this dress is a little above my knees so I don't think it will be very tall lolita friendly!

Overall this is a cute cheap dress to have for more casual looks to wear when you don't want to worry about ruining or staining your brand pieces... but can you buy lolita fashion from AliExpress? I'd say, short answer: no. If you're a newbie lolita I'd highly recommend LaceMarket, Etsy, Closet Child or Bodyline instead of AliExpress for main pieces like dresses so the origins are less... questionable. Shipping from AliExpress takes a while, too. Long answer: maybe? There are a lot of accessories, socks, blouses and other things I see on AliExpress which may be worth it but to be honest, none of them look like good quality! That being said, most of my shoes and blouses are from Taobao (from the actual lolita brand's store, not a reseller or general cosplay store) but I've stopped buying from there recently since I wasn't too pleased with my last order with my shopping service. I did use Chinese Lolita Updates on Facebook recently though so I'll be sure to review that once it arrives.

Anyway, I hope you found this useful! That's all for this post, until next time~!