AP Honey Cake JSK 2021 vs. 2019 MTO

I guess posting every 3 months is gonna be a thing now...? :') For the past three months I was busy prepping for my wedding at the end of October. I've finally gotten married! After postponing it (it was originally supposed to be in July this year) but overall I'm glad it's over and done with! There were so many things that could have been done better but of course these are all details that I'm being super critical about personally... sigh. I say to Fred that I wish I could have gotten married again just so I could fix the problems but I guess I should really focus on the good, which is actually being able to pull off a wedding safely in the middle of a pandemic! Anyway one regret is that I wasn't able to take many photos on my own and our photographer tends to take a long time to process the photos so... I really don't have anything good to share right now so I guess I'll make a future post in detail next year about the wedding. In the mean time, in October I randomly saw that a mutual on ig was offering shopping services for a second hand lolita fashion reselling site in China so I decided to ask her to help me hunt down some of my dream dresses. Because why not and I don't know how much longer I can wear lolita...

So last year I was finally able to get my hands on Angelic Pretty's Honey Cake JSK (jumperskirt) in yellow during their 2019 MTO (Made To Order) and I received the dress in 2020. I only wore it about once, indoors (pandemic), and never again. Don't get me wrong, it is one of my fav prints (probably my ultimate fav) but the cut I wanted was the switching one with the white yoke in the middle and three ribbons, and during the 2019 MTO, they only released the "round" cut. Which was fine since I just really wanted to own the print and I didn't know if AP would rerelease this ever again (*cough* they did). But deep down, I always liked the switching JSK cut the best. Something about the white and ribbon detail (reminded me of the Dream Fantasy lucky pack JSK I used to own...and regret selling, sigh), and I found that the fit of the round JSK was a little weird, the bust area was a bit too loose on me, and I felt like you wouldn't have that problem if there was less fabric in the front, like the switching JSK.

And believe it or not, AP rereleased Honey Cake again earlier this year.... in the switching JSK cut!! (WHY didn't they do a MTO for this cut back in 2019?!). Along with mint and pink colorways too, unlike the 2019 MTO which was in yellow and ivory only. Anyway, long story short I slept on it but it was really bugging me at the back of my mind, so I decided to hunt it down using the shopping service from China, firstly to test out the service and also the switching JSK was proving impossible to find at a decent price on Japan auction sites. Finding it was really quick and shipping took about a month. Overall not bad and since we're mutuals I was able to send payment without PP fees so I'm super pleased with the service and so happy to finally get this dream dress!! Since I have both I decided to do a quick comparison:

They're both made of polyester of course (I'm still kicking myself for selling the mint OP in the original cotton btw) but to my surprise, there were quite a few differences. The lighting is crap but it's natural daylight (overcast) so I'm wondering if the subtle color variation even shows up... but the 2021 version is definitely more "cool toned" yellow compared to the 2019 version which is more warm feeling. Not very noticeable at first glance. 

The shade of ribbon is the same and the material more or less feels the same, the print is the same (I roughly looked at it, there may be more differences...)

Probably the biggest difference is the color of the inside lining - for some reason the 2019 version has this orangey colored lining compared to the light yellow to match the yellow of the 2021 JSK. I really didn't question it or notice it until I put it next to the 2021 dress. It looks really orange?!

A shot of the inside tags - the 2021 release was made in the Philippines, like the original cotton release. The 2019 MTO was made in China. I could be wrong but I feel like all their big MTOs are made in their factory in China. The pink AP tag is sewn into the inner lining of the dress on the 2019 release, whereas the AP tag is sewn into the back of the switching JSK dress itself.

 

The reverse side of the tag. The 2019 release has bigger extra buttons for the waist ties.

And then one other obvious final observation is that the hem lace of the 2019 MTO dress is more beige/warm toned whereas the lace on the 2021 dress is more off-white/ivory which in my opinion, matches with the white parts of the dress more. Of course there is no white panel on the round style JSK so the darker lace didn't matter. Overall after noticing these differences, I much prefer the 2021 switching JSK because the cooler toned pastel yellow lining suits the dress more. Not sure if I ever mentioned it, but I really don't like anything orange in my wardrobe. Even from childhood I never really liked the color orange (and even got made fun of for it lmao). Well, not like you'd really notice since it's on the inside of the dress, but this matters to me. The 2021 version's shade of yellow appears brighter to me for some reason.

I'm so happy to finally get this cut though! And hopefully I'll be encouraged to wear it a bit more! The downside is, I'm now stick with two Honey Cake JSKs (I mean, is that a bad thing? Lol...) and now that it's been rereleased so many times, the rarity is gone and it's hard to sell back at the price I got it for. Although, in the past I was able to sell AP anything relatively quickly, so we'll see.

That's all for this post, thank you for reading!!

P.S. I also got AP's Magical Night Theater JSK in red (my dream dress is the black JSK but the price range was way out of my limit and I got the full set for the red one at a good price) but no pics for now since I want the focus of this post to be for the Honey Cake comparison... so until next time!!