Monday 25 March 2013

Taobao & Sweet soul shop Review

Hola!
I haven't made a post for a while because I've been really busy lazy with uni and tings. But now I am back home for Easter and had a parcel waiting for me from Taobao :D
For those who don't know, Taobao is basically like a Chinese ebay with millions of stores but sells literally anything your perverted little imaginations can think of. But I mainly look for Japanese brands/replica's which are sold at a really cheap price! It really has tonnes of amazing products, however, apart from the website being all in Chinese (thanks Google chrome translator!), to order anything from Taobao you have to live in China.
Hm.
This is where a handy dandy shipping service comes in.
Having never used Taobao in my life or a shipping service I had to ensure the company I chose were trustworthy. So I chose sweetsoulshop who I have been following on tumblr for a long while and who also have a Facebook page. When I found their store it was a long while ago when they only sold cosmetics but as the store grew bigger sweet soul shop added a Taobao shipping service.


My favourite Japanese brand is Candy Stripper, I love its blend of cute and creepy so here is what I ordered:


Originally I wanted the black stripes on the jacket however it was sold out...so red will do (:.
Also, the jacket is an original Candy Stripper piece, the t shirt is a replica.

Jacket - (Chinese Yuan) ¥170 = £17.95
T shirt - 
¥85 = £8.97

The prices are so amazing, in comparison to the Japanese prices:
(Roughly)

(Japanese Yen) ¥20,790 = £145
¥13,440 = £93
I love you Japan but you are the most expensive country, I swear.

Anywhoooooo, I ordered these items on 24th January which is the date I received my Paypal invoice. 
I was in contact with Jasmina Rosa from sweet soul shop who I have to say is excellent at communication with customers. She was fast at replying (the girl's who run Sweetsoulshop are from Australia so despite the time difference I always got an email very quickly) letting me know that Taobao services are usually longer since they are communicating with two different Chinese sellers who may not reply at the same time or have the items ready.
My items were shipped on 08/3/2013 which is quite a long wait, however, I do not blame sweetsoulshop for the time it took as they were not in possession of the clothes and had to wait until the parcel was received to Australia to then ship it to the UK. I was emailed the tracking number as well.

The parcel arrived on 14th March :3





 The badge was a gift from my Korean penpal, Hyun ^3^. It says Choi Seung-hyun 최승현 (T.O.P's real name) 


The quality of the jacket is excellent which is what I expected of brand, the t shirt however, is decent just a little baggy. I wanted to wear this with high waisted shorts but the material gathers since its quite wide on me


Please excuse the lack of ironing :P I wanted to put it on straight away.
Here is what the jacket looked like, the fit was perfect. The translation isn't clear but I think this comes in one size. 



Bare Mirror pics 2k13 
I had to really edit this photo because I looked like such a derp in this outfit. Can't nobody stop the derp!
The skirt is also by candy stripper from vivi-clothes.com (:. 

These two pieces are supposed to go together as it is modeled on the website, however, because the shirt lacks any shape all the material bunches up at the back. 
I like the design but it is uncomfortable to wear with high- waisted things which is basically all I wanted to wear it with :c
I'm sure I will find something in my wardrobe haha. Anyway, I also received a "little" gift with these items. It looked like a tiny bit of cloth with a drawstring at the top. As I pulled it out the parcel I thought it was a little blue bag, as I opened it I notice it had a huge hole in the bottom.
Wtf is this!?

It was so tiny I honestly thought it was a make-up-type-drawstring bag but on closer inspection I figured it was a bit of clothing...for the thigh perhaps? Because that's literally the only part of my body it would fit on.
So perhaps its a boob tube, but as I measured it to my chest it hardly covered anything. Yet I squeezed it on, my bra was way too padded (push up bra's ftw!!) so I changed into something a bit more flat...okay really flat and I got it on okay. It still hurt my boobs which is saying something because I have hardly anything. So here is the tiny bag/boob tube thing! 

It was super difficult to get off as well D;
I love these items and will be ordering from taobao again soon, but hopefully I can find something that doesn't take a month and a half to be shipped.

1 comment:

  1. Thank you! :)

    Thanks for the link as well, I have used Buychina before and I am not living in Australia :) I meant sweetsoulshop is based in Aus ^^
    Although I did write this review out wrong, they ship their items out straight from China not Aus haha x

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