I love Taobao.
Like I love Amazon, but I love Taobao just a liiiiiiittle bit more. This is mostly because there’s a lot of indie designers and other cute things I can find easily on Taobao. Obviously I love Amazon for other reasons, but Taobao has a special place in my heart.
I already knew a while ago that Taobao had established a sort of forwarding division for shops on their website, but at the time they had first established this, almost all the shops I frequently buy from did not ship to the USA, so it was kind of a moot point for me. Before this, I used proxies to purchase items on Taobao for me. Taobao hasn’t changed much in the years that I’ve used it; it’s still quite confusing, has a bit of a learning curve if you don’t read Chinese (although I guess Google Translate has changed a lot of that) and is still as orange as ever. It has had a few upgrades (including how many things you can save to your wishlist, which increases without me noticing every like couple months or something) but otherwise, the website has remained relatively the same throughout the years.
They have a phrase in China that’s 淘宝只有你想不到，没有你买不到的。The phrase means, on Taobao, there are no items you can’t buy, only things you can’t imagine. Basically, the phrase means that you can buy literally anything on Taobao, the only thing you can’t buy are the things you don’t even know exist or can’t think of.
I have the Taobao app on my phone and a registered Alipay account. If you register for Alipay you automatically get a Taobao account because the two are inherently linked as they’re from the same parent company. You can’t use any other payment function on Taobao other than Alipay. Alipay takes international credit card though and functions similarly to Paypal, so if you know how to use Paypal then I wouldn’t worry so much.
Back when I visited Shanghai, I remember looking up places to visit to shop other than your standard big malls and stuff. There’s a million and one places to shop in Shanghai and one of the areas I went and visited had a small, bright pink store called To Alice that was situated across an arcade full of claw machines filled with cute stuffed animals in an underground shopping center just off one of the metro exits at the People’s Square stop.
I ended up buying a really cute pink strawberry purse from To Alice which, now that I think about it, I have absolutely zero clue where it is now. Which kind of annoys me because it wasn’t particularly cheap!
But I’d always wanted to own a few more pieces from them, but with my limited time in Shanghai, I ended up not having any time to buy anything from their shop. I thought of them recently and decided to check out the brand’s online Taobao shop. I wanted to test out Taobao’s new forwarding system anyways, so I figured I might as well buy a few pieces I like from To Alice while I’m at it.
To Alice is a relatively popular Lolita brand in the mainland. It originally started in Hong Kong and has grown in popularity to the point where they’ve established physical stores in the mainland. It’s popular enough that it has a Japanese website and a Harajuku store.
To be honest, I really like Lolita fashion, but it’s not something I regularly wear. For me, I really enjoy seeing the coordinates people put together, looking at the beautiful prints, and overall just admiring how girly and cute the entire fashion is. However I can’t exactly wear it every day, and not to mention, as per usual, most Lolita dresses don’t fit my bust. If there’s a good amount of shirring it might, but even then, there are quite a few Lolita pieces with shirring that would just choke me to death if I tried to wear them.
However, of course, that doesn’t stop me from wanting to buy a few more Lolita or Lolita-esque pieces into my closet.
To Alice has a pretty varied range of clothing. They do make your ‘traditional’ Lolita dresses but they also do have several other fashion styles they’ll create, so it’s a nice varied bag. I particularly like the To Alice clothing, mostly because they just have a ton of very cute pieces I could wear on a daily basis. But also, they have a ton of really cute bear-themed and bunny-themed items, and honestly, bears and bunnies are my greatest weakness.
They have a particularly denim jacket with bunny ears that I almost bought, but the price tag was at like just over $100 USD so I ended up foregoing for a different jacket. There was another jacket I wanted to buy but since I wasn’t sure of the quality of the clothing so I didn’t want to buy too much the first time around.
I’ve seen To Alice dresses in person but that was probably three years ago, so at the time of purchase I didn’t know if the quality had improved or gone down. I can’t really comment on those dresses from the past, but I’ve read that most people don’t think they’re worth the price because while they’re cute, the quality of the dress in terms of materials is cheap compared to the somewhat expensive price tag.
I’ve never used the Taobao built in forwarding system, so I chose to purchase only a few things this time in preparation for things to get lost or broken in shipment.
I purchased three pieces from To Alice, two phone cases, and a very random Lolita dress I found with a rabbit print that was relatively cheap and something I wouldn’t mind if it didn’t fit/looked weird/etc. I also bought a cute pair of flats only to realize thirty minutes later I bought them in a size too small so I ended up requesting a refund before it’d even shipped. I got the refund approved the next day and the money returned to my card several days later. It took a little time for the refunded money to return to my account despite the refund having been approved and processed only a day later, but that doesn’t surprise me too much.
In total, I spent about 1,046.21 CNY which seems like a lot but converted to USD it’s about $160 total. This included the 85CNY shipping fee to send the items to the warehouse. The second charge to have the items shipped to me was around $30 something USD, which I expected. There is also a transaction fee with using Alipay for using an int’l CC if I recall correctly, but it usually wasn’t much. I also don’t get e-mail notifications regarding my purchases, their arrival at the warehouse, or anything else, so you kind of have to keep track of it yourself either through the website or the app. I was pretty excited though so I ended up checking like every day. They also didn’t tell me which carrier they’d use once it got to the USA, but the tracking on Taobao said it was FedEx. Not sure if they use FedEx every time though.
I’ve really been into denim jackets lately. I’ve actually never owned a denim jacket before this – I never felt like I could style them right and I was never able to find a denim jacket that I particularly liked. Recently though I’ve added two denim jackets to my closet, this oversized To Alice one and a light wash cropped floral denim jacket.
If I’m honest. Neither of these are particularly versatile pieces in terms of being able to pair them with whatever, like a plain denim jacket would. But that’s okay! Because I can always buy that later. The floral denim jacket and this oversized To Alice one are more like statement pieces to me.
I love the dark wash color of this jacket. It’s so beautiful. I don’t really like light wash jeans much, I much prefer darker wash jeans and this color is just right.
The fabric of this coat is very sturdy and well made. The buttons do feel a little loose though so I’ll probably have to reinforce those, but that’s pretty typical of any piece of clothing I buy that has buttons. The button holes have some stray threads but for the most part, I didn’t find any sort of major defects with my coat. It fits comfortably and looks really cute on! The coat length is quite nice as well. It hits around just above my mid-thigh and the coat looks particularly cute with some tennis skirts I bought recently. Overall, I’ve really enjoyed styling this coat with other clothes in my closet!
The other two pieces I got from To Alice was a rabbit eared head band and a pink sweater. The sweater I mostly got because… the rabbit was cute… and it looked warm. It’s quite soft and made of thick material. I’m actually kind of surprised, the sweater was a lot better quality than I was expecting. That being said, it is a somewhat thin material and not a super thick, chunky sweater type of material, so you might want an undershirt or something else. It’s not particularly oversized on me, but fits me quite nicely. It’s very soft to the touch and super comfortable to wear. I mostly bought it because it looked like a good lounging sweater.
The last piece is a pair of rabbit ears. I don’t actually need anything like this in my life, but my God did I want it! It’s soooo cute! I originally thought it’d be like something you clip into your hair because I didn’t see the hairband in the photos, but after recieivng it I realized it was sewed and attached to a metal hair band. It sits securely on my head and it’s honestly ridiculously cute. I only wish this came in other colors!
The only thing about the ears is that like one of the ears is slightly top heavier than the other so it kinda dips forward while the other dips a little more towards the back but it’s honestly kind of charming that way? They’re both still pointed upwards with no issues it’s just one looks like it’s leaning forward a bit more. I personally think it’s a little cute, and anyways it only ended up costing like $16 so there really isn’t much to complain about for me.
Now a quick review of the other items I bought:
Like the above phone cases! I was a little disappointed at first because I thought these were fully hard cases, but they’re that soft kind of clear plastic. However, I was pleasantly surprised to find that instead of those cheap finishes where the maker just slaps a painted image on the back of the case that chips easily (I had a case once where after I got it, I bent it to see how flexible it was, and the entire image on the back completely just flaked off the case… thank god it was cheap, but I guess I get what I pay for…) but instead it’s actually quite hard and not as flexible as other cases. I believe it’s some kind of image that was placed inside of the case with a somewhat stiffer layer of plastic or something because it’s not as flexible, doesn’t bend as much and it doesn’t look like it’ll chip because the image appears to be ‘inside’ the plastic per se rather than painted on.
The case is pretty good quality too and doesn’t feel cheap, so I’m pretty pleased!
Finally I bought this lavender colored dress with this cute rabbit print:
And whaddya know. Just like I mentioned in my last KATIE post, this dress also has one of those little return tags. This one is made of hard plastic. I find it interesting these tags are appearing more and more often on clothing! I actually quite like the idea, especially since most of the tags I’ve seen aren’t easy to rip off. For example, the MissGuided brand has these tags too but they’re like literal silk ribbons you have to cut off and can’t be easily pulled out of the clothing seams. I also got another dress that had a similar one to the Missguided brand. Back when Gal Meets Glam was still a shop, they also had these kinds of tags on their clothes but they were just held in with those little thin plastic tag things, similar to KATIE.
The dress was really cheap at like 25 ish dollars? The quality honestly isn’t amazing, but you get what you pay for. The fabric is pretty cheap, although the print is quite nice and clear, and the attached slip is also made of relatively cheap material. The fabric has some stretch and is pretty statick-y to be honest which is insanely annoying to deal with if you don’t live in a humid environment. The stitching is okay, but there are some parts where if you pull and look closely you’ll find that some of the stitching is a uneven and slightly visible. This is particularly noticeable on the left-hand side at the waist, but only if you pull it down.
The details are cute though – the little heart buttons, the ribbons that tie on either side of the heart buttons and the peter pan collar. It’s not shirred in the back so I was worried it wouldn’t fit me, but this brand happens to go up to a rather large size, so I just checked the sizing guide and grabbed the one I figured would fit me easiest. Surprisingly it fits me quite well, not tight at all, and instead is nice and fitted. It has ties around the waist to make it tighter as well.
In any case, this was just an experimental dress I wanted to buy so I wasn’t exactly expecting it to be Angelic Pretty quality.
Overall though, I feel satisfied with my purchases.
I ordered on I believe March 1st, and all the items departed the warehouse on March 12th before arriving at my house on March 16th. Personally, the turnaround wasn’t bad. Sellers typically shipped next day (their time) and the parcels usually arrived at the warehouse a day or two after that. After that it was just up to me to combine everything into one post and then for the warehouse to ship the item out.
The only reason why this took so long for me to have the items combined at the warehouse was because, for some reason, two of my packages took ages to reach the warehouse. They’d reach one part of the area then they’d have to get transferred again to get to another part before finally being put into storage. Once they reached storage, I could combine everything into one order, pay the international shipping fee, and then the items shipped together.
Overall, it was a pretty straightforward experience. If you have any experience with how Taobao’s website works and are interested in buying off of it, then I’d say it’d be pretty easy for most people to navigate. The whole forwarding to the warehouse and then shipping to me in my home country was pretty easy to understand. The only thing I couldn’t figure out was if I had a tracking number with FedEx after it arrived in the USA because I kept trying to find it, but on the Taobao website the log ends after “arrived with local delivery service carrier FedEx” so I couldn’t figure that out and couldn’t track my package while it was in the USA. It’s only recently that I was finally able to see the updated tracking numbers, but only on the Taobao app on my phone. Still have no clue where to find it on the website in the browser. I have three more packages coming because I’m an absolute idiot and ordered a bunch of things with different seller shipment dates so yeah. Three packages. Luckily because the packages were light, the int’l shipping fee wasn’t expensive in total. But still. I am an idiot. :’)
Lastly, the package that showed up at my house was in one of those thin soft flexible plastic mail carriers. Everything was squished into a square and then taped a bunch. I was worried my headband would get crushed but luckily it was fine. It was just like… really strange. Why didn’t they use a box? But the plastic carrier didn’t break or fray or rip or anything in transit, which was good because I’d be real annoyed if like, something fell out or something. It was taped a ton though so I feel like, even if it did rip, it would have stayed in place due to how much tape there was…
Everything was wrapped individually in my package too though which I’m assuming the sellers did, so that was pretty nice. Even if water got inside or something then the items inside would still be protected.
Since I’ve ordered more items since this first package, I’m wondering if they’ll come in a box since I ordered a bit more this time, but honestly, I’m not holding my breath… Guess only time will tell.
Side note, the second and third package I’ve ordered from Taobao have taken FOREVER to go through customs or something and get into the hands of the FedEx courier. Even if the information on Taobao says it’s been sent to FedEx, it took like 2 weeks for the tracking information to finally update. It’s honestly kind of weird. I don’t know if it’s cause of weather or customs or COVID or whatever, but it’s been significantly longer compared to my first.
Anyways if anything strange happens I’ll update this post but I think it’ll be fine. I’m going to assume it’s COVID that’s causing things to be backed up.
Anywho, as usual, thanks for reading!
{ Honey + Bunny } 