#forestgirlfans

History  I rarely make purchases online, and especially with clothes, but since I have been trying to redo my wardrobe lately, I saw online shopping as a cheaper, and far more 'my style' alternate to shopping locally. Before this I had only bought a small haul of clothes once before from Brave Store, who also stock Taobao items. I found these items to be rather poor however, with most of them not fitting, being low quality, or  even being the completely wrong product! This was obviously very disheartening and took awhile for me to regain my courage to buy online again, but whereas Brave Store sells Taobao clothes for a higher price to make a profit, I had the courage to risk it due to the low prices Taobao offers with its products (so much cheaper than in store).

My Order

I decided to buy from Taobao before I had a clear idea of what I wanted, and it took a lot of searching to find a range of products I felt right. I recommend googling the style you want to try and find a list of stores, for instance 'fairy kei taobao stores'. There are a few tumblrs dedicated just to Taobao items in a particular style. I did originally want to buy Fairy Kei items myself, but I was unable to find a store I liked, and so instead I decided to buy Mori Kei (which is my most loved style, but one I did not think would suit me originally). I found this list very helpful  and it is what led me to Forest Girl Fans.

Forest Girl Fans

Here I bought the majority of my clothing. I found their prices very good, considering the apparent quality of the clothing. I mean, it all looks amazing right? It was very hard to not buy everything and this is the main reason why my haul turned out so large. I had to cut my original shopping cart down a lot. My only real issue with them at this stage, was the lack of sizes. I think maybe two items had sizes? But otherwise no sizes, or indications of what size things would turn out to be. I was hoping that because mori clothing is very loose fitting I would be OK. 

I also purchased clothes from two other stores.

Lemonbao227 I purchased a scarf from here as it was listed as a related item to some of my Forest Girl Fans socks. It stocks clothes very similar to Forest Girl Fans.

Sunuo1985

I saw this store on tumblr months ago and saved the item I wanted (a blouse), this was one of the main reasons I wanted to use Taobao.

In the end I decided to purchase 15 items from Forest Girl Fans, one from Lemonbao and one from Sunuo. Here is my haul picture:

Buychina

So I decided to use Buychina as my client. I tried my best to research fully what my best opition would be, although I don't think I did as well as I could have. I think the best way to decide on a client would be to talk to other Taoabo users and what their preferred client is, as I found it hard to find proper reviews or websites online. I chose Buychina after going on this website as it was recommened and it says it used paypal on here. Buychina no longer accepts paypal and this made my purchase a lot more difficult and so It's vital to ensure the reviews you look at are recent to avoid this, a store might have dramatically changed in its service and quality in a short peroid of time. I liked Buychina because whereas a lot of websites require you to fill out a form in Excel with your purcahses, Buychina translates Taobao for you and has a shopping cart system. I found the english on the website to also be very good and the shipping prices were the best I found out of all other websites I checked.

My order came to $203 US dollars, and while this was a lot, its important to remember I purchased 17 items, so its a lot cheaper then if I bought in store. The shipping came to $130. This makes my purse cry quite a lot, and is the main reason you need to research the best client before making a purchase. Shipping was calculated by (roughly) $20 for the first 0.5 kg, and $5 for every additional .5kg. Because of this I tried to choose light items, it was mostly things like my shoes and jacket that bumped up the shipping cost (for instance my shoes which were 1500kg had $15 shipping).

Process

I placed my order on the 10th of November 2013, buying from Buychina was very easy and there was not any translating issues. After my order I got the apporpriate emails confirming it, and the next day my order changed from Pending to Processing, meaning they were in the process of buying my products. 

On the same day (the 11th) I received a message outlining which products were out of stock. I expected this after reading so many other Taobao reviews and I was pretty lucky only a few were unavailble. I was unable to get my hat, bag, or socks because of this reason. The Baby the Stars Shine Bright bag I also did not get because apparently the $1 was just for a deposit and the actual product was around $20 (i was mainly buying it to see if that price was right anyway haha). Here are the messages, very good english and VERY fast. 

After I replied they purchased all my items for me and all my products arrived at theirs by the 15th. A feature that I found great about Buychina is that before sending your products they first check the quality of the items, and send you a picture of the packed products, it made me so excited and was very thoughtful! 

The pictures were listed next to the products. Also notice how one product does not say shipped, that was one of the unavailable items, this feature made it easy to remember what I wasn't getting :)

After the weekend BuyChina shipped my items on the 18th of November, and I then received everything on the 25th. So fast! Everything was in a large box and individually packed in plastic. So my BuyChina review? Fantastic and A+. They were fast at both sending my stuff and replying, and they made the process easy and fun by going out of their way to make the buyer feel comfortable (such as with the product photos). The only bad side was the shipping price, but I went with EMS and another provider may be better suited for the weight and location of your haul. I will be buying with them again :)

The quality of products

Everything is perfect. I saw some reviews that said to not buy from shops who had magazine sort photos as their product pictures, because it means they just choose the clothes they want from magazines, and then send it off to produce lower quality and cheaper items from elsewhere. I trusted the 5 star ratings BuyChina provided of the stores however and I was very lucky. Everything is EXACTLY like the pictures, so much so I can't believe its not the product from the picture. Everything fitted me despite the fact you could not pick sizes. Everything was good quality and just perfect. The only problem I had was the shoes were too small, but I have real trouble finding shoes IRL that fit me too, so it wasn't their fault. Now for some photos and then I'm done with my review!

Completely woollen and lovely, this is one of my favourites. Also just a note, my legs aren't super pale, I'm wearing tights that I also bought in the haul. They're fantastic and I didn't expect them to fit because there was no size, i'm glad!

These shorts are super comfy.

My blouse from Sunuo1985, i got it to wear under jumpers and things, but its super cute by itself. The ribbon did not come with it.

Really lovely detail on this one, even the buttons have a fabric over them.

One of my favourite co-ords.

I was worried the jacket would feel too small to be a proper overcoat, but its the perfect size.

This scarf is the best. It's very long and has woollen buttons on the corners.

It's hard to tell from the picture but the way the jacket is shaped makes it look really nice from the behind.

this jacket has the most lovely material on the hood. the zip also works really well which I didn't expect since i know ive bought a few jackets from Owl City's online store and the zips were AWFUL!

Detail Shots

One of the best things that shows the quality of these clothes is the smaller details on them. Some places just try to make the product with as little fabric as possible and as little work, but that's not the case with Forest Girl Fans.

The shirt is beautiful and so is its lace, but it also has straps for a belt!

This blouse came with its own ribbon and is really detailed and lovely.

The shorts had inside fabric despite not needing it! There is also little stitched on vegetables on the pocket.

kawaii!

the jacket used so many different fabrics, its reallly great and comfortable.