#now to idk make a love nadia bag out of my old purple one

[20dollarlolita]

CuratedKawaii Lolita Fashion Mystery Bundle Review

So a while back, I was made aware of this etsy listing:

I love mystery packs and lucky bags. It doesn't matter to me if it's good or terrible. I love me a lucky mystery bag. This listing had just little enough information about it to be unable to tell if it's bad or good, so I went for it. The thing about having this blog is that if something's bad, it's still good blog content.

Ordering process was pretty simple. I believe I had to pick a substyle from a drop-down list and then had a fill-in box where I could list colors and motifs that I want. I picked brown and cream classic. I paid $75, shipping non-inclusive.

Finally got the order in the mail a couple months later, and I had a whole lot of fun with this.

The idea is that the items included would be a full coordinate (minus shoes and petticoat).

Quick little economics comment: buying this is buying a service and a product. I knew going into this that I'd be paying for the curation service as part of the cost, so I was expecting to get less than $50 worth of items. The etsy seller has to make money on this, and you have to know going in that the seller has to make money on this. Expecting every item in the bag to total up to $75 is kind of stupid. This isn't like a AP lucky pack where everything is being sold at cost.

Actually, the price was one of the things that made me so interested. A full lolita coordinate for like $50 of stuff? Color me interested.

So, what did we get in the bag?

Main piece: Love Nadia JSKOP by Bodyline, in brown.

So on baby me's second ever Bodyline order, which I received Dec 31, 2012, I bought Love Nadia in purple, and was immediately disappointed in it. I then cut it up to plan to make a skirt out of it, put it in a box that's now labeled "abandoned projects", and it's still here to this day.

In that time, I've really regretted cutting it up, because I figured it probably wasn't as bad as I remember it being, and I just had a lot of confusion about how I wanted my own body to look.

So the first thing that I checked was to see if the weird printing part was still there. It is. I'd like to let everyone know that, in the past ten years, Bodyline did not fix the weird printing part. However, they DID add a side seam pocket!

Anyway, this wasn't a review of Love Nadia. This is a mystery bag review. I was very excited that there was an actual identifiable brand in the mystery bag. It wasn't super clear from the listing exactly how much experience with lolita the curator had, so I was bracing myself for some quality sweat lolita.

Second item was a cute bolero from Liz Lisa. I did immediately have to put this in the wash because, speaking of sweat lolita, it was a used item and it had a little bit of smell adhesion. But it's a nice cream lace cardigan thingy with a front tie. Love Nadia is not sure if it's an OP or a JSK and so having a shoulder wrap helps me not have to decide if its' a JSK or an OP. I like the term JSKOP, pronounced j-s-ko-p.

All the rest of the accessories are offbrand.

The socks are cream net socks with a little loop opening in the back. I find these so cool because they would probably look like they were trying to be really sexy on me if they were black, but they look just lovely in cream. I could go on a rant about color contrast here, but that's not why we're here. I loved getting some nice and detailed socks that I didn't have to worry about not fitting my kitten-holders.

There were two hair accessories included. Since this was supposed to be a full coord, I decided to try to wear both of them at once. One is a cute little beret with rickrack and a bow. It's got wig clips to help it stay on. I wore this yesterday in my comfy casual coord.

The other hair accessory was a bow barrette with a little lace drape. I think this one was handmade. I don't know who made it, but I really love that there was a handmade accessory included.

Fitting both the beret and the barrette (and keeping track of how many r's are in each word) on my head was a challenge, but I did it.

There was also a tie-on headbow. Since I already had two hair accessories going on, I opted to wear this one as a belt in the context of this coord. I do love me a good head-eating bow, so the fact that I can use this for that is very fun to me.

And then there were some little stretchy pearl bracelets. I wear stretchy bracelets all the time, and so it's good to have some new ones!

Total coord:

I was going to take a better picture without the cat poop box and where I was looking vaguely interested in being there, but Carhartt was in this picture (having just thrown litter everywhere) so we used it instead.

As far as substyle goes, it's very sweet. It's definitely the sweet end of the classic spectrum, and I could even just say it's brown sweet. There are a lot of little details that want to push it over to the classic edge. It's definitely brown and cream.

Functionally, there's a little bit of an issue where too many things want to take up the same space. IDK if the coord was intended to wear the headbow on your waist (but I couldn't find a better way to include it), but that bow sits right where the tie-front of the bolero wants to tie. The beret and the barrette are competing for the same real estate on the head, so I can't wear the beret like a beret without covering up the barrette. I promise that I DO know how to actually wear a beret normally.

In terms of including all the necessary parts of the coord, yeah, we checked all those boxes. Color balance is pretty good. All the colors are incorporated into the coord without leaving any weird blocks of just cream or just brown. I feel like whoever curated this box knows how to wear lolita fashion.

We knew this going in to the idea of getting a coord for <$50 of items, but there is a concern about the overall quality of these pieces. One of the fun things about lolita fashion is that you can balance things into your look. You can use a less expensive or lower-detailed accessory if you put it in a coord with more detailed items. A lot of these items are going to be really useful for me in future coords. However, I've previously addressed the idea of the "faking it" card, where you can only use so many not-quite-right items before it starts overtaking the coord. The accessories are lovely on their own, but when they're all put together, you kind of start to feel it. But this is a solid case of getting what I paid for, and I'm very happy.

Who do I recommend this for? I'm not sure I can recommend this package for a beginner that has no other items. You can build a wardrobe that's more accurate to how you want to coord things with the same money, and get pieces you know you'll use. But I do think that, if you have established pieces to later work the accessories in, it's a really fun sort of surprise gift. If you already wear lolita fashion and you want to try a new color or a new substyle, this can be really good inspiration, and fill in some gaps that you're likely to have as you branch into another direction.

A couple of things that I'd potentially like to see changed about this listing in the future: I'd really appreciate if there were photos of mystery bundles that had already been sent. I get not wanting to spoil the mystery, but taking some good flatlays of the bundles and then adding those flatlay pictures after the buyer reviews the bundle would be a really good addition. There's nothing wrong with the collages as listed, but seeing real items people have been given would help buyers a lot. I think it'd also be nice to drop something like, "This mystery bundle may contain new and lightly used items from Japanese and Chinese lolita brands, nonbranded accessories, and handmade accessories." I bought this partly because if it was terrible, that'd be funny for the blog, but I don't think that the primary audience of this was "people who want to take a gamble on losing their money." These kind of notes would be really helpful for people who were making the decision of if they want to buy.

Another potential option that I would love: CuratedKawaii definitely has good resources for getting fun offbrand and nonbranded accessories. I love my little beret and I love the socks and I love the tie-on bow. I love how well everything worked together. I feel like the budget here is the major limiting factor. While I don't think I'd want to spend $300 on a mystery bundle, I do think there's an untapped market that's at about the same price point as the mystery bundle. Everyone who is reading this and who has a problem where they keep buying dresses and not buying acessories, please raise your hand. Since that's most of us, let me pitch my idea: A mystery accessory bundle, where instead of saying what color and substyle we want, we just tell CuratedKawaii what main piece we want accessories for. I can write, "Hi, I just impulse bought this OP, and have no accessories for it. Please help!" This would give our curator friend a bigger budget to work with, since they don't have to budget for a main piece. I would absolutely LOVE to trust buying accessories over to another person and seeing what they come up with.

So yeah, I had a TON of fun unboxing this. I picked brown and cream because I knew that I needed more of both of those colors, and I love the flexibility of the things that I got. I got a bunch of stuff that I normally wouldn't buy for myself, and I like that I now have a bunch of cool creative items to work with in my wardrobe. I DIY a ton of things, and so I'm already planning how I can change and use the pieces I got to be a little more like I'm used to working with. I asked CuratedKawaii if they planned on putting up a listing for this again in the future, and they said they were. If anyone else out there reads my experience and thinks that it's the kind of mystery surprise that they'd want, I definitely recommend checking them out.

#curatedkawaii #lolita mystery bundle #20dollarlolita #now to idk make a love nadia bag out of my old purple one #coordination and shit #can't get over that they added a pocket