Casual in Black and White

9:33:00 PM

Hey guys..!

I'm currently in Makassar to attend a cousin's wedding, we've been going out from early morning until late since yesterday (and we haven't even done anything wedding related yet LOL) and i'm ridiculously tired now T.T... I did drafted some filler posts to keep y'all entertained while i'm away, so enjoy!

Time for another bakcdated outfit post hehehe... I know i don't really post pics of me in casual (in my standard okay, it might not be casual enough for some people. My niece Au goes like "What do you mean SIMPLE? Does it mean like a ball gown with a meter long train?" when i announced i was going to wear a very simple dress to a wedding pfffftttt so little faith in me. But yeah, you really can't expect to see me in tees and jeans when i say casual! Tees and shorts *the basic ones* wouldn't cut it as well with me!) outfits but of course i wear more casual outfits in my everyday life, i don't wear all of my tutu skirt and lacey top every day you know!

So here's my version of casual in Black and White

My shoes were light blue and white tho :p

I also want to introduce my favorite online shop that sells Indonesian made pre-order clothes inspired by Korean/Chinese fashion at the same time. This is NOT a sponsored post okay, i'm a regular shopper at her place and she's always been so nice so i thought why not help her promote a bit and at the same time help my readers to find a trusted, affordable online shop as well. She only has a BBM group shop though at the moment, and i don't think she ships internationally, here's her BBM PIN : 26C41770 (her name's Henny). I'm wearing 3 items from her online shop in this coordi, that's how much i shop from her haha!


Set of Black Sleeveless Top & Striped Skirt : Henny's OS Cropped Sweater : Magnolia Doggy Bag : Henny's OS Shoes : New Look

I really love the skirt but my favorite item from this look would be the cute doggy sling bag!

Picture of the bag (and the next one below) is taken from my IG (@Mgirl83). I posted this blog post the day before yesterday but somehow Blogger messed up and more than half of the text went missing T.T i already wrote so much! Dang!!! I also can only remember half of the things i wrote about by now zzzz so i'm just gonna wing it... (yes, i am taking a few hours of down time that we have between the wedding ceremony and the reception fixing this post coz i can't just let it be *too OCD*...

Anyway... That uber cute bag, like all of the stuffs Henny sells at her OS, was super cheap. Can't remember the exact price but i believe it's around IDR 60.000 (about USD 5)! The price range in Henny's OS is about IDR 30.000-IDR 90.000 (USD 2-USD 8), give and take. And yessss... Sometimes price does equal quality, while most of the clothes from her OS is made of quite nice quality (most are better than the replica China made ones), but the bag is a bit of a different story. The material is quite thin and i kinda broke the flap where the sling is attached after only 3 weeks of usage hahaha. But it's so cute and cheap, i kinda oversee that :p.

All of the pictures (except the mirror selca one) were taken in Museum Angkut, Batu-which i should be able to blog about soon :D

I actually wrote a long arsed guide for you on shopping at local-made replica OS (i've been buying hundreds of them and after a while i sort of know the things to keep an eye of when buying such things. When i first start buying i would say whenever the huge packages come i'd be 60% happy and 40% horrified, but nowadays i am around 90% happy!) sort of tips and tricks. I remember i wrote 5 points, but for the life on me i can only remember three, so if any of you had read this post when i first posted this... The points might be a little different WTF (but a lot of it's go to do with luck *LOL* and a keen eyes/a bit of imagination). Here goes...

1. Don't Hang Your Hopes Too High

Most local made replicas are copying designs on original Chinese/Japanese/Korean brands (actually those PO online shops that sells imported fashion with price range under IDR 200.000 are also selling replica ones, price range for the genuine brand would be over IDR 350.000 at least, you can get the original at shops like Rosemary Online) and they actually just put the original brands' catalog pics as their "own catalog". But please, don't expect them to look exactly as the catalog pics, even the Chinese replica sometimes would look nothing like the original item.

You can expect a similar item (sometimes even the color would be way off), so just ask yourself-do you want the exact same clothes as the picture? If you do, don't be stingy and purchase the original, but if you don't mind a look-a-like, then you can try replicas. Once in a while you might strike gold like this dress i got once (i'd link it up but i'm using the mobile Blogger application and i can't do it, if you're interested to see just type "Vintage N' Roses" at the search box on the right), which picture looks so pretty that i was so sure that local seamstresses (the mass production ones) would never be able to replicate it, but i was wrong, it was totally pretty and super cheap (IDR 80.000 i think), it depends a lot on luck and imagination hahaha.

2. Sizing

If you're like me, slightly on the bigger side for an Asian girl (if you're skinny as a pole then you have nothing to worry about) you can still shop for local made replicas even though most of them are "all size" or "free size". Most seller would provide an "up to" info and it's safer to stick to "Fit to L" ones and even better, choose the stretchy materials ones.

For illustration, i wear XS-S in H&M and Cotton On, M in Mango and Zara and i don't have any problem with all of the stretchy cotton, spandex, and all of other stretchy materials local made replicas. Of course, their sizing can be totally uneven but you'll get the hang of the items that would fit you after a while, i got some stuffs that i cannot fit in but not too many (compared to the ones that i could), maybe 1 or 2 in every few purchases and i could just give it to my skinny friends (W mostly) or niece (that'd Au) and since it's so cheap anyway i didn't feel too dissappointed anyway *LOL*

3. Material

I don't know why, but local made replicas love to mess up the materials! Like if the dress in the catalog is supposed to be made from stiff cotton, they'd make it from spandex (and make it look all wrong), the ones that's supposed to be made from spandex would be made from knits, the supposed to be made from knits they make from cotton, and so on! Sellers would usually put the material's info and it's crucial that you pay attention on the materials they're making it from and then use your imagination, how would the item look with the material they are using? If you like what you're imagining, then you can order it.

Alternatively you can also check out websites like www.tanahabang.com that sell the same style of local made replica fashion (those sellers get their items from different factories so the material/style might be a bit different from one store to another but it's actually quite close) but ready stock (they have higher prices though for retail), they provide both the catalog pic and the real item's pic so you can see how the real item look (be warned that they use fugly models so even decent clothes might look a lot uglier there T.T totally disillutioned after seeing those images LOL), you can also ask for the real item for ready stocks items in OS such as Henny's.

4. Avoid Big Printed Pictures

Sometimes they'd have beautifully printed top/dresses in the catalog pictures, and in my experiences they all turned out FUGLY IRL. Really, even the flower prints would look NOTHING like the catalog pics. All the printed tee/dresses that i got from those OS look super cheap and fugly i just want to use them to wipe the floor WTF. I'm not saying local made printed tees and dresses are fugly, there are real nice ones too of course, but the inspired by Asian brands ones? You should totally avoid them like a plague, i know i do! No matter how pretty the catalog pictures are, i always remind myself how the local made replicas always screw them up and i can stop myself from ordering.

5. Customize

There would be times when the clothes you get from those local made replica OS are very pretty, but the sizing would be way off. Like the dress from the Vintage N' Roses post i mentioned earlier totally exceeded my (very low) expectation, but it was 2-3 sizes too big for me! I should've take them to the tailor but i was too lazy... And there are dresses that are equally as pretty, but could hardly passed my (flat, as you know) chest WTF. I have some local tailors whom i trust to alter my ill fitting replicas and i am a master of finding the right material to add inches to the (mostly problematic) chest area by now *LOL*. The alteration might cost you half of the clothes' price (coz it's super cheap in the first place), but i find it totally worth it. Most of my party dresses costs less than IDR 120.000, even after alteration, which is a lot cheaper than anything you can find at the malls!