Shopping for Brand Coordinates: Closet Child & Wunderwelt Edition

Last year I put together a post showing how much you could spend on Fril to end up with a full coordinate from each brand. Shopping apps like Fril and Mercari are full of bargains, although for an average newbie they are a bit of a step up in navigating compared to other websites. As Closet Child and Wunderwelt are not only consistently recommended as reliable and reasonably priced, but also easy to navigate and shop from, I decided to revisit the idea and bring you some entirely brand coordinates from those two.

The Rules

Previously each coordinate was made entirely out of items from a single brand. However, as they have a smaller pool of available items, this won't be entirely realistic for Closet Child and Wunderwelt. So instead the challenge is to put together a complete and cohesive coordinate using only items from primarily lolita brands as cheaply as possible. In other words, no brands like Axes Femme, Milk, Liz Lisa or Jane Marple etc., which often fit the aesthetic or have a dedicated lolita label. The only allowable exception is Q-Pot's jewellery, as jewellery cannot be inherently lolita or not. However, additions from Q-Pot will be limited to one item, as I want to focus on the main Japanese lolita brands. The coordinate has to be good enough that you could attend your first meetup without being worried about how you look.

Some additional rules that I will set for this challenge are that:

• The coordinate has to be sweet lolita. The reason for this is twofold. On the one hand, sweet is many people's first foray into the fashion, which I wanted to reflect. On the other, sweet lolita is a bit stricter when it comes to styles of items, especially shoes, which you'd be hard pressed to substitute from normie shops, thus necessitating an additional purchase.
• Each coordinate will include the following items: JSK, blouse or cutsew, headwear, legwear, shoes, bag, wrist cuffs and 2 pieces of jewellery.
• Each item has to be available for purchase at the time of my search. No looking through past listings in search of something cheaper or that'd match better.
• Each item has to be from a Japanese lolita brand. Although both shops have a gradually growing offering of Chinese, Korean and other lolita brands, Japanese ones are still a status symbol and continue to suffer from being labelled as expensive. Moreover, for the price of used Japanese brand you can often find brand new clothing from Chinese brands, so selecting used Chinese clothing would skew the findings of this little experiment.

So without further ado, let's get this party started!

Closet Child

Click to enlarge.
| BtSSB Ice Cream JSK (¥4,290) | Angelic Pretty Fairy Airy blouse (¥3,850) | AatP Lady Victoria Torchon Lace wrist cuffs (¥3,960) | Metamorphose Drawing Teddy OTKs (¥950) | BtSSB Going Out Poodle shoes (¥2,322) | BtSSB Poodle-chan's Strange Pocket headbow (¥1,782) | Innocent World Ribbon Frill bag (¥6,380) | Metamorphose Bunny Cameo necklace (¥924) | Q-Pot Chocolate Piece Good Luck bracelet (¥1,283) |
Total price of this coordinate = ¥25,741
Coordinate assembled on April 6th.

For this coordinate I decided to start my search with shoes. Closet Child doesn't separate its items as strictly as Wunderwelt, so I wasn't sure what I'd have to work with. It seemed best to start with the item I felt would be harder to find cheaply and work from there. After spotting three very different pairs, I then went on a search for a JSK and once I found this one (literally the first main lolita brand piece that was a JSK), it decided the rest. I was hoping to make a black x pink coordinate, to really hone in on the sweet lolita, but the lack of affordable pink blouses from brands killed that idea. So instead I went for all black with pink accents. Whilst not the most balanced coordinate, it's not the worst either. I think that this could plausibly be someone's first lolita coordinate, as grasping the balance between what's too classic or too sweet for an outfit comes with practice, you kind of have to just get it wrong and learn through your mistakes. The price is a little less than a brand new JSK from any of these brands, which is really not bad considering that this includes shoes and a bag.

Wunderwelt

Click to enlarge.
| Innocent World Aphrodite JSK (¥4,792) | Metamorphose Margaret cutsew (¥3,597) | AatP Torchon Lace wrist cuffs (¥2,336) | Enchantlic Enchantilly Torchon Lace Ribbon headbow (¥1,999) | Angelic Pretty Enamel Ribbon Pearl bag (¥3,597) | Metamorphose Snow Dome OTKs (¥2,499) | Innocent World Cross Ribbon shoes (¥3,499) | Metamorphose Bow ring (¥2,299) | Q-Pot Truffle ring (¥2,299) |
Total price of coordinate = ¥26,917
Coordinate assembled on April 7th.

As Wunderwelt has a somewhat larger offering of shoes, this time I have started with the main piece and worked down the more traditional route. However, while Closet Child lacked in accessories, Wunderwelt's biggest lack was in legwear. Although they have some reasonably priced options on their Fleur shop, even the cheapest matching pair of tights from there was more than the cheapest matching used socks. And they were from a Chinese brand, which would be against the rules I set. So after finding the JSK (and there were some cheaper ones, but I wanted something that was more typically sweet) my next choice was legwear, and then building everything else. I actually had two versions of this coordinate: a fully beige one and this beige x pink, then went for the cheaper one. It also seems more plausible that a new sweet lolita would go for a neutral colour with pink for their first coordinate rather than entirely beige. There are a few shade mismatches, particularly the wrist cuffs and every pink is a different shade. However, there were no pink wrist cuffs available when I was putting this coord together, so these had to do. And as every sweet lolita will know, pinks never match, which would make this a more realistic first coordinate and a first taste of that fact of sweet lolita life. As a bonus, Wunderwelt has its own brand petticoat available, which has had good reviews so far. So if someone was to buy all this and a petticoat, the price would be ¥32,467 total. For a coordinate that includes a fluffy petti, shoes, bag and every item is brand, when some fancier JSKs alone can cost roughly ¥32-34k new, this really is not bad value for money.

Mixed Coord

Click to enlarge.
| BtSSB Ice Cream JSK (¥4,290) |  Metamorphose Margaret cutsew (¥3,597) | AatP Lady Victoria Torchon Lace wrist cuffs (¥3,960) | BtSSB Poodle-chan's Strange Pocket headbow (¥1,782) | Angelic Pretty Enamel Ribbon Pearl bag (¥3,597) | Metamorphose Snow Dome OTKs (¥2,499) | BtSSB Going Out Poodle shoes (¥2,322) | Metamorphose Bow ring (¥2,299) | Q-Pot Chocolate Piece Good Luck bracelet (¥1,283) |
Total price of this coordinate = ¥25,629
Coordinate assembled on April 7th.

This is a bit of a bonus one: a coordinate created with items from each of the above ones. Because while you can shop for an entire outfit exclusively in one place, the fact of the matter is that many people don't. People shop around to find the right piece or the best bargain for them, and it is perfectly plausible that a newbie might put together an outfit shopping at both Closet Child and Wunderwelt. This means that an area where one of these sources lacked or pieces that one may have been missing could be found at the other, making for a more polished coordinate. For the sake of a 'true' merger, so to speak, I only used the same items I already have. However, the coord wouldn't have been that much different if I stuck to my original principles and made something new, so I spared myself the extra work this time. This is still a very plausible first sweet lolita coordinate and although it is the cheapest one of the three, the differenceof ¥112 is truly negligible (that could only just about buy you one thing at Daiso or any other 100-yen store). In fact, were you to buy this exact coordinate, you would pay double the postage and double the customs charges – or you'd have to pay double the domestic postage and then a shopping service fee plus international shipping. So either way, unless you're keen on this exact outfit, shopping from just one shop works out cheaper once you consider the costs beyond simply the price of clothing.

Final words

Just like in the Fril version of this post, these are by no means the cheapest lolita coordinates possible. Ignoring the savings you could make by opting for a skirt or an OP, or by skipping certain pieces, these coordinates focused on a very narrow group of brands. As mentioned in the beginning, there are plenty of Japanese brands that may cater predominantly to other styles which still work with lolita or have lolita pieces. To me companies like Emily Temple Cute are predominantly otome, however, in my search I found several incredibly cheap JSKs that undeniably had the right shape for loita. And the smaller the item within the coordinate, the more it's obvious that you pay for the brand label first, then the item itself (e.g. with jewellery or hair accessories).

As before, the less specific and/or picky you can be about what you want, the better the bargains that you can grab. And both of these shops have regular (and often generous) sales than really make sure your patience pays off. Nonetheless, it remains entirely possible to have an all-brand coordinate for the price of a brand new jumperskirt from a major Japanese lolita brand, even when shopping on websites like Closet Child and Wunderwelt. These are overall slightly more expensive than apps like Fril, as these are companies trying to make a profit, not individuals trying to declutter. In terms of individual item prices, Closet Child is a little bit cheaper, although Wunderwelt has more stock on its website. Truth is, neither shop is inherently better than the other and both rely on lolitas selling them their unwanted clothes to make stock for sale, so keep checking both.

Stay safe and shop responsibly!