Taobao Seasons Shoes In Depth Review

[tsusho.livejournal.com]

I've been in need of lower heeled lolita shoes for my daily lolita coords, and having heard of the new taobao store/shoe brand Seasons: http://anna-shoes.taobao.com/. I wanted to take it as an opportunity to give the company and their shoes a try. I decided on ordering 3 pairs of the Bow Sweet Lady Heels 1542 shoes in black, white and brown. All in size small and used taobaospree as my shopping service.

I contacted taobaospree on Sept 10th, 2012 about ordering the shoes. My taobaospree agent CiCi let me know it would take about a week for the seller to make the shoes. I promptly agreed to wait for them to be made in that time frame, paid and they sent in the order the next day. I received an email notifying they were ready to be shipped out to me on Sept 24th. Finally I received the package in the mail October 2nd.

The cost of the 3 pairs of shoes including taobaospree's commission fees came out to be $88. The shipping to the USA by EMS was $47.91. All together including the shipping service fees and EMS shipping, the total cost per pair of shoes came to $45.

Everything on TaobaoSpree's end was perfect and they always replied to my emails within 24 hours if not hours within having sent the message. They shipped my 3 pairs of shoes in a cardboard box that perfectly conformed to the outside shape of my shoe boxes sent by the seller which really amazed me, considering that probably saved me some money on shipping.

Anyway on to the actual shoe review !


 My Seasons shoes were all sent in clearly Secret Shop brand shoe boxes. Hmmm.... Well I was pretty happy just to get shoe boxes lol, considering some companies just send them in bags. But it does makes me wonder if they have any affilliation with Secret Shop as well.
 Picture of all the shoes together side by side with their boxes. Here you can see that Seasons had used a complementary different colored/patterned inner shoe sole padding for each pair of shoe . Also that the Seasons logo looks alot like Secret Shop's logo...hmmmmm....

Here is an example of the black pair's perfectly cut scalloping on the edges of the shoe.


While my white and brown pairs had much less cleanly cut scalloping.

Example of my white pair of shoes which had no glue showing on the join between the shoe sole and the upper pleather of the shoe. However the join is still not perfect and has wrinkles from overly stretching the pleather to make the join. This pair had the most obvious pleather wrinkles out of the three pairs. The black pair had the least noticeable amount of visible wrinkles in the pleather.

Example of my brown shoes which had visible glue from the join but less visible wrinkles at the join than the white pair. My black pair had the same thing.


Heart snap on buckles :3. No issues here.

One of my shoes on my brown pair had a back heel sole that completely came off. Apparently they neglected to glue this one on like the two other pairs...Very easy fix though using industrial shoe glue.

 
Here you can see here with my brown pair that the inner side of the heel's pleather seams were joined together perfectly on one shoe but not at all with the other shoe. My white pair had both shoes seams unevenly joined together. While my black pair was like my brown pairs, with one even and one uneven.


Bottoms of all the shoes. Here you can see that my black pair of shoes had been made with two different types of bottom soles lol. And that basically each pair was created with different bottom sole material. I would say the white pair had the best quality of bottom soles because of their textured grit bottom and they were physically thicker, so they would last longer. But not so thick that they would make walking uncomfortable or cause blisters. 

I'm not sure how well you can tell from pictures but at this point I noticed my brown pair of shoes had a shoe with misaligned heel so it does not stand the same way as the other one. This doesn't make them uneven to stand on, they just look misaligned.


 
The front bows...The black pair had the most perfectly well done ribbons, with their ends laying completely flat, contouring around the body of the shoes like they are supposed to. The brown pair had ribbons that looked not as neat but were still acceptable. Their contouring of the ends around the body of the shoe were not as well done, so they tend to stick out straight more often. The white pair's ribbons neatness wise were about in the middle of the black and brown pair.

The black pair had one bow that was off center ( the one on the left of the picture). While the brown and white pairs had none off center.

 

Back bows of the white pair were the most neatly done as well as fuller, while the brown pair's were less neat and were thinner as well. Notice here that the brown pair picture shows of the misalignment of the back heel I wrote about before. So it looks like the shoes are not side by side but they really are. Just the misalignment causes them to not sit perfectly together in the back.

The white and black pair had mostly center back bows, while the brown pair had really off center bows as can be seen in the photo.

Overall my scores:

Product Shipping: N/A

Since I used a shipping service to order I cannot know how long it really took for the seller to make and send the shoes to my taobao agent.

Product Packaging: 9 out of 10
I really appreciated they gave me shoe boxes to store and protect the shoes during shipping, and they stuffed the inside of the shoe with some tissue paper so the shoes didn't lose their shape. However I could see how they also could've packed better with the use of a shoe form similar to the ones bodyline and other companies sends with their shoes.

Product Quality: 6.5 out of 10
The black pair were noticeably the best quality out of the three pairs of shoes. With the brown pair being the worst. Please notice I am judging quality from my overall judgement of quality alone (and my previous experience spectrum of high end brand quality to low end quality of shoes in general not just lolita shoes and how they scale up to in comparison to those) and not price because I feel this is a more fair system of review. 
I would say these are about costume store quality shoes like Pleaser brand shoes. Since I am wearing this for daily lolita coords, I can see myself wearing these out very quickly due to the thin pleather used in the shoes (for example bodyline's pleather shoes are much thicker) and thin bottom soles used for 2 out of the 3 pairs. The misalignment of the back heel on the brown shoes I feel shouldn't happen as well. I am also considering the inconsistency in quality details such as  visible glue, wrinkles, unclean scalloping, off center bows and unglued back heel sole... etc. 
I realize these are all easy fixes or nearly unnoticeable flaws when the shoes are worn, but I feel that my score reflect their true quality. 

True to Size: 10 out of 10
All shoes fit true to size. I ordered them in all size small which is noted to fit sizes 22 cm to 22.5 cm. I have one foot that is 22 cm and one that 22.5 cm. These shoes fit perfectly with enough comfortable room for socks.

Overall: 8.5 out of 10 (Cumulative Score)

Last notes and comments:
I am overall still really happy with my three pairs of shoes and would recommend them to others who are not planning on wearing them too often but only occasionally or for only meetups. For what I wanted them for, they are acceptable and are perfect at their price point at this time of about $45 each including shipping and fees. I feel if they were above $65 with all fees I probably wouldn't purchase them and instead purchase bodyline shoes since they are much higher in quality. Considering they are one of the only companies manufacturing replica Baby style shoes is something to think about if that is important to you.