Tags
I have a serious bone to pick with lolita brands. My gripe is not with price or sizing, as is normally the case for most brand complaints. It’s image quality.
I know it sounds a little ridiculous, but just think about it for a moment. Lolitas outside of Japan mostly go on nothing other than pictures and some brief information (that might not even be in a language they speak) to purchase these dresses that are very expensive. So you would think that brands would invest in a bit of good equipment and the occasional extra couple of minutes to touch things up in Photoshop. That’s not always the case. Let’s take a look at some of the worst culprits, shall we?
Mary Magdalene:
For one of the most consistently beautiful brands, their pictures sure do suck. Most of this is from poor photoshopping, as seen above. The blue is bad but the pink is just horrendous. Part of the problem is that I’m pretty sure MM doesn’t take individual photos of each dress, they just photoshop it into different colors and call it a day. You can tell from weird edges on hems and the fact that the dresses are all in the exact same position, down to folds in ruffles.
Moi-Meme-Moitie:
Moitie is one of the worst culprits in all sorts of different ways. The ridiculous neon blue background they had for a while was recently replaced by the sort of mottled backdrop that people use for elementary school photos, their general image quality is consistently bad, their lighting is very hit or miss, and on top of everything their photoshopping is awful! They have improved somewhat recently, but the difference between seeing their clothing in person and looking at their sub-par photos is still vast.
Metamorphose:
Meta’s problems may not be as severe, but there are still some things they should work on. For example up there on the left is Meta’s picture for Honey Picnic, which is super contrasted and makes the print look really harsh. On the right is a more accurate picture of Honey Picnic from Closet Child which shows the print to be a lot softer and frankly much cuter. Colors in general are not Meta’s strong suit. Black and white they can photograph fine, but most of the time brighter colors are over saturated, sometimes even downright neon in comparison to how they look in real life.
Most other brands take pretty reasonable pictures. It still makes all the difference to see a dress in person of course, just because small details are hard to capture on full-length pictures, but at least nothing Moitie looks like Moitie’s awful pictures haha. Have you guys noticed this about brand photos before?
kieliheart said:
Yeah, it’s really bad for those of us that don’t live in China or Japan. In some cases, the photos aren’t that bad but when they are bad…they’re terrible. Even though it means more research, I tend to look for actual buyer photos of the same outfits as they tend to be better and you can get a review too so you can see if it is worth getting xD
~ Kieli ~
makelovely said:
I totally agree, I always try and at least look at their shop blogs but it’s best to see other people in outfits before buying.
Duplica said:
nice article. it’s so true :)
makelovely said:
Thank you!
Janera said:
Baby. Baby’s dresses always look like a friggin potato sack. seriously. coloring and everything ist mostly ok, I think, but the display dummies/dress forms they use always tend to make the bodice look like a potato sack. I often think “oh, that looks like the construction of the upper part is atrocious!”, and when I see a worn picture I think “oh, this is nice! I like it!”. i keeps me from buying baby dresses, the skirts always look fine, but the dresses… blergh.
makelovely said:
I totally agree, something is definitely off with Baby’s dress forms! I love that they have huge pictures though, their full-sized photos are like twice the size of everyone elses’.
Idril said:
Innocent World can be kinda bad at getting colours right. I have no idea what they do but I’ve seen a lot of egl posts inquiring about the colour of something. A dress I brought from them looked like a really light brown in the stock picture, in reality it is an awful lot darker!
makelovely said:
I totally agree with that. I’ve seen a lot of their black things look green especially. There’s something weird about their lighting I think.