Within minutes of Kate Middleton’s wedding dress being revealed, designers worldwide were scrambling to make copies and/or dresses “inspired” by the Alexander McQueen gown. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw this article showcasing a Chinese bride who wore a knockoff dress just 36hours after the royal wedding.
“The Muyi Wedding Dress Company, located in Suzhou, China, made this dress, which sells for about $320. Suzhou is known as “Wedding Dress City” because it boasts more than 1,200 wedding gown factories”.
I warn you that I personally got burned from one of these Chinese knockoff e-tailers. I found chinese-shop2009 on ebay and trusted them to deliver on my one-shoulder, Maggie Sottero knock-off dress. They were responsive with my q&a, had a wide variety of fabrics/colors to choose from (more than Maggie offered), and had almost perfect feedback scores. For only $158 I decided why not take the risk. After all, I needed a 2nd wedding gown for my 2nd reception (1week prior to the “real” wedding) and loved the idea of wearing a different gown with simpler train instead of having to reveal the gorgeous Kenneth Pool gown that I bought at Saks for the main reception.
Time flew by before I noticed 3months had passed since the original order which is when I checked in and the seller promised it would ship soon. When it finally arrived, it came to me the wrong color (I ordered ivory and received gold), the dress had prominent pin holes throughout the entire dress, and stunningly the cut and drape were even all wrong! And to top it off, the zipper broke on the first try!
This is what I expected (shown here is the authentic Maggie Sottero Fiorella dress on a model and then on me to show the back). Beautiful, right?
But instead, I got a poorly made replica in the wrong color with the wrong back with holes all over and a broken zipper. As soon as I have a full-length photo of me in it, I’ll have to post. But for now, here are the close-up shots (which do not accurately reflect the gold color due to the camera flash).
Even from these pictures you can see all the large holes on EACH pleat.
The draping was the most modern, and unique element of the original gown’s design but unfortunately, chinese-shop2009 got it all wrong.
To top it off the bra cups had been sewn in too close together making what looked like a monoboob. Ugh.
After a few emails back and forth where Chinese-shop2009 asked for the photos and then completely ignored me, I searched ebay for buyer protection help. When reading the fine print though, I learned that their offer expires after 90 days and then you’re basically on your own! So beware to all wedding dress buyers on ebay because most if not all wedding dress makers will require 90days to produce and ship to you. A special warning goes out to anyone considering shopping with chinese-shop2009. Do not on any circumstance trust or buy from them. They did not respond to my numerous emails with listed complaints and photo evidence and have not offered to resolve the issue in any way. It’s unfortunate, because, they are tarnishing the reputation of foreign ebay sellers and adding to buyers’ hesitation in shopping with ebay. Hopefully, none of you will have to learn the hard way as I did with ebay buyer protection rules.
In case chinese-shop2009 ever changes their ebay seller name, their associated email was chinese-shop@live.cn and the shipment came in from
Jiang Rong from Hangzhou whole sale city trading co.
B Room, 21 floor no 428
arch of triumph building
Shanghai China 200070
Buyers beware!
I made it casual with a pair of black skinny jeans, black rainboots and my hair tied up in a messy bun.
The cardigan is from the Limited, the jeans $15 from Forever 21 and the sequin black ruffle tank is from H&M.
I added a little more shape with the skinny belt and added interest with the black jeweled, bowtie like necklace.
The purse, pictured earlier is from TopShop. I think the whole outfit from head to toe costed me less than $200
