If you have an Instagram or Facebook account, you certainly often see sponsored posts offering you various and varied purchases, all in line with what you are supposed to like (thank you cookies!).
Personally, Instagram on which I follow a lot, I admit, has identified that I was a real fashion victim and floods me with sponsored posts of clothes, costume jewelry and also yoga classes, well!
In short, I resisted, resisted, I clicked on the link, checked out the dresses and tops at unbeatable prices, with great promotions and always a very limited stock (like, hurry up to buy, there are a great promo and it’s going to be sold out soon!!!) and then one day I cracked!
SHEIN: we’re going on condition that we follow our advice
The SHEIN site offers rather nice and stylish clothes, at super mini prices, like 8 th the simple blouse, 12 € the blouse with lace, 15 € the evening dress, 18 to 35 € the coat etc… And
there there is a huge choice with pages and pages of clothes… enough to lose your Latin!
Faced with so many choices at low prices, I took the plunge and placed an order.
1- Good news: the order has arrived… You just have to wait a bit because the delay is around 10 days or more. I remind you that our small parcels come from China…
2- Re-good news: the clothes are consistent with those in the photos, which deserves to be noted (see the rest of the article). Certainly the quality is not extraordinary either, but the price / quality ratio is up to par. The little black jumpsuit with white polka dots ordered by my daughter suits her very well and for 12 €, it works, with good quality material, just like the floral print pleated dress.
3- Pay attention to the sizes ! That’s the big downside! The sizes !!! Indeed, it is clear that SHEIN runs small! Small, like the one-size-fits-all sweater that you imagine quite loose with your little 40 molds you as if you absolutely wanted to fit into a 34! Yet on the photo, the sweater seemed really wide to me but in fact not!!! At the same time, I could have looked at the reviews at the bottom of the article because it was mentioned many times that the sweater was small!
So once you know that, you forget the one size if you don’t make a 36 and you order a size above yours, so only L for me, my 40 and my 1m72!
4- Super easy returns but at my expense : I was a little worried about returns, that’s why I had placed a very small 1st order of 3 items (all the same!!!) and it turns out that the returning my sweater was child’s play! Which for me means that I could recommend on the site!
So I received this email from Yvonne who even told me that to help me save return costs, she provided me with a return label: “For this option, you do not need to pay LaPoste at when you return the package, we will deduct €4.50 from the amount of your total refund.
Conclusion: positive experience
Following my 1st order, I placed a 2nd order and still no bad surprises, rather the opposite!
And to find your way around or find inspiration among the hundreds of clothes on offer, the site offers a lookbook and a photo gallery with looks posted by Internet users.
Can you buy with confidence on foreign fashion sites?
Jumpsuit in photo on the Shein site and worn in reality: it is perfect!
Vadim at AliExpress: as pictured, cheap but no return possible
AliExpress is this huge platform that hosts hundreds (maybe even thousands) of Chinese sellers. 100% Chinese, so to eat and drink, with counterfeit sites and serious sites!
We obviously can’t do a full review on AliExpress because every seller is different and therefore you may have good or bad experiences.
So I will only tell you about the clothing seller that I tested, namely VADIM Official Store.
I discovered Vadim by following a fashion influencer on Instagram. She had on a pretty shirt dress for a pittance, I swiped and entered Ali Baba’s cave! The Vadim store is quite nice and I was tempted for my first order by the dress that the influencer was wearing and a small English embroidery top that I took in black and white, all in size L, having been aware of the problem of sizes among the Chinese!
So I received my order 3 weeks later, having been notified when the order was shipped. It arrived safely in a padded envelope.
The shirt dress is awesome! In any case, it corresponds exactly to the photo, the size L is perfect and the material very pleasant.
The little top in English embroidery is also lovely, of good quality BUT I explode in size L…which is still the biggest size even though I am a small 40!
I say to myself, no big deal, I’m going to request a return EXCEPT on AliExpress, no return possible!
We contact the seller and we try to make a transaction, photo in support!!! So, I take a picture of myself in my top that is too small in black then in white and I manage to get the seller to agree to reimburse me for 1 out of 2 knowing that I’m keeping the 2 tops! Well, so, I give them to my daughter who puts them on sale on her Vinted account…
