Atelier Pierrot order details!

8/24 UPDATE: Shipment is here! Watch for new products on our site in the coming days.

We wanted to give you an idea of what's coming in our Atelier Pierrot order. We did our best to take your requests into account, and we also added some things we thought you'd all like.

This is by no means everything, but just a sampling of what we're getting. Some of the most beautiful items will have to remain a surprise.

These photos are from the Atelier Pierrot web site - we will take our own once we receive the order. Some of the items we wanted to show you have already been removed from their site - we cleaned them out!

Blouses:

We have several coming, not all of them pictured below. This one's coming in both black and white:



This one in white only:



Panniers! (AKA petticoats):

Every good Lolita skirt or dress needs a pannier/petticoat. These will be the first we'll have in stock. The nice thing about Atelier Pierrot's panniers is that they're a lot less expensive than some other "brand" panniers. Of course you can wear them with skirts or dresses you already have too. We're getting two different types, and both types in black and white (one of each shown below):



Skirts:

We're getting a variety of corset skirts, including bustle skirts, long skirts and more. Some of them are almost indescribably beautiful. Most of these have already been removed from Atelier Pierrot's site, so you'll have to wait to see them until we get them in. Here are the couple they have left:



This below is a crinoline:



As far as we know, this item is unique to Atelier Pierrot among Japanese brands. It is a historical garment that used to be meant as an undergarment, but Atelier Pierrot intends you to wear it on top. Like this:

Photo by Chris CB

The white version has not been released yet - we will most likely stock it once it is. The black one can be worn the opposite way, with a light colored skirt, or even over a black skirt for more of a textured, less contrasty look.

Watch for more on this in the coming days! And remember to not just look forward to what you see here, but also to what you don't see here! Some of the best stuff will be revealed when it arrives.

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Atelier Pierrot update + weekend web work

Just a couple of minor things to keep you updated. First, we now have a FAQ page! There's a lot of info in there already but if you have other questions, feel free to ask us and we'll put them there (or not, if you're bashful).

We've also fixed a few miscellaneous things on the site, like the search box not showing up in the newest browsers (it does now) and other little weird things.

And, a quick update on Atelier Pierrot. We sent our order to them, and it looks like we will be able to get some of the items listed as out of stock on their web site! This is very exciting, because not only were these items unavailable to ship overseas, they weren't even available anymore to ship in Japan. So you Atelier Pierrot fans are gonna get lucky. We'll give you another update once we know approximately when our order's coming, but it doesn't sound like it's gonna be too long a wait.

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Weekly sale! July 2009 #2

We're a little late with our single-item sale this week, so while our celebratory subject may not be Japanese, lolita, visual rock or even strictly punk, he's definitely a rebel and a world-renowned pioneer of noise rock. His still-truckin' and now not-quite-accurately-named band Sonic Youth will be playing the Summer Sonic music festival in Osaka in just a couple weeks. And his birthday is today! So join us in wishing Thurston Moore many happy returns by purchasing this, the most appropriate item we have for the occasion:




The guitar pick necklace from SEX POT ReVeNGe! (Don't worry, next week we'll be featuring a different brand for those of you are fans of our other stuff. First two weekly sales kinda just worked out this way.)

Normally $38. Now just $26 through the 25th! That's somewhere north of 30% off. We're not sure, we've never been good at math.

This necklace can be worn with or without the included SPR guitar pick, or even with a different pick of the same shape. And yes, the guitar pick it comes with is perfectly usable as a guitar pick in real life. Try it!

This sale ends tomorrow at midnight. You've been warned. Watch for our next weekly sale, well, next week.

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New brand announcement: ATELIER PIERROT!

Attention those of you finding this page through Google: Check out our Atelier-Pierrot page in our store! It's up!

It's tricky deciding when to "officially" announce something major like a new brand on our web site, especially considering that we can't always predict how long it will take to get our first shipment in (and it can sometimes take a while). Do we wait until you can actually buy the clothes from us? Or do we try to drum up a little advance excitement?

Well, it feels like the right time for this:


We're excited to announce the upcoming addition of Atelier Pierrot to our stable of brands, and we'll be carrying their clothes in our shop shortly. If you saw Chris CB's photos from the Laforet Fashion Show at the Japan Expo a couple of weeks ago, then you know how beautiful their clothes are. They specialize in the Elegant Gothic Lolita genre, so all of you goth loli's will soon have a great brand to buy from us.

Our first order has already been placed (with help from some of you), and we've been in regular contact with the studio since then. They're both responsive and helpful - there's even a possibility we might be able to get some items listed as sold out on their web site. We'll of course let you know when the shipment arrives and is up for sale in our store. We'll also be bringing a selection of their apparel with us to the New York Anime Festival this September.

What makes this announcement so exciting for us is that Atelier Pierrot is so hard to get in the United States. Unlike many of the other big Lolita brands, Atelier Pierrot has no English language web site or overseas shipping. We very well may be the only official retailer for their clothes in the United States. So we're extremely pleased to be able to bring their clothes here and help build their fan base.

We don't want to put a date on receipt of our first shipment, but we've got a good feeling about them. We don't expect the wait to be too long this time. Fingers crossed.

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Otakon thoughts, more stuff coming

We're back from Otakon 2009! Yeah, we only went one day - we don't have a booth this year, so we were just looking around. We'll have a booth at NYAF in September, and we'll probably have a booth at Otakon next year. It's a long trek from New York, but not impossible. And for those of you who live in Baltimore, we were surprised by how beautiful the city is!

To be honest, we're obviously not a cosplay or a replica store, so conventions like Otakon are kind of a mixed bag for us. We sell real Japanese street fashion, which is why you don't see a million different brands on our site yet. We're going after the real stuff, and only the real stuff. It's not that easy, especially for a new store, which is why so many cosplay and replica stores exist here and so few stores selling the real thing.

We saw a lot of great costumes today and also some bad costumes - but that's not really why we were there. We also saw a lot of people wearing Harajuku street styles, including punk, gothic and Lolita. Some of it was really cute and we wanted to give those people a thumbs up whenever we saw them. But some of it was so bad that we wanted to grab those people, shake them and scream "you're doing it wrong!"

We're hoping that the more "brand" clothing we carry, the more you'll see the difference between the real thing and the cheap replicas, knockoffs and costume-level clothing. It's both quality (fabric, stitching, fit) and design. When you put it all together, there really is a difference in the look and feel of the outfit. Do you remember when you were a kid and you used to wear costumes on Halloween that your parents bought for you at the drug store, and they were always made out of this plastic-like material that looked really cheap and fell apart after you wore it once? Yeah, that's something you don't want from your actual clothes.

We also took a look at some of the booths in the dealer area to get some ideas for our own NYAF booth, and we think we've got a sense now of what we can and can't do there, and maybe more importantly what we should and shouldn't do. Not every booth at Otakon was full of great ideas, and some of the worst belonged to some of the biggest companies. (Not naming names!) But, NYAF's definitely going to be exciting! And we've got some announcements related to that that will have to wait a little while. But I think you guys are going to be pretty happy, including fans of all genres that we carry.

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To Otakon!

We're off to Otakon in Baltimore tomorrow. We're not going to have a booth there - we're saving that for our hometown NYAF in September (booth 414! mark it down!) and anyway we're not quite ready yet - but we just want to go and see what's up. We're going to check out our competition and just generally cruise around the floor and see what we're in for at NYAF. They are similarly-sized conventions.

If you see a Japanese woman and a tall American guy walking around together and taking pictures, that might be us. We're hoping that our regular street clothes don't make us look like a couple of squares in a sea of cosplay and Lolita-ness.

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Angelic Pretty - for those of you waiting

We posted a while ago both here and on the EGL LiveJournal community about selling Angelic Pretty, and we know some of you are waiting for news. Here's the deal.

As you know, early last month we visited Japan and met with three clothing brands. Angelic Pretty was one of the three, and we were (and still are) very happy that they eventually emailed us and accepted our offer to sell their clothes here - though it wasn't until we had returned to the United States. We placed our first order soon after. AP has since been understandably busy with planning the Japan Expo fashion show, so we waited. We were excited to see their stuff (in pics and videos) at the show there, and to see Maki and Asuka staffing their booth and attending the tea party after the Expo.

The only update we can give you since then is that we are still waiting, and our order is still pending. We've contacted them again and haven't gotten an update ourselves. All we can do is keep waiting.

We are talking to other brands at this point. Having several Lolita brands will make it easier and quicker to maintain a good stock of Lolita merchandise.

So we're unfortunately in a wait and see mode with AP right now, but moving forward on other fronts. We do apologize for the delay! It will all be worth it in the end, one way or another.

(Yeah, this is one of those annoying "we have no news!" posts, but in this case we thought you'd want to know what was going on... or not going on.)

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Let's play a game - weekly sale!

It's time for a little summer fun. Only this is going to last all year. How does a new sale every single week sound? That's right, 52 weeks out of the year.

The catch? Oh, you knew there'd be one. More than one, actually:

• Each sale lasts just one day.
• The sale will be on a different day each week, coinciding with a world holiday, a famous birthday or something else we'd like to celebrate.
• You will not know what we plan to celebrate in advance.
• Each weekly sale affects one product!
• You will not know which product will be on sale until the sale.

The good news is the sale will cover all genres, and not just stuff we want to get rid of either. Think of it like playing a little game, trying to guess when the next sale is and what product we'll be offering.

To kick things off, we celebrate Bastille Day! Yes, in honor of Japan Expo in Paris last week, we celebrate the storming of the Bastille, which became a symbol of the French revolution almost immediately after it happened on July 14, 1789.

And the item on sale this week to commemorate this distinguished date in history?

The SEX POT ReVeNGe Hell Bitch One-piece! Actually one of our most popular items!

Regular Price: $89

Sale Price: $59

That's CRAZY talk! You won't see this price again. Ever.

The sale ends tomorrow night at midnight EDT. You have been warned.

Oh, thinking you're just going to wait for your favorite item to go on sale? Well, some items never will - they just cost us too much, they're too rare and hard to get, or they just sell too quickly. And the more items we add, the lower the chance of any given item going on sale any given week. So if this is your strategy, you may be waiting a long, long time. If you like something on our site, just buy it! Our regular prices are as good as you'll find outside of Japan.

No, we just thought this would be fun, and a way to keep you guys coming back to the site. (Hey, we're not gonna lie, we're in this to sell stuff.)

What's coming next week? Who knows?! We'll announce it here when it happens.

UPDATE: First sale is over! Thanks to all who ordered!

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Things to look forward to

It may seem from the outside like we've been sitting on our laurels since returning from Japan last month, but nothing could be further from the truth. We wanted to take a minute to update you guys on just a few of the things we've got going on behind the scenes, or coming soon on the web site (or even "IRL"):

1. Physical store - things are definitely moving forward. It takes some time to get these things done, but we're very close to knowing exactly where we're going to be. We're in active negotiations over a location right now. It's both exciting and frustrating at the same time, because anything involving a legal contract always takes about twenty times longer than you want it to. Be assured that we will let you know immediately once we sign a lease. We'll be too excited not to!
   
   
2. More brands - either shortly before or shortly after opening the physical store. This is another thing that you might not realize is really tricky. When you're trying to deal with Japanese brands from America, it's not as simple as calling them up and saying we want to sell their clothes. It takes some convincing, especially for the larger brands. We're also trying to get the right mix - we're being picky. So it's not a quick process. But we're actively working on it.
   
   
3. More clothes! Believe it or not, this is an in-between period for manufacturers right now. They're all gearing up for their fall collections, while a lot of their summer clothes have already sold out. We've already got fall orders in with two of our brands (which should be arriving in late summer) and we're planning another one with the third brand soon. We'll probably up the size of these orders once we're settled on a physical store too. Oh, we can still order summer clothes - it's just that the supply is a bit limited. But feel free to email us with special order requests.
   
   In the meantime, we've still got some used clothes to post. Just haven't had time! But we will within the next few days.
   
   (Oh, and about that Angelic Pretty order? Still pending...)
   
   
4. Coordinate how-to's. Sometimes it's tough to picture how things are supposed to look when you see them by themselves on a mannequin. We're working on ways to fix that. SEX POT makes it easy - they put out their own coordinate books complete with their own models, and we've got permission to post them. We'll be doing that here, along with English translations. We may need to get a little more creative with our other brands. We'll see what we can come up with! (Eventually we'll have our own models, but not for a while.)
   
   
5. Scrapbook. We want to give you guys a way to show off your own coordinating skills. We'll feature photos of our customers and fans wearing the clothes we sell, probably both in a featured slot every week and also on one big board on our web site. (And maybe in our store?) Probably won't be up for a little while, but you can send us your photos starting now to help us get ready.

Well, that's by no means everything but it should give you an idea of the work we've been doing. We really want to turn this into something big, so we're working tirelessly towards that goal. Things may sometimes take a little while, but please be patient!

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Laforet Harajuku @ Japan Expo 2009

Every year for the past decade, Parisians have gathered in summer to celebrate all things Japanese. For the past several of these years, a large part of the Japanese street fashion industry has ground to a halt for Japan Expo, which now draws upwards of 130,000 people. Tokyo department store Laforet - home to the famed "Laforet Underground" that houses many popular street fashion brands (literally in the basement of the building) has both a set of booths and a fashion show to display some of their brands' wares. This year Algonquins and Angelic Pretty attended, among many other brands (Maki and Asuka were staffing the AP booth).

Chris CB caught the fashion show this year and has now posted a great photo set from the show, featuring photos from pretty much everyone except Angelic Pretty! (UPDATE: See the comments below - this is now corrected. I thought some of those Black Peace Now outfits looked a little odd for them...) But Algonquins is there, as are other brands like Super Lovers, Metamorphose temps de fille, Putumayo, Black Peace Now and more.

It's almost enough to make a New Yorker jealous of Paris. Almost.

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July Sale FINAL DAY!!

Just a reminder - this is the last day for our July storewide sale! After midnight EDT, all prices will return to normal! Hurry - some items are already sold out! Get your orders in now, before it's too late!

SHOP NOW

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