Hello and thanks for joining me in my first review of the new year! Today I am writing about the new upcoming series, Rapunzel: Imprisoned Princess, a collaboration between korean brand Baroque, japanese artist Sakizo, and dress pattern provided by Miss Anri from Dear Margret ( tumblr for us english speaking folks. ). There's been a lot of buzz around this series since it's arrival on the Baroque webpage back in November and after the first reservation period now closed, the second wave of reservations has just recently opened. I was instantly interested when I heard these three were collaborating for a lolita related venture and could not wait to see the fruits of their hard work these past months. I've been given a rare and unique opportunity to show other fellow lolitas interested in this series some first hand info and detail on this new release and I can't wait to get started!
The dress I received was so graciously provided from Baroque and I have also been informed tights will soon follow illustrated by designer Sakizo at a later date most likely in May. I'm also told they are from the same company that hers are produced at so the quality should be better than the ones I received prior. ( The review for these tights can be found here. )
The print is very vibrant and the polyester material soft to the touch. It's different from their prior series, Ridiculous Circus, which was a crepe chiffon but still just as light. The fabric is very reminiscent of the material Haenuli used for their Whipped Cream Kitty series as a comparison.
In the following photos I have a few close ups of the actual print. There is an incredible amount of intricacy in the print and the dyeing is a lot better from the previous series as well. The black is much darker than before and true to color than with the previous release which was a big gripe of mine. It still lightens around where the fabric is folded and sewn over but for the most part it is pretty uniform in color and a lot more saturated than the older series on this kind of fabric.
The production value is a lot better as well. When inspecting the print, I could not believe the amount of time put into the small details. Sakizo really puts out a lot of impressive work, but I think she really went all out on this one. If you look at the image below you can actually see under the flowers and above the embroidery style bottom border, there is a stretch of birdseye motif instead of black negative which is not replicated anywhere else on the dress. Albeit a very insignificant addition, I absolutely adore little details like these.
There is a lot of depth to this particular dress; overlaing the vertical print is also a baroque pattern overlay which gives it an amazing tapestry feel.
You can see however in the image above, the polyester fabric does have a bit of a lighter sheen / saturation than a dress printed on cotton, but this is only visible when you're extremely close. This is also only printed on one side so if there is a snag the print can become distorted.
In the photo below the stripe placement of the bodice to skirt isn't really aligned to look more fluid, but I think given how busy the print is, it isn't as noticeable as Pearl Drops on the Dry Flower. There are some loose threads visible, but were easily pulled away, but I left them in this photograph to show you. The birds in the cameo were the only ones found on the dress as well, which I thought was very interesting.
I kind of wish they would have tried to match the front bodice pattern better because it looks kind of all over the place; but the detachable choker helps to break up the mismatched alignment. A skirt overlay will also be included with this series and would also help to camouflage the misalignment so I don't really feel this is a huge negative aspect to the construction of this dress.
Also I feel that it should be mentioned; that since the print is one sided this is something to also take into consideration while storing your dress. The top part of the bodice has a ruffle made of the dress fabric and it should be kept ruffled correctly otherwise it may wrinkle or pleat in such a way to show the white unprinted side which will stand out horribly in the wine, black, or navy colorway..
The lace across the bodice shown here is also pretty delicate, I would have wished it color matched each particular colorway instead of it being across the board ivory. But I think some simple hand dyeing would be a quick fix to that if you're a stickler about that. I think it looks very different when used in the OP version so I guess it just sort of depends on your preference.
In the photo below you can also see the very top of the straps of the dress. They are lined on both sides with elastic to make them stretchy to help accommodate for different sizes instead of different buttons for strap adjustments.
As you see, this is the main back of the bodice here. There is no corset lacing, which with this series I'm on the fence about. Usually this has been an on again off again gripe for me with cetain releases as it makes it harder for someone who is on the smaller of the measurement scale to make these dresses smaller; especially when they are inbetween the two allotted sizes. This particular series however also allows for some custom sizing while reserving. But if you can't get it customized, at least there is a bit more of an overlap with the two sizes available so it's not such a problem as other brands that also do releases in two sizes..
In this second photo above, this is the only place I found an actual illustrtaion of a girl and not just the repetition of the hair and window design. It seems the bodice has a completely different print from the skirt and that may be why they don't exactly align. I thought this was pretty cool just because it makes the print a little less princess-y and open to be a little bit more versatile.
This is the underside of the dress, with pretty straight and clean hem lines. It is however lacking a slip lining, but since this was only a sample dress I was promised that the regular production dress will include a lining.
This below is the side seam which is aligned really quite well. My finger is pointing on the line of the seam that runs horizontally across the photo. Especially with the bottom border print, it was pieced together very well.
Something to note about these kinds of dresses though. As this was just a sample dress, it's normal for snags and small imperfections to sometimes be missed which is no problem because they're samples. However I must stress that with these particular dresses, it's kind of easy to distort and mess up the print if you are careless and scratch or snag your dress on something. ( I think I mentioned earlier my Haenuli Whipped Cream Kitty is also printed on material identical to this. ) These dresses are usually printed on one sided polyester and sometimes if there is a snag it'll show up kind of like how a run in a stocking looks.
There was a small snag when giving this dress it's first once over inspection and I think it also shows in a prior photo earlier in my overview.
Overall construction: 4.7 out of 5
Print Overall Crispness and Alignment: 4 out of 5
Regarding print placement and alignment; I found the bodice print to be my only issue that could potentially dissuade me from purchasing this dress. But I suppose it would really depend on how ocd you are or how good your powers of distraction are with accessory placement along these points on the dress. If you're good at it I think this would be a fantastic edition to your wardrobe.. If things being just a bit off alignment wise keep you up at night, you might need to seat this one out.
All in all I think Baroque has kept up to the standard of the previous dress I purchased from them, Ridiculous Circus, ( you can read about my review for it as well as Missing Letter Keys here ) but has improved exponentially with their color printing as well as getting the print crispness clearer and sharper with each release. I hope since they are using a new company in Japan for production of their new dresses, that their popularity will boom.
Thank you for taking the time to read my review of the upcoming series, Rapunzel: Imprisoned Princess by Baroque. I look forward to seeing more of their future prints and am glad I got this opportunity to help give some insight on one of my favorite korean indie brands. A special thank you to Mana Kim and all the lovely people that poured themselves into this series and made it possible; you guys are getting better and better and all your hard work has definitely been noticed!
And lastly, I want to apologize; I have been having some issues transferring images from one device to another so there are not as many clear photos as they got drastically resized,unfortunately. I hope to have this remedied soon so until then thank you for understanding.
If you're interested in reserving this dress the 2nd round of reservations are still open until January 22nd. I think the items still available consist of the JSK, headdress, 3 way choker, innerskirt, head ribbon, and bonnet. I think the OP slots are filled already, but you might want to contact them and double check. English and non Korean reservations are done through their facebook page found here. Below is a shot of the JSK I used for this review with everything it comes with and all of the colorways available.
I am now in the process of making the final tweeks to my wardrobe post for this year. I hope you guys stay tuned for that and thanks for reading!
