Deer Alice: Pop-up store: Laforet HARAJUKU in Paris

Last Saturday was the opening of the Laforet HARAJUKU pop-up shop in Paris! From September 23rd to October 3rd, several brands are featured at L'Exception, a French select shop: Angelic Pretty, Baby the Stars Shine Bright, Jane Marple, E Hypen, Nile Perch, Ciara and more. A large selection of brands that would please any Harajuku and Japanese fashion lover~

Many girls, including myself, have been waiting for this day with excitement. Early birds gathered around 9AM, one hour before the official opening time of the store in order to be the first ones in line and make sure to grab the best items! By 10AM, around thirty girls were queuing and before anyone else I was lucky enough to take some pictures of the store to share with you.

The selection of items was quite recent and large : there was a total of four racks, four mannequins and some shelves holding the accessories that were all from 2017 autumn-winter collection! Since the staff of L'Exception knew about the Harajuku fashion fans coming on the very first day, they did put the most iconic brands on display for the occasion: Angelic Pretty, Baby the Stars Shine Bright, Jane Marple, ... And this was definitely a good move! First half of the pop-up store was popular brands among Harajuku lovers and the other half was more designer/higher end brands such as FURFUR or Honey Salon.

L'Exception is quite big and Laforet HARAJUKU pop-up store took about one quarter of the room. Which was already amazing: I think the pop-up store itself had a nice size, one of the only things I would regret is that not all of the featured brands were displayed at the opening: some brands as E Hypen weren't for seen until the beginning of the afternoon, which mean several girls, myself included, left before being able to see all of the stock. I could easily go back to L'Exception since I'm living in Paris but some other girls can't or won't and therefore maybe missed one or several amazing items they would have wished for. But at least, the Harajuku fashion fans that couldn't be there on the very first day will also be able to find some really great items!

The second thing I would find regrettable is selection of items itself: I'm not exactly sure what were the conditions under each brands were presented. Was it a matter of number of items? Total worth of the stock? I really don't know, but the thing I do know is that the pop-up store was definitely lacking of accessories. Not counting the brands that only do accessories or smaller items such as Ciara (phone cases and covers) or feast (underwears), only Baby, the Stars Shine Bright and Alice and the Pirates brought accessories to match their stock : few legwears and headwears as long as an endless count of Usakumya and Kumakumya bags.

This lead to many girls leaving the store empty handed: since the brands featured in the pop-up are on the more expensive side, it was incredibly hard to find something under 50€ or even 100€. However, regarding the prices, on a happier note, all the items are priced quite closed to current the euro-yen exchange. There was no taxes or hidden fees which means it was basically like shopping directly in Japan! What a great surprise!

In my opinion, the overall experience was really nice: Laforet and L'Exception staff were lovely and professional, many amazing brands were featured, the prices were really nice compared to the original ones in yen. Apart from the lack of accessories and the fact that not all brands were presented at the same time, I would say this definitely was a really good first time pop-up store for Laforet! I hope it will encounters the success it deserves and that they will soon come back with even more brands (and more accessories) ♡

Thank you for reading! See you soon for more endless writings about Japanese fashion~

I'll leave you here with some street snaps (I wish I could have taken more!!)
and pictures of my own purchase ♡