Seraphim is actually kinda located in bum fuck nowhere :sweat: This is the approach after you leave the train station. As you can see, it's a bit rural.
Sadly I forgot to take a picture of the outside, but the shop is located in a residential neighborhood and it just looks like a house (well it is one). It seems like the ground floor of the home is the shop while above is the living quarters for the staff. I think it's a husband and wife business.. The wife was tidying things up and the husband was the main manager of the shop.
My Japanese is quite poor, but I was able to ask if it was possible to take pictures. Many stores in Japan forbid you from taking pictures, but the staff said yes! It is always polite to ask first, right?
So I was really surprised that inside the salon is the same setting they use for photos of their stock pictures. It was surreal seeing it in real life! They must have put a lot of effort decorating their shop given how unique it looked! I imagine trying to emulate the antiquated European look isn't the most easily accessible in Japan.
There are two rooms of the shop. One is the main display area for dresses and a couple of display cabinets.
The above is Room 1.
The second room contains the changing room, cashier, and more display cases for accessories.
It's also customary to ask if it's possible to try on some clothes before going into the changing room. So I asked first. This is the view from the changing room.
The whole place made my classic lolita heart get giddy and squeal with excitement (kept it internal though, lol). I mean it's decorated to perfectly suit a classic lolita's taste, right?
So one thing that really surprised me was that they made me tea. Like wtf. It felt so weird to have shop staff make me tea lol. The male staff asked me things like how I knew about Seraphim. I couldn't really explain it so well... I tried to say there is a whole community of lolitas out there that like Seraphim (well maybe not a lot), but I don't think I conveyed it well.
I have no idea where it is, but I got access to the membership too. I had to fill out a form with my home address (I think).
Here's a picture of my haul.. It's customary in Japan to always wrap everything so nicely!
A beautiful flower brooch. This isn't made by Seraphim, but an indie brand and Seraphim carries their items.
I might have a problem and really like flowers...
Here's a full body pic of the dress I bought ^^
Anyhow, I really recommend going because of how personable the experience is, being able to talk to staff (even through Google translate) is really a great experience.. I wish I had prepared more questions and asked how the brand started, etc. :sweat: I feel like the male staff might have been the designer too? I doubt Seraphim is a really big brand. So I think it's not very often you get to talk to staff behind the scenes one on one..
Please let me know if you visit!
Thanks for reading!
▶︎•၊၊||၊|။|||||။၊|။• Tanpopo - Last Kiss
Back to normal jpop yay
