So, if you follow me on my instagram, you may have seen a few of my stories talking about how I thought I might have came across a small undusted section of what lolita may have looked like in China during the old school era. I saw a lolita skirt labeled "Westmend", and the seller listed it as an Old brand with a Japanese designer. So I searched the brand in lolita discords, no one had spoken about it. A google search brought up an ancient live journal post, and the OP and commenters were sort of reviewing the brand and discussing that they planned to visit the store in Shanghai soon. One person suggested that the store was nothing more than an ita paradise, but I was still curious! There was a link to the website in the post, and a quick plug into the wayback machine opened a tomb of old images. I'm very excited to share what I found! I don't think research is my best talent, and a lot of the photos didn't have too much context as to what they were showing, so most of this may seem like a photo dumb! Nonetheless, I hope you enjoy scrolling through this post!
♡ ♥ ♡ ♥ ♡ ♥ ♡ ♥ ♡ ♥ ♡ ♥ ♡ ♥ ♡ ♥
♡ ♥ ♡ ♥ ♡ ♥ ♡ ♥ ♡ ♥ ♡ ♥ ♡ ♥ ♡ ♥ ♡ ♥ ♡ ♥ ♡ ♥ ♡ ♥From what I gathered, Westmend originally was small retail chain in china that sold Harajuku fashion, and had a Japanese designer. Not every image is lolita, but definitely inspired by Jfashion.
West Mend Booth. “From April 2 to 4, 2005, the company participated in Beijing Garment Expo. The company's booth was crowded and lively. CCTV, Zhejiang TV, China Fashion News and other professional media have paid great attention to "Ximending Ding" and have successively made exclusive interviews and filming. During the exhibition, excellent franchisees from all over the country have also reached cooperation intentions with the company.”
Various WestMend storefronts 2004
A few Items for Sale on their website
How cool, this is very similar to what the brand releases today!! Humble beginnings for their EGA/historical line.
I'd assume this is the ita-ness that person was referring to?
This is a replica of AP's Velveteen Standing Collar Cross OP, or at least very inspired.
Next is a Surfacespell photoshoot from 5/08/04
Westmend's Website had quite the facelift in 2006. It doesn't seem like the wayback machine was able to capture majority of the photos from this site, so I didn't get many results from it. I think At this point they were transitioning a out of sweet classic lolita, to a different soft jfashion. They may have started really buckling down on the replica life too, but I ended my research before diving too deep.
If you made it to the end, have you heard of this brand before? Its sad that there is so much lost media out there, I would love to see how other parts of the world discovered and interpreted lolita during this era. A glimpse in the past is always gives me inspiration, let me know which image is your favorite! I'm for sure stealing those edit styles... I'd love to chitchat about this find, be sure to comment! ❣