Taking a Selkie Break

Finally, Finally, finally, I have all the Selkie dresses from the Out of the Tower collection that I have been waiting for for the past seven months.  It took a lot of work to find them all, way more work than I've ever put in to buying any clothes before, and while I absolutely love this French Corset Dress in Night in Paris print, I'm not sure that any of these pretty dresses were worth all this work.  You may not know it from my wardrobe, but I'm a very low-key person.  I despise drama and chaos.  I like things quiet, simple, and straight forward.  

To that end, my experience with Selkie has been a wild roller coaster and at this point, I just want off this ride.  I only began shopping at Selkie less than a year ago just to see what all the hype was about.  So, only two or three collection releases in and I've already noticed a pattern of delays, followed by surprise drops, a frenzy of buying and quickly selling out of stock.  After this comes the desperate search by Selkie-lovers to find the dress they loved but weren't sitting constantly by their screen waiting for and so missed out.  Some people love this sort of drama.   While I see the appeal and I would never take that from anyone, to me, it all just feels like an unnecessary and easily avoidable nightmare.  Here's what I'm looking for from the companies I shop with:

  1. Tell me when you're going to release a collection.  2.  Release it on the date you set.  3.  Have enough stock to meet demand.  That's it.  So simple.  But that's not how Selkie has operated during my year or so of shopping with them, and while I still love their prints and many aspects of their fashion mission, I have to take a break from all their ruffled princessy pandemonium.  In October of 2021, Selkie announced they would release their Spring '22 collection near the spring solstice, which was March 22, 2022 if you weren't paying attention.  The week prior, there was an unannounced teaser drop in which various stores like Anthropologie, Revolve, and Free People received a couple of items from the drop.  I was in surgery and missed out completely.  Everything I wanted sold out long before I even knew it was there.  Then, there was a "mini drop" in which I managed to snag the Mucha Day dress.  And then.......we waited.  March ended and the new release date was mid April.  April ended with no word about when the collection would release and I got soooo tired of waiting.

I found this corset dress at Quinn Hop and for the other I did a rent-to-own from Nuuly.  My experience with Quinn Hop was fantastic.  The dress shipped on the first business day after I ordered and arrived at my door in about 4 days.  It came nicely wrapped and with a reusable canvas bag.  I could not be happier with Quinn Hop.  I do regret that I couldn't wait anymore, but I had a life to get back to.  This whole thing of sitting on social media waiting for the announcement was OK in the winter when there wasn't much going on, but when spring hit, I had things to do, places to go, and a life to live away from my screens.  Three days after I found the final two dresses on my wishlist and ordered them from other companies, Selkie did a "partial release" of their spring collection, which still did not include these dresses and everything that was included was going to take at least three weeks before it shipped.  In the immortal words of Charlie Brown, What the Hell?!  Ok, C.B. didn't say that but, good grief, Selkie, either release the dresses or tell people you'll have to delay, but stop stringing us along!  The dresses I own from Selkie are beautiful, no mistake in that, but the drama that came with attaining them was a far larger price than I'm willing to pay.  And so, I'm taking a little break from Selkie to explore other brands with more consistent and orderly business models.  And that's all I'll say about my experience of shopping with Selkie for now.