Flirty ruffles top - tee discontinued by Espiral - review by Jul!a

There really wasn't much to the packaging at all, just a plastic bag and a tag that shows a model wearing the top. Both that tag and a tag on the inside of the shirt tell you what size it is, along with it being made of 65% Polyester and 35% Rayon. The tag on the inside of the shirt doesn't write out washing instructions, but features symbols instead. It seems to indicate that you should hand wash everything, although it think it'd be fine with your regular T-shirts.

Seeing as there isn't a sizing chart available for Espiral onsite, I had to do some digging to decide what size to order. I ended up settling on a size small, which means I should have a 34" bust, a 25" waist, and 34" hips. I'm personally about 5'2, size 4/6, I weigh about 120, around my bust measures about 32" and underneath measures 28 1/2". I've got a 29" waist with a B cup. This was pretty tight everywhere. Like, you know those shirts you manage to wriggle into and then immediately wonder how in the hell you're going to get out of it? That's what happened with me. There was a little more room in the bust, but not much. This would fit better on somebody who routinely looks for smalls that run small or wears an extra small.

This is a two piece set, with a shirt and a belt. The shirt features ruffly cap sleeves, and if worn "correctly" features a scoop neck with a plunging V in the back. There's no reason you can't flip it around and have the V in the front with a tank top underneath if you want to cover more of your back. The bottom measures about 31" around, meaning you can have a waist larger than 25". Mine is almost 30" and it was still comfortable in the waist. Across the shirt under the armpits is also about 31" around, which means that it probably isn't going to fit the bust range it claims it will. Underneath mine is about 28 1/2" around and even that was pretty tight. From the armpit down to the hem is about 17" and on me landed a few inches below the top of my hip bone.

Up next is the belt. The belt's sizing confuses me, because there's no way that it would fit underneath my bust, it ends up being too loose by an inch or two. If I move it father down, it would have sat comfortably on my natural waist at 29 1/2" around. At about 2 1/3" tall it's a good size for breaking up the flow of the shirt in a fashionable way. It features faux leather ends, complete with rivets and snaps. Well, one snap really, on a piece of faux leather that comes out from one end of the belt and should snap on to the other. However when unsnapping to put it on, I realized that the snap had come apart, and wouldn't be doing me any good, which worked out well because the belt didn't fit where it should to begin with. It does stretch though, and would stretch up to about 38" or so.

I'm on the fence with the overall quality of everything. The belt's thick stretchy band is solidly built, no issues there. The ends looked a bit unfinished, sort of like a Halloween costume prop. Some of it was cut unevenly with wavering in the pieces, but the stitching all looked solid. The snap seems to be the biggest trouble piece on this belt, not holding together very well. The shirt is made really well, quality wise. Even with as tight as it was and as much stretching and tugging as I had to do to get out of it I didn't hear any strained seams and couldn't find anything awry. The material is also nice and soft to the touch, and comfortable for long term wear. The downside is that the tag is really itchy, but can be cut out, and that my pretty much completely dry gel deodorant showed up almost immediately on it and looked like bleach stains.

I've got a lot of pictures for you with this item. The first is my usual front, side, back with it being worn how it's supposed to be:



The next set is with a tank top underneath, and what it looks like if you wear it backwards, which is how I prefer to wear it:



And I also have a close-up of the belt where it broke, as well as the best I could do to show where the belt would sit on me:

I'd recommend taking 2" off of the listed bust measurement and going by that compared to your band size when you purchase. The other sizes are listed as: M - 36/27/36, L - 38/29/38, and XL - 40/31/40.

I did a big ol' happy dance when I saw how much new lingerie we were getting, and started thinking about what I wanted to pick up to make mine. I settled on this one because I liked that I could wear it out if I wanted. Well, I'm probably not going to. It's nice and I can even get past how weird the sleeves feel to me (totally a personal thing), but I hate the fact that a) it's already got deodorant stains on it and b) I have a very hard time getting out of it on my own. The color is gorgeous, but I'm on the fence about it in general still. I can say though that I'll be buying my Espiral stuff in a medium from now on.

Scoring was hard to decide on. It loses a star right off the bat for the belt not being usable. If you have the right sizing it's easily a 4 star purchase. I settled on 3 stars because it doesn't fit the sizes it advertises and the belt was poorly made.