Dressing Your Doll on a Dime Part One: Our Generation

Welcome to my first post in a multi part series where I'm going to take a look at three brands of the more inexpensive 18in doll clothing available on the market! I'll be examining one outfit and at least one pair of shoes each and comparing the brands to each other.  I'm going to compare Target's Our Generation, Walmart's My Life and Springfield Collection!

First up is Our Generation (brought to you by Battat) and you can check them out here. Their website is actually very nice and shows a pretty impressive range of really cute outfits and accessories! One thing that I really like about this company is that they use eco-friendly packaging and I will talk about that in depth here shortly. But first here is what their clothing display looks like at my neighborhood target:

Man someone needs to face those shelves!

They had two rows of hanging spaces for clothes. The top row is for the deluxe fashion sets (which retail at $16.99) and the bottom is for their regular fashion sets ($12.99.) As far as I can tell, the biggest difference seems to be that the deluxe sets have cloth shoes and they seem to be a bit fancier? I'm not sure if that justifies the price jump but since my biggest issue with this company is the plastic shoes that come with the normal fashion sets......it could be. I might have to get one of the deluxe sets just to see what I think.


Anyway, I purchased one of the 12.99 sets! Actually it came down to these two:

Hubby chose the dress with the hat but I will be back for the red outfit! So cute!

And my husband chose the green striped dress with the hat. It's called the Sweet in the Heat set and yes those shoes are plastic but...

They had a display of better quality shoes for $6.99 so I chose the pink shoes up the top left corner. I almost bought the orange wellies too but I held myself back. I will be getting them sometime though! Too cute!

Let's look at the dress first.

The front and back of the box

Inside is the dress which comes with a hat, pink plastic shoes and ankle socks. On the back of the box is a picture of the dress on one of their dolls and an inspirational little blurb about how awesome this generation of girls is. I think it's a little overdone but hey, I'm not going to mock it! It can't hurt and maybe some girl will get inspired by it.

What I think is really cool about the back is the little pink box there. It says that the box is made from recycled materials, printed with soy based ink and is recyclable. So I checked out the FAQ on their website. Not surprisingly they say the same thing, but they also add that all the plastic is recyclable and that they design their packaging to be reusable. Something that is pretty evident in the shoe box (I'll be keeping that for easy storage) and in the hanger part of the dress box! It is in fact a cute detachable hanger that can be used to store the dress later on. I don't think this is the end all or be all of doll accessory packaging BUT, like their inspirational blub, it can't hurt! I think the recycling angle pretty cool and a nice feature.

The box is also fairly easy to open. It's just taped at the bottom and then you pull the front little panel down and you can lift up the back inside panel of the box (after a little struggling) and everything is just attached with thread. I really should have gotten a picture of that but I was too excited!


Now that I've yammered on about that, here is the dress out of the box:

The dress is made of a light green, striped material with pink accents. To be honest I don't know much about fabric and I'm sure this type has a name so if you know it tell me! (edit: after some deliberation it has been determined that the fabric is most likely seersucker! Thanks Traci!) It closes down the back with two short pieces of velcro.

The inside of the dress looks pretty nice and neatly finished to me!

The bottom has a cute little og label, that I really wish wasn't there. Mostly because when I see OG I think original gangsta not our generation and it makes me laugh! But still it's a nice little label.

The bodice is decorated with a embroidered felt and ribbon flower. I wish the center felt piece was pink. Some may think that would be too matchy matchy but I find the orange a little jarring. I'm considering taking it off since it is stitched and not glued one. We will see! Maybe if it were on the hat instead I would like it better?

Speaking of the hat:

It's a very nice, if plain, wide brimmed straw hat. All I really have to say about this is that it's very well made, it doesn't snag doll hair and it fits like a dream! I like it a lot!

The socks are pretty disappointing:

They come in a little cardboard sleeve taped on the side and are basically just white rectangles. They look pretty ragged on the top already so I don't have much hope of these looking nice through any long term play.

Straight side on the left, slouchy on the right

If you place the seem on the toes, where it would normally go, the socks slouch down like they do in the pictures on the box. However, if you run the toe seam lengthways down the foot the sock stays up much straighter. I like it better that way but still they are a pretty basic low quality sock.

Now I've already said that I don't like the plastic shoes. My main beef with them is just that it seems lazy. Other companies are making decent fabric shoes and selling them for around five dollars so I know they can't be that expensive.

That being said there are a few things I like about these:

They are made out of a flexible pink plastic. The tread and the bows are molded parts of the shoe itself with the bow painted white. They are foot-specific which I thought was nice and the paint on the bow is fairly neat. I also really like that they have tread! I think it's a nice little detail.

They also fit pretty well and they don't fall off easily! Still I'm not a huge fan. Having plastic shoes just kind of breaks the illusion for me. It makes this seem more toy like and less clothing like? I don't think I'm making any sense. We'll just say it bugs me!

So I mentioned earlier that I bought a pair of their better shoes for comparison! There weren't a ton of choices but I picked the pair I thought matched the best and here they are in the box:

I had to take of the sleeve here to get a good picture

They come in a nice, sturdy little box, nestled in purple tissue paper with a plastic sleeve over the whole thing. The back has a different little inspirational blurb and the same info about recycling!

The upper part of the shoe is made out of pink felt with a cute little felt flower for decoration and the lining is a shiny green fabric. The insole is a hard green plastic with "our generation by battat" stamped on the inside of each one. The outsole (or bottom, yes I looked up shoe anatomy for this post) is a harder, textured, brown plastic. It looks like it would be rubbery but it really isn't. It does still have a decent amount of flexibility to it though!

They are held on by a pink felt strap that closes with a little piece of velcro.

I really like these shoes. I think they look sturdy and adorable! The double layered uppers are nice and thick, the strap is attached very solidly and I love the soles! My only complaint is that they don't fit quite as tightly as I would like (especially for seven dollars) but I can see where that would be an excellent thing for little fingers! I think I will be checking out their other styles in the very near future.

Now I am a little strange! My dolls don't share clothing for the most part. Each has her own wardrobe and if I can't decide who would wear a certain outfit I don't buy it. This outfit went to Kanani, so let's see how it fits:

I love the short straps on this dress. I don't really care for dresses that show a whole lot of their cloth bodies and this one does a great job of covering that up while still having a very summery feel.

Fun fact! My first try taking this picture there was a giant dead bug I didn't notice till later. I went back and redid this shot.

You can see that the shoes gap a little. It's nothing that really bothers me and I still think they are very cute!

I do think that the dress is a little on the short side (it hits Kanani a little above her knees) but I still think it's very appropriate for little girls!

And just one more shot of pretty Kanani in her new dress! She approves!

So what are my thoughts on Our Generation?
The clothing is well made, the basic shoes and the socks are a disappointment but I'm impressed with the extra shoes you can buy separately and with the hat this dress came with.  I will probably buy from them again!

Stay tuned for part two which is going to be all about My Life! Till next time!