Fancy Dress and Fairy Costume Accessories

In a little over two weeks my bff/sister/partner in doll crime is going to come visit! In honor of her arrival all of my girls are changing into their meet outfits. So over the next two weeks I'm going to do variety of clothing posts. Might as well take pictures while I change them right? There might be some meet outfits but then again there might not be. I haven't decided but there will be lots of clothing either way!

Also I got a new cardboard backdrop so I'm experimenting with that! Hopefully the pictures are looking okay.

And now for today's clothing post! We are going to talk about Cecile and Marie-Grace's Fancy Dress and Fairy Costume Accessories!

Here is the whole outfit on Marie-Grace:

Very colorful!

First let's talk about the dress:

It's made of a very silky, slippery fabric in pink and blue.

Here is the front and the back:

They did use the nice velcro for this dress but it can still catch:

And create nice little runs. Fortunately it's not all that visible but you have to be really careful with this type of fabric and velcro!

Here are a few detail shots:

The dress has double puff sleeves and there is the rosette at the waist.

The pink over-skirt drapes nicely over the blue skirt and gathers slightly in the back.

It also has a ruched bodice!

The dress comes with blue, satin dancing slippers; decorated with another pink rosette. 

 They are hard soled and lined with white fabric.

They also have a slight heel. I actually got to watch a kid try and put these on. It was a task! The shoes are tight and difficult even for me.  They were a little frustrating for her.

Next up are the Fairy Costume Accessories:

This set includes wings, elbow length gloves and a mask.

The wings are made of a glittery fabric.

It's a bit rough to the touch. It also has a faint blue and green stripe pattern.

They don't have any sort of wire of anything to help them hold their shape but the wings are so thick that they hold up well anyway!

They connect to the dress with a thick metal hook.

It hooks into that long pink part right there on the back of the dress:

The wings stay in pretty well. My one issue with them is that they are kind of small. Unless you put the doll's hair up the wings get almost totally covered.

The gloves her elbow length. I think they are made of the same glittery fabric as the wings? If not it's pretty darn close. They even have the same blue and green stripes.

They are a bit thin but very easy to put on and pretty sturdy. I'm not a fan of them because they look like mittens but that's pretty unavoidable.

The best part of this accessory set is the mask:

It is made of thick, surprisingly heavy, white plastic covered in glitter and shaped like a crown. I was a bit worried about how much this thing would shed but so far I've only found a few stray glitter pieces. I spent sometime trying to make some glitter off. If I rubbed a little would come off but I had to rub at it pretty hard! I'm impressed.

The mask is heavily decorated.

It has green satin bows on either side with "floral trim" stretched between.

Each spike of the "crown" is decorated with a pink ball.

The paint on my two masks is pretty nice. Again I'm fairly impressed!

The other side is unpainted:

You can see American Girl and Made in China stamped on it.

The mask attaches to the doll with a green strip of elastic. There are only a couple of things I don't like about this mask. One, I don't like that you can't put the elastic under the doll's hair. At least I haven't figured out a way to do it and make the mask sit right. Two, I wish that the eye holes were any other shape. The holes are small and round and so they tend to cast shadows so it's hard to see (and photograph) the doll's eyes.

I think Matilda's mask has much better eye holes. They make her look a bit mysterious and flirty like a good mask should ;) and it's easy to see her eyes. But other than those two things I think the fairy mask is adorable and I'm very pleased with it.

Now I've heard a lot of criticism about this outfit. Primarily about the colors (I hear this a lot about Cecile's summer dress too.) But I personally LOVE them and I'm going to explain why.

If you've ever been to the French Quarter in New Orleans you will see all sorts of colors on the buildings. It's almost blinding at times. There are yellow buildings with green trim and pink buildings with blue trim and and peach buildings and bright green buildings!

A picture of Madame John's Legacy from my trip. It's the only French building left in the French Quarter!

Now I don't know if girls in the 1850's would have worn a dress in any of  those colors but for me they are a fun little reminder of a place that I love. They just SCREAM New Orleans and I love it! It makes me feel like maybe someone from AG walked around the French Quarter a bit before picking fabric.


Here are a couple extra pictures:

Pretty Cecile!

The girls and their masks.

I am really glad that I got these dresses before they disappeared! I think they were very worth it especially since I got the dresses and the accessories on sale. The girls look lovely and I enjoy a fancy dress every now and then. I'm not really sure how well this set would hold up to a child. I was being very careful and ended up getting the dress caught on the velcro anyway. Plus the shoes are pretty difficult to get on. I think if you want to keep this dress looking nice and adult should help.

I hope you enjoyed this post! Stay tuned for more in the next couple of weeks. Till then!