The Disney Designer Collection

Over the last several weeks, the Disney Store has been releasing a series of limited edition dolls called the Disney Designer Collection. The dolls feature six Disney princess characters, not dressed in their traditional outfits, but in clothing inspired by the fashion of the years in which their movies were released. Released one a week, the collection featured Snow White from 1937, Cinderella from 1950, Jasmine from 1992, Ariel from 1989, Tiana from 2009, and Belle from 1991. The dolls sold out within minutes of their release online, and my wife and I were lucky enough to purchase three of them. They are gorgeous, so I thought I would share photos of them online.

(Because the packaging is as fantastic as the dolls, we haven’t actually removed them from their boxes yet. Plus, we don’t want to damage them. So apologies for the reflection of my ugly mug in a lot of these photos.)

The first to be released was Snow White, on October 6. We were able to purchase this one without too much stress, if memory serves. The doll arrived a week or so later, and is beautiful.

Each doll comes in a box illustrated with art by Disney artist Steven Thompson on the back and the side.

The front of the box also features the limitation number of each doll. As you can see, Snow White was limited to 4100.

The front panels of the box swing open to display the doll against a background of silhouetted photographers of the period, as if the characters were on the red carpet at the premiere of the movie.

The facial sculpts, hair, and painting are all gorgeous. 

My wife was particularly impressed with the makeup on the dolls. Disney had worked with Colourpop to produce a line of makeup tying in with these dolls. It really excited her to see that the colors of the makeup on the dolls matched the makeup she had purchased for herself.

Disney paid a lot of attention to the production of the dresses, which feature details stitched on, not painted or printed. The dresses are reminiscent of the costumes worn by the characters in the movies, but expressed through the fashion of the years the movies were released.

Even the accessories were highly detailed!

The boxes also included some extra features, including a certificate of authenticity and reproductions of the original posters for the movies, tickets to the premiere, and an invitation to the premiere.

Having had success with Snow White, we tried for Cinderella the next week. We had to jump through some online hoops to order it—the link the Disney Store had emailed out didn’t quite get us there—but I was finally able to get one ordered before it sold out. Cinderella was limited to 4400.

I particularly like the see-through purse that has been designed for her.

The third week, Jasmine was released. My wife particularly wanted her, because her outfit was so gorgeous. Unfortunately, we had the same problems with actually finding the doll on the website. By the time Jasmine showed up on the Designer Collection page, she was sold out. This was particularly frustrating and disappointing, because we had been refreshing the page constantly starting at midnight. This left a pretty bitter taste in our mouths.

The four and fifth weeks saw the releases of Ariel and Tiana. Those were two that my wife wasn’t particularly interested in, and after not being able to get Jasmine, we decided to not even try.

The last doll my wife wanted to purchase was Belle. While still stinging from the Jasmine situation, we decided to give it a shot. 

Once again, the link sent by Disney didn’t take us directly to the doll, and by the time the doll was added to the Disney Designer Collection page, it was sold out. However, by searching the category of dolls by release date, my wife was able to see when Belle became available, and snagged one before she sold out. (She, like Ariel, was limited to 4500.) 

One of my favorite features on the Belle doll is her Beast-shaped handbag.

After seeing how gorgeous the three dolls we purchased are, we feel even sadder that we weren’t able to get Jasmine. (We were never really interested in getting Tiana or Ariel, and even less so after the stress of the Jasmine experience.) I think I wouldn’t feel so irritated by the whole thing if the Disney Store hadn’t made it so hard to find the dolls on the web site in the first place. I also think it’s somewhat questionable that the two non-white characters, Tiana and Jasmine, have the lowest numbers of dolls produced out of the entire set. Given how quickly each one sold out, Disney could have easily produced an equal number of each character.

Having said that, we got three of the four dolls that we really wanted, and as you can see from the photos, they look great. We aren’t huge limited edition doll collectors; we really only have these, and a handful of others. And, honestly, we’ve seen a range of quality in the dolls that we do own; our Mulan and Moana dolls are definitely worth the money, but the Anna and Elsa limited edition dolls we own are not quite as impressive. This collection, however, is one we are happy to own. Now we just need to find a good way to display them!