Top row: Suzette Morgan, Amanda Fairchild, Alexandra Fairchild Ford, and Paris Williams. Bottom row: Jadde Lee, Sofia Cruz, and Sienna Evans.Photo: Madame Alexander
Couture doll maker Beatrice Alexander Behrman is long gone, but her cheeky spirit lives on at her Harlem doll factory, Madame Alexander. We were recently notified of additions to the company’s collection of so-called fashion-editor dolls, pictured above, which prompted us to check in with some real-life fashion editors for a reality check. After the jump, Linda Wells, editor-in-chief of Allure, Eva Hughes, editor-in-chief of Vogue Latin America, and Cleo Glyde, style director of Marie Claire present their reviews.
Do real fashion editors look like or dress like these dolls to go to work?
LW: Imagine the crush in the Condé Nast elevators! The headaches KCD would have seating fashion shows! It’s an Aaron Spelling–Nolan Miller fantasy. Reality is so much drearier than this.
EH: When I was growing up, this is how I thought a fashion editor would dress to go to work. Although it is not what I wear to work or what a modern fashion editor wears, it is very representative of what a Latin American woman wants to look like: elegant, sophisticated, classy.
CG: This is the deliciously retro George Cukor version — Park Avenue does Seventh Avenue by way of Le Cirque. These gals are declaring their next fashion epiphany over Grey Goose martinis, not hunching over a Mac.
So when would fashion editors dress like this?
LW: At the apocalypse? If Scarlett O’Hara was editor-at-large? I do sense a little Karl Lagerfeld around the collar and bolo tie of Alexandra (Alex) Fairchild Ford, spawn of John Fairchild and Eileen Ford. Sofia Cruz looks as if she’s double booked for the evening: a service at Frank E. Campbell followed by the CFDA awards. Sienna Evans is angling to be photographed by Bill Cunningham at the Conservancy Garden lunch.
EH: The dolls are perfect, but not to go to work. I cannot imagine the first doll reviewing layouts in that dress!
CG: When urban vampire black and the trapeze line is out and the Wasp waist revolution returns or someone invents a time machine or they date a throwback billionaire who gives them an open-ended couture account. It’s high camp, not realism. Could you imagine a Madame Alexander in an avant-garde Japanese sweater with three sleeves?
What do you think of these dolls? Would you buy one?
LW: These dolls are pure inspiration for all of us who live in Prada and Balenciaga. I’m ordering in bulk.
CG: I had one for years, but my guests kept putting her in obscene poses. If I was going to John Waters’s Super Bowl party, I would buy one in a heartbeat. —Susan Avery
