Dolly Dress Discussion: Bratz Kidz rodeo outfit

Family life at the Moon house continues to be mildly insane.  Grandma has improved a little but will have to stay in the nursing home for a couple of weeks upon her discharge from the hospital.  Unsurprisingly she doesn't want to go, so Mama is trying to get power of attorney to make her go.  I understand why Grandma doesn't want to go; the food is bland and the people there tend to treat all the seniors like they're senile (not all of them are).  But we do not have the training or the time to keep Grandma going at home, so what choice do we have?  Long story short, it's been a busy week and a busy month.  I got a three-day weekend for the Fourth, but instead of resting like I WANTED to do, I've made multiple trips back and forth to the hospital.  Yesterday we thought Grandma was being released.  We were told "no, she's not" at 11:30, went to lunch, came back around 12:30 and we're told "yes, she's going today", waited around until 4:30, and finally got told for sure that "no, she's not."  So now it's a national holiday and we still don't know when she'll be turned loose.  It has not been a good weekend.

In the meantime I'll try to keep y'all satisfied with something about Bratz.  Yep, another Bratz post...or rather, a post about one of their spin-off lines.  When I was a teenager there were the Bratz, there were Bratz Babyz, and there were Bratz Kidz, which were a lot like Moxie Girlz in appearance, but stylish like the Bratz.  I have one Bratz Kidz, Yasmin.

She looks enough like Sophina (my lone Moxie Girlz) that the two could be sisters.

Sophina is also moderately hard to dress so she may be making another appearance here in the future, but for now the spotlight is on Yasmin.  Yasmin came to me secondhand and naked, and due to her small body she's hard to dress.  I was able to fit some of Vi and Va's clothes to her, but Vi and Va got discontinued long ago so that possibility is out.  And since I like matching a certain brand of clothes to the corresponding brand of doll, I decided to sniff out some Bratz Kidz clothes for Yasmin.  eBay came through as they often do, with this.

Apparently there was more than one wave of clothes; I can't think of any other reason for the rodeo label and theme.  I don't recall this line being particularly long-lived, but then again it was shortly before I took a hiatus from doll collecting so I'm not the best person to ask.

I find it interesting that the front of the box says "Yasmin," and the box art clearly shows Yasmin, but the back of the box announces that the outfit can fit all Bratz Girlz.

I also found something interesting on the interior of the box:  look at this!

Is it just me, or does that look hauntingly like a skullette???  If this outfit were a Mattel product the presence of a skullette would make some sense...but this is NOT a Mattel product!  Maybe it's just some sort of coincidence...but then again, maybe it's not!

Alrighty, let's take a closer look at this outfit.

It looks more boho than rodeo.  The illustration on the package shows Yasmin wearing a cowboy hat in addition to the rest of the outfit, but no cowboy hat came with this set.  No great loss.  Let's start at the top (LOL, pun).

This is a little crop top, made out of a pink, white, and brown print.  It closes in the front with a tab of Velcro as opposed to the back, and this is in turn concealed with a little faux tie.

To my complete surprise this top is only minimally hemmed.  The sleeves are not hemmed at all, in fact!  See the loose threads?

This likely will fall apart if I fool around with it too much.  That's a bit of a shock since MGA Entertainment usually took such care to make quality products.  Maybe the skirt will be better.

Visually the skirt is the most eye-catching piece.  It's a peasant skirt, one of my favorite types of clothing.  The top is ringed with this pleather belt that doesn't detach.

Despite looking elaborate, this skirt is relatively simple.  The base material is robin's egg blue, and the paisley strips are sewn on.  The back of the waist fastens with Velcro, which is occasionally problematic because the Velcro can snag on the inset panties.

The skirt isn't hemmed either.

What on Earth was MGA thinking???  I don't even detect any fray-stop!

Hopefully the purse will be better!  Yep, there's a purse in tow!  It's a nice little purse too, not terribly unlike the purses that the earliest Bratz dolls carried.

The material feels like some sort of pleather, but it's definitely fabric.  The whole purse is made out of this stuff, and it has a nice, fuzzy texture.  The front has gold polka dots painted on, and one side is decorated with a gold bead and a little tassel.  The purse opens and can hold some small things, though right now it's just stuffed with a small wad of tissue paper.

Like the larger Bratz, the Kidz wore shoe-feet instead of shoes on permanently attached feet.  By a good stroke of luck in got shoes with "skin" that matches Yasmin's vinyl; sometimes this matching was a problem with these dolls.  The shoes themselves are silver mary-Jane's with brown soles and pink molded bows.

The outfit looks appropriate enough for a child doll, but as always, let's see how it looks on the doll.

Not too bad.  The top and the skirt don't meet at the waist, so some of Yasmin's painted underthings show.

Too bad that belt doesn't detach, because it would've done a good job of covering that paint.  I guess I can always pretend that it's a little white camisole; girls of all ages wear those under tops nowadays.  This outfit as a whole looks good on Yasmin, but I did run into a couple of problems.  First, the unhemmed sleeves are already starting to ravel, and every time I put Yasmin's arms through them they fray a little more.  Getting the purse on is also a little tricky, at least when it's put on the way I want it on.  I have to thread the doll's legs and one arm through that strap, and the material has no stretch so I have to be patient and careful.  In short, this is a cute little outfit, but I'm at a complete loss for why some of those hems were left raw.  I can understand not wanting to stitch a hem on such delicate material, but some sort of fray-stop would've been nice.  I'll have to do that myself in the near future.  Otherwise I'm glad to have this outfit aboard, as it fits Yasmin better than that Vi and Va outfit did.

Happy Independence Day,
RagingMoon1987