Monster High - I heart Fashion wave 2 - Scarah and Clawdeen

I heart fashion, or I love fashion.. whatever man.. I don't know! It's a heart, how do you pronounce a shape!?

I shall dub it "Hrrrrt"
So, I hrrrrt fashion wave 2! AWAY!

I've had Clawdeen for a while, I shipped her from the US but they at the time had no Scarahs. When these hit the UK, Scarah sold out stupid fast and then it was months.. and months.. and months of no restock. In fact, she still hasn't restocked online. Way to go tru, good to see you really making the most of your exclusives *eyeroll*
I lucked out and found this Scarah in my nearest store (which is like an hour away by bus). They only had Scarahs, no Clawdeen at all and from what I hear, this is common everywhere. Scarah is shipping in her own case, making Clawdeen now the hard to find one.
Go figure.

Anyway, Scarah's box is damaged because my toddler sat on it. Bah. 

The backs of the boxes have character art in a somewhat generic paper doll kinda style. Clawdeen looks oddly awkward to me here. Like.. her leg position and her hip/torso don't quite gel. Looks like someone chopped up several images and pasted them together.

Clawdeen's box as you can see is the US version, while Scarah's is the Euro version. This means more text in multiple languages and less actual words. While Clawdeen gets a whole in character blurb explaining how much she loves to shop etc, Scarah gets one line... repeated over.. and over.. in different languages.
THIS ladies and gentlemen, is what the euro diaries look like as well. Now you see why we're so pissed off when we get EU versions of this stuff in the UK. Damnit, we want complete content, it's sucky that we get shafted with abridged crap.

 

 

Let's look at Scarah first as she's the one that's selling like hotcakes.

She comes in an attractive green box with a few cardboard inserts. A dress maker's dummy/dress form thing, a table and a shelf. Also a picture behind the doll featuring her frankly rather freakish logo/symbol. It's a grinning mod face and it's freaking me out man.

As with the previous I Hrrrrt Fashion line, the dolls feature 3 full outfits and a few random accessories. 

Scarah's first outfit is this funky 60s inspired ensemble. White zip up boots, a white pleather jacket with a green belt and a pair of shorts an a cute graphic tee under.
It's a simple but effective look, a modern twist on retro fashion.

I actually had to look at several Scarah's in the store to find one with decent shorts though. The first one I picked out had iffy seams in the crotch region, meaning the shorts rode up higher on one side than the other. Wth?

I love these boots, I have no idea whether they're a recast, but they're fabulous. I'm a sucker for knee high boots on dolls.

Scarah also has 4 chunky square bracelets on one wrist and a small pink bracelet on the other.
her necklace is a recast, it's a sort of blobby effect that makes me think of science wheee. That's probably because it's Mad Science Lagoona's necklace but in black hahaha.

She has these great giant sunglasses that remind me of Tim Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory's Wonka (Now that was an awkward sentence).

Her hair is soft, fluffy and gel free. YAY! not sure what the heck is up with the style though, it's tied to one side and then loose and what? Eh.. whatever.

Her belt clasp is a skullette... she's skullette crazy this ghoul.

The jacket has one flaw. To take it off you have to snip a teeny little white thread holding the belt in place. Unfortunately, then it wont STAY DONE UP again. ARGHHHH. wth Mattel? The clasp is too loose to actually hold the ribbon, so her coat just slowly slips open like an unintentional striptease.

Under the coat is this cute pink graphic tee with skullettes in black and green. Shorts and that afformentioned pink bracelet you can't see under her long sleeves.

Scarah's second outfit is this saucy little number. A sparkly high collar dress and green wedge heels. She also has a simple white necklace.
It's a very basic look but i'm sure could be awesome with some mixing and matching of accessories.

Her final outfit is another little dress with printed tights underneath. The dress features a grey on black skullette motif on one side, a strip of pink, then what looks to me like safetypins and stripes. I like this dress, it's suitably devoid of any particular thematic while still having a pattern. It's not specific to ONE character, because it seems Spectra is yet to get a pattern identity beyond "Skullettes".
And everyone looks good in skulls.

She also has a white belt with an open faced skullette "buckle"

There's also a third pair of shoes, simple silver heels. But they and the green heels will NOT got on her feet if she's wearing the tights. Bit of an oversight for a line that's all about the mixing and matching don't you think?

Speaking of those tights, they're designed to look like mesh, printed green and black with occasional hidden skullettes. I love this subtle detail, it's adorable!

The tights are also very effective in conveying a fishnetty mesh look while being robust and easy to put on and take off. (these sorts of tights are apparently fashionable, frankly I think they're kinda dumb irl because they rely on you having the exact right skin tone and that rather limits your market.)

Now of course, the reason this Scarah is selling like hotcakes is because she's the first mass market release of the character. Previously the only way you could have a Scarah of your very own was to be super duper special lucky at SDCC or the after sale on Matty, or fork out stupid amounts of money for the limited edition exclusive. 

I got lucky ok?

SDCC Scarah has much softer makeup and a very mod sort of hairdo, which I love, while I Hrrrt Fashion comes with pink lips (not sure I like them, they're a bit jarring) and silver eyeshadow which is quite pretty.

I'm not sure if my eyes are messing with me, or these two actually have slightly differently shaped faces. I hrrrt fashion's jaw seems squarer to me, broader somehow but i'm not certain it's not an optical illusion caused by the bangs and lip shape... hmmm.

Have I mentioned how much I freaking love her blank white eyes? Oh yessss.

It's remarkably difficult to take a photo of two dolls when they refuse to stand and you only have two hands.

Still not sure about the faces being different or not. It's messing with my head man.

So, final thoughts on I hrrrt fashion Scarah? She's gorgeous and she comes with a LOT of very versitile, and more importantly, non character specific outfit pieces. The mix and match possibilities here are practically endless because so much is so blank or general in patterning and that's a really good thing. It means ANY doll can wear this without looking like they raided another's closet.
Her mod style is unique to the franchise as well, and I love love love retro styles so i'm pleased to see this.
The pink in all her outfits is minimal and attractively done, I love how much black and white she's sporting in all her looks.

Her hair is a little fluffy but it's sooo soft, I can't stop stroking it. Certainly an improvement over the gel nightmare that was her SDCC doll.

She has a few design problems. Her belt that refuses to stay closed and her shoes not going over her tights are a pretty major oversight for me. I mean come ON Mattel, what the hell? It's extremely frustrating to see such a great doll let down by a few badly implemented elements.
As a result, Scarah has to get only 8 stocking feet out of 10. She's great though, and for a first mass release of a character, you couldn't ask for better than a doll with three complete looks!

Oh, she also has a stand, but it won't clip over her coat. -_-