The Fashion Avenue series was clearly all about the fashions, which for the most part were sold separately. But there were 3 actual Fashion Avenue Barbies that were sold in the mid to late 1990's. All 3 of them were exclusives, to either a store or to a specific market. The first two wear the same fashion which was also available as a regular Fashion Avenue in the US. I never set out to collect the dolls so most of today's pics are from ebay.Zeller's exclusive Fashion Avenue Barbie, stock #15833- Zeller's was a Canadian department store and they sold this fun mod FA on a Barbie with the Superstar face sculpt (I think, someone can correct me if I have the sculpt wrong). The FA was sold separately in the US as part of the 1995 Boutique collection, stock #14363.
The fine print on the back of the box is in English and French which is typical of Canadian exclusives because of Canada having 2 national languages. The FA's pictured are all from the 1995-1996 collections sold in stores.
Japan exclusive Fashion Avenue Barbie, stock #62692- The same fashion is now on a Barbie with the Mackie face sculpt. The box writing is mainly in Japanese.
Close-up of that gorgeous Mackie face:
The back of the Japan box has the same picture as the Zeller's box but has 2 more FA fashions shown in inserts near the bottom:
1998 Kay Bee Special Edition Fashion Avenue Barbie, stock #20782- This was the only FA Barbie available in the US and she was exclusive to KB Toys. She's a gorgeous redhead with a Mackie face, one of my very favorite Barbies. I can remember buying several of these at local KB's because I loved the doll so much, and she has modeled many of the FA's I've shown over the years. The fashion she wears is unique, meaning it was never sold by itself as a Fashion Avenue fashion. It's a beautiful blue party dress. The pictures don't show that the silver in the dress print has some nice shine to it. I'm not a big fan of the matching "gloves"/mittens as they seem to make the whole fashion look kind of busy. A matching blue ribbon choker, black pumps and some paper invitations were also included. Here she is in her box:
The back of the box advertises FA's that were available around the same time:
And here is one of my dolls that I've dressed back in her original fashion. Note that her hair would have originally had the front section pulled up and back into a partial little ponytail. The elastic band disintegrated with time so her hair is a bit of an unruly mess which I've tried to tame down somewhat with brushing.
The paper accessories:
That concludes the reviews of all the Fashion Avenue fashions and dolls. Next week we'll finish up this whole years-long FA saga with a look at some FA ephemera.
