- 100 Years of Madame Alexander Dolls, beginning with Premiere Archived Message
Posted by Jackie_NJ
on February 27, 2023, 10:52 am
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I am going to talk about 100 Years of Madame Alexander, and the Madame Alexander Doll Club's mini Convention called Premiere. The MADC NJ Premiere has been situated in Ft. Lee, NJ, and the Doubletree Hotel has taken great care of us, for 27 years now. I have belonged to the doll club for 21 years, and I started going to Premieres in the first decade of the 2000s. There may be a revival of Premieres located in other areas, (the West Coast, the middle part of the US), as there once were, but for this post-Covid era, Premiere takes place in Ft. Lee, NJ, just east of the George Washington Bridge, across the Hudson River from New York State. I arrived home Sunday from Madame Alexander Doll Club Premiere, just 40 minutes north of me, although due to Northern New Jersey traffic, I always stay at the site, which is the Doubletree Hotel in Ft. Lee. Don't want to miss anything being stuck in traffic on the way there. 100 Years of Alexander Doll Company, this year of 2023, and we began the celebration with Premiere, a two day event, and the celebration will continue with the annual MADC Convention in Indiana in late June 2023 and the Fall Friendship luncheons. You need not be a member to attend a luncheon, so it's a good way to meet people from the Doll Club, and see if you like it. Premiere had a few unsold spaces, but the 100 Years of Madame Alexander Convention has been sold out for many months. The fall luncheons won't start booking until the end of summer, so they are wide open. There are about 17 locations of Fall Friendship Luncheons, all around the USA. The Premiere theme was Under the Sea, and the dolls are adorable! The souvenir doll is an 8" Wendy, "Call me Jellie", and she has a hat with tendrils that is a sight to behold! The breakout event for Cissette was another beauty, a titian haired "Pirate Lass" and the program was about Women Pirates from the 16th to about the 18th Centuries. Some badass ladies sailed the seas. I re-designed a Cissy and donated her to the Club, she was aqua, but she was named "Agua" and people could buy special helper tickets for her. She was very well received, did some good for the Club, and I drew the winner's name at the closing banquet. Pictures below. We had an actual Premiere of ADC dolls, an event which began long ago in conjunction with Toy Fair. We used to visit the factory when it was in Harlem, now there is only a small office in midtown, and most of the staff works remotely. The way Premiere is done, is that representatives from the Alexander Doll Company come to Ft. Lee with a sampling of new dolls from their playline and the Collectibles line, and the dolls are on display at the closing dinner banquet. For those Food Curious folks out there, we had rolls and salad, followed by an entree of filet mignon, mashed potatoes, gorgeous fresh vegetables, optional wine,(courtesy of ADC), and cheesecake for dessert. One thing about the Doubletree in Ft. Lee, Chef Angel is very talented. Did not matter which event I attended, ALL the food was fabulous. Yes, there are two TDF Cissette, a Regency Era CHristmas doll and one called The Gilded Age, like the HBO series, and the details of the prototype made me want them, and I don't collect the small dolls! Yes, there is a Cissy for the Centennial, and she will be sold exclusively through the ADC website. She is a white and gold dream of a doll. Pretty, genuinely pretty face and costume. The mini-Convention called Premiere usually coincides with Presidents Day/Week and begins on the Thursday night with an optional visit to a Broadway play. The group charters a bus, and we break into smaller groups and dine at local restaurants. My room mate Diane and I, went with the group headed to Carmine's, which is a family style Southern Italian oasis in the Times Square area, 3 blocks from the theatre where we saw "Six", a completely different take on the 6 wives of Henry VIII. Still digesting that theatrical experience, so I won't elaborate. Note, due to years of experience, we found that the bus for the theatre district must leave Ft. Lee at 3:15, even though most Broadway curtains are at 7:00 p.m. Leave at 4, and it might be two hours of traffic, so they go in to the City early. Roomie was coming in from Nashville, and we weren't at all sure she would get to Ft. Lee in time to make the bus, in which case she would have had to go directly to the theater district and meet up with us, schlepping her suitcase, but she rolled in with, uh, 14 minutes to spare, so we made a quick trip to the room to drop off her suitcase, and got on the bus in time. Whew! Premiere can boast of a great turnout, lots of break out events to attend, seminars, workshops, and a fabulous Sales Room. we all needed a weekend away, and the consensus among all I talked to was we had a great one! I had pretty close to a sell out at my Sales Table, and my annual volunteer task is to Chair the Sales Room, except for last year, during which time the Chemotherapy made me a toxic presence and I had to stay home. I am fine now, and I LOVED being back. I missed my little winter interlude and I was damn glad to be there. Ask me any questions you would like about Premiere and any Madame Alexander events. You can find lots of pictures of Premiere on line.   |
- Linda in Cincy March 4, 2023, 12:26 pm