Young Fashionistas in the Making with FashionPlaytes – Giveaway (CLOSED)

I remember when I was a young girl… back when I had to walk uphill, both ways, in the snow, barefoot, backwards to school…I had no style (and very cold feet.) My favorite outfit was a faded old USC t-shirt and some awful yellow shorts. Thank goodness I grew out of that phase. Although, girls these days have something I didn’t have when I was young…Did you know that they can design their own clothes through a company called Fashion Playtes?

Fashion Playtes is a virtual design studio that allows girls to truly flex their design skills by creating and designing unique clothing items according to their own personal styles. Fashion Playtes has 9 different items that can be customized, from tops to skirts, and also allows you to design a matching headband and custom sack pack.

Since I’m not a young girl anymore (*sniff*), I asked my friend Star to help me out with the site and clothing design since she’s right in the age range for Fashion Playtes. So most of these comments will be coming from her, but may be “adultified” for the purpose of this post.

First up, the website – www.fashionplaytes.com – this is where all the “magic” happens. When you get to the site, to start designing, you click on the “Design Now” button and it will take you to a very user-friendly interface that will walk you through the design process step by step, which I will do for you as well.

1. First, you select the item that you’d like to design. Fashion Playtes offers a few different styles of both tops and bottoms to choose from. Star opted for a hoodie.
2. Next, you choose the size that you would like. Fashion Playtes has a useful chart that breaks down age, height, and weight to help you choose the correct size.
3. After clicking the “Next” button, you select the color that you would like. We had 5 solid colors and two nice patterns to choose from.
4. Now here’s where the real fun begins. Fashion Playtes has quite a few different options to jewel, ruffle, ribbon, layer, and rhinestone and clothing item. This is where we spent the bulk of the time designing, simply because there are so many options to choose from. You can even customize the clothing label to have a special design & the designers name.
5. When you’re done designing the outfit, you can save it to your collection so you can view it later. Star ended up designing two separate outfits that we flipped back and forth between.



6. Once you’re happy with your design, simply add it to your cart and ~2-3 weeks later, you have your brand new, customized clothing item delivered to your door. I placed my order on 10/26 and it was at my door on 11/14. Not too bad considering these are made to order.

I asked Star to give me her opinion on the Fashion Playtes design process. She thought that there was a good variety of clothing styles, but would like to see more pants and more colors. With that being said, though, she thought that other sites that have similar concepts didn’t have as much detailed information or as many options as Fashion Playtes has. One of the thing that stood out was the label customization, which she had a lot of fun with when trying to decide what to name her collection.

The final product is well constructed and is of good quality. The cotton is nice and thick.  It isn’t sheer or super thin like some shirts out there. The ruffles and the pocket were attached on without any extra or loose threads around the seams. On both the hoodie and the bag, the little add-ons were adhered solidly and didn’t look like they were going to peel off. I haven’t given these items to Star yet, since these seem like perfect X-mas presents, so I don’t have her comments yet, but they’d probably be something along the lines of “Oooh! I love it!” or maybe that’s just what I thought.

Fashion Playtes is a great way to let your daughters, nieces, and their friends have fun creating their own clothing. They recently began offering gift certificates as well, making Fashion Playtes a convenient and easy gift to give.

Fashion Playtes is generously offering a $10 discount off your first order just for What’s Cooking at DD readers! Simply use the code “DD10” when you check out and it will be deducted from your total. (FYI, that $10 savings is about the cost of the sackpack with a little applique on it.)

In addition, TWO of you can win a $50 Gift Certificate to Fashion Playtes in the WCatDD Fashion Playtes Giveaway!

The Prize:

Two winners will receive $50 gift codes to create their own Fashion Playtes clothing designs!

To Enter:

Make sure you follow the directions carefully. All giveaway entries should use the ENTRY FORM. You only need to fill out the ENTRY FORM once, unless you decide to additional earn extra entries at a later time. You can earn up to 18 entries into the WCatDD Fashion Playtes Giveaway by doing one, some or all of the following:

Ways to Earn Entries:

Make sure you use this ENTRY FORM for your entries to count!

1. THIS ENTRY IS REQUIRED FOR ALL OTHER ENTRIES TO BE VALID (+1): Visit the Fashion Playtes website and tell me what clothing item you would design.
2. Become a fan of the Fashion Playtes  Facebook Page (+2)
3. Follow Fashion Playtes on Twitter (+2)
4. Post this giveaway on your blog (+3)
5. Tweet about this giveaway using the “retweet” link at the top of this post or by tweeting “Girls can design their own clothing lines. Check out the @WCatDD Fashion Playtes Giveaway! http://bit.ly/3kRXAT” (+1)
6. Subscribe to WCatDD (+1)
7. Follow WCatDD on Twitter (+1)
8. Fan our WCatDD Facebook Page (+1)
9. Follow us on Google Friend Connect (+1)
10. Follow us using Network Blogs (+1)
11. Add the WCatDD button to Your Site (+2)
12. Vote for us in the Divine Caroline Love! This Site Awards (+2)

The Rules:

Two winners will be selected at random for this prize.

Giveaway ends at 11:59 PM EST, November 30, 2009.

Visit our Giveaway Rules page for general giveaway rules that also apply to this giveaway.

Disclaimer: No compensation was given for this review/giveaway. I did receive a gift certificate to create my own Fashion Playtes clothing item. This did not influence my opinions.