Kaya Doll

Included with Kaya are a dress, belt, moccasins, 2 hair shells, 2 hair ties and a book, I got her from American Girl for Christmas 2006. I love Kaya, she has a sweet expression with warm dark brown eyes and I really like her closed mouth smile. Her hair is very long and fine and is a beautiful black with dark brown highlights. The braids snag very easily if they get near velcro, or really if they even catch a glimpse of something with velcro and are impossible to make look new again because they are cut straight at the ends in the factory. I think her hair would have looked better if they had just cut the wig straight across and then braided it. The ends of my Kaya's hair have gotten very dry and frizzy and are nearly impossible to get a brush through, I have been reduced nearly to tears trying to rebraid her hair. Especially disappointing as I always mist her hair before brushing and only brush with the AG brush, very carefully starting at the ends. Kaya's dress is a soft synthetic? suede with fringe cut along the edges and fringe with blue beads across the front of the bodice and skirt; there are plastic clamshell beads along the yoke and a smudge on the front to represent the deer tail that the Nez Perce left on dresses for decoration. The beads on the yoke seem a bit easy to damage, mine was missing some straight out of the box, but that was easy enough to fix and I haven't had any problems with them since. There are two versions of the meet dress, one with straight out shoulders that looks pretty bad, and one with curved shoulders that looks good. The belt is brown pleather that velcros in the back with some of the dress material sewn on the front of it to look like lacing. The moccasins are basic little booties with wrap-around ties made of the same material as the dress and I don't think I will ever work up the courage to take them off of Kaya. The shell medallions for her braids are made with genuine shell (And I half expected it to be made of plastic. Which they apparently now are.) on brown elastic, they are beautiful and fairly easy to take on and off. The ties at the ends of her braids are beige and look to be made of the same material as her Adorned Deerskin Dress. Also included was the current version of Meet Kaya which I already owned so it has remained in the doll box, but I love that it is included. A-