Are Andrea from LEGO Friends and Tiana the Disney Princess related?

The 2021 LEGO set Andrea's Family House 41449 is notable for several reasons. The main one is that for the first time ever, a non-white family has gotten a home and currently it's the only set that contains four Medium Nougat dolls (and Stephanie). However, here I'll only take a closer look at the mother Donna. Because she's wearing a Yellowish Green outfit that's eerily similar to the one Tiana's famous for. Does that mean that they are related? Or even the same person?

Andrea's Family From the LEGO Set 41449: Andrea's Family House
Andrea, Donna, Liz and Martin

Of course not. LEGO characters aren't color coding their relationships to each other. Otherwise Andrea and Liz would have to wear Yellowish Green too. And they clearly don't. So that's settled.

But since we're already here, we might as well take a deeper look at Donna's outfit and how it fits in with the rest of the minidoll wardrobe.

Donna and Tiana in Their Original Form and With the Torsos Switched
Minidoll Donna and Tiana in their original form and with the torsos switched

Let's get the obvious mixes out of the way first. Tiana's torso and Donna's skirt create a great summery outfit that I wouldn't hesitate to use as a modern variation of Tiana's dress. Unfortunately, that one example is also where the amazing combos stop. The best we can hope for from now on is good.

Looking at the other Donna-Tiana clothes combo, you can see what I mean. While the combination isn't horrible, it's far from great. The Yellowish Green is clearly a match, but everything else isn't. The Sand Green - Bright Light Yellow - Silver medley of the skirt just doesn't go well with the torso. The styles are not that different and I could have ignored the differences if the secondary colors wouldn't clash that much. Such a shame.

Maybe we'll have more luck matching the clothes to the ones of other minidoll characters?

Mixing Donna's Clothes With Other Minidoll Parts 1
Trying hard to find parts that will mix-and-match with Donna's clothes

In my search, I first turned to long skirts. I dismissed all of the lavender and blue ones for hopefully obvious reasons and out of the rest I liked the two green skirts the most. Again, they are not a perfect match for the torso, but they can do in a pinch.

I found it easier to match Donna's skirt to other torso pieces. I think that's because of the skirt's simplicity. The legs piece is Yellowish Green and Gold just like the torso, but it lacks the Dark Green lines and a noticeable style. So, even if the Yellowish Green doesn't really go well with Magenta, the outfit can get a pass because the golden details bring it together.

Mixing Donna's Clothes With Other Minidoll Parts 2
Trying even harder to find parts that will mix-and-match with Donna's clothes - I don't think Andrea's likely to borrow her mother's skirt any time soon

By the time I had Donna try on half of my minidoll clothes stash, I figured out what the big problem was. Yellowish Green is a very light color that goes well only with other light colors and some darker ones. And Medium Nougat dolls, up until now, came mostly in bright outfits. Therefore, it's no wonder I wasn't able to find many aesthetically pleasing combos.

At some point, I was even desperate enough to put a nail sticker onto Ariel's green mermaid tail in hopes the gold would do some magic on the outfit. It didn't.

The pairing I find most successful is Donna's skirt and an old Bright Light Yellow LEGO Friends torso. It's almost perfect. The torso is just missing a few golden swirls that I may or may not be preparing to paint on right now.

I feel it's safe to say that Donna's outfit doesn't fit in well with the rest of the minidoll clothes repertoire. And I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. Yellowish Green is a rare color in the dolls' wardrobe and it's hard to match with other colors. But that shouldn't stop LEGO from producing more of it. If they only made shirts and skirts that easily match the ones they already produced, the Medium Nougat dolls would be in a similar boat the Nougat dolls are in. They only get to wear Bright Light Yellow, Dark Pink and Dark Azure.

So I hope this is a sign that in the not-so-distant future the minidolls will have (almost) all LEGO colors at their disposal while deciding what to wear that day.

 

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