Madame Alexander is a American company based in New York, established in 1923.
The company is named after its founder Beatrice Alexander, a dollmaker who founded her company at first in a one-room studio, later expanding to a storefront later in the 1920s. By the mid-30s, Madame Alexander Doll Company had become a pioneer in American doll manufacturing, listed as one of the country’s top three dollmakers. Though the company’s origins were in porcelain and cloth dolls, in 1947 they would begin manufacturing hard plastic dolls, moving to vinyl in the 1960s, which the majority of Madame Alexander dolls sold today are made of.
The company was notable for their licensed dolls – in fact, they produced the first doll based on a licensed character, Gone with the Wind’s Scarlett O’Hara, in 1939. Dolls of O’Hara would continue to be produced over the years by Madame Alexander, as well as dolls based on characters from Little Women, Alice in Wonderland and Heidi. They also produced dolls based on real people, such as the Dionne quintuplets and Queen Elizabeth II. Beatrice Alexander herself sold the company in 1988, before her passing in 1990; the company would later be sold to Kahn Lucas in 2012.
Nowadays, Madame Alexander continues to produce baby dolls, fashion dolls and dolls specifically aimed at collectors, including recreations of their classic lines such as Cissy and Wendy. They have also collaborated with Sonja Hartmann and Isaac Mizrahi on doll collections in recent years, as well as brands such as Marvel and Disney.
List of Doll Lines Made by Madame Alexander
