Babyshop, Walt Disney announce winner of ‘Disney Design a Dress’ contest

Babyshop and The Walt Disney Company have announced 8-year-old Madinah resident Wasan Abdullah Shoker as the winner of the 2017 edition of “Disney Princess Design a Dress” competition, with Shoker seeing her design brought to life by Saudi fashion designer Razan Alazzouni.

With their parents’ help, little girls across the GCC aged 5-12 years were invited to submit creative sketches of their dream princess dress for themselves and their favorite Disney princess doll. Following on from its phenomenal success in the last season, this year the competition received more than 1,400 designs.

Each submission was evaluated for creativity, use of color and originality of design by a panel of judges including Alazzouni (who has dressed Hollywood stars such as Elizabeth Banks and Emma Roberts), and a panel from Babyshop and Disney, and Shoker’s sketch was selected as the winner.

Following the announcement of the winner at a gala ceremony, held at Park Hyatt Hotel, Jeddah, Alazzouni unveiled her “real-life” magnificent version of the winning dress, which she created based on Shoker’s design — featuring bursts of greens, blues and silver.

Alazzouni said: “I’m fortunate to enjoy many positive moments in my career, such as praise from revered magazines or seeing my clothes on women I admire. However, the joy of being able to see hundreds of children’s imaginations coming to life through their beautifully sketched dream princess dresses — and then being given the opportunity to take one little girl’s dream princess dress and bring it to life — has to be one of my most thrilling career moments to date and I’m honored to be part of a competition which nurtures artistic talent and creativity.”

Jayant Khosla, CEO, Landmark Arabia, said: “I think every girl should have at least one day in their lives when they feel amazed from head to toe and Wasan had this dream come true at the grand celebrations today. It was amazing to see her eyes just twinkle at the dress prepared by the guest designer — Razan Alazzouni. Through the Disney Design a Dress competition, we have successfully tapped into the creative talent pool existing within the GCC region and the entries we received all demonstrate incredible potential among our young customers.”