As a child, Hameda Yeung gave up dressing her dolls when she discovered Nintendo. Now dolls are taking her away from being a 3D game artist and multimedia designer.  As Yeung’s doll fashion businesses Princess Tapi and  Luxour Academy have grown, her computer design work has become a part-time job. The doll fashion businesses Yeung has created and runs under the name mEda, are expanding with new items and her first collaborative project with Charles Stephan of Charles’ Creature Cabinet.

Barbie, Sindy and Jenny may have lost her, but Blythe and Pullips rekindled mEda’s love of dolls.  Dissapointment in the quality of clothing and accessories for these dolls led Yeung to begin creating her own fashions and jewelry. Princess Tapi was started two years ago, first as an on-line gallery for the clothing and accessories she had made.  During site construction, mEda decided to turn her website into an e-commerce site in part to learn how to set one up. The name ‘Tapi’ or  ‘Tapioca’, was the name of her cat, which unfortunately died of FIV.

Inevitably, mEda discovered Asian ball jointed dolls. The first doll that caught her attention wasElfdoll’s Alice Cherry Blossom, but she wasn’t able to buy one at the time. The first BJDs in her doll collection were a Pipos Heero cat and Lati Blue Clara. Now her doll collection includes  52 Pullips, 5 Blythes, 5 Dals, 10 Taeyangs, and 19 BJDs. “Some of my favourite doll companies are CCC, Iplehouse (especially the tanned line), Soom dolls (for their creative Monthly Dolls), and Fairyland.  I’m hoping to add Elfdoll Soah and more boys to my collection soon.” It wasn’t long before Princess Tapi and Luxor Academy began to carry BJD fashions. mEda explains “I expanded the collection to various BJD sizes as well as accessories. During the years of expanding and developing Princess Tapi, I have received a lot of special requests and decided to start accepting custom clothing commissions.  The amount of requests and custom clothing commissions grew rapidly during the last couple of months, and with the new collaboration with CCC as well as authorized dealers, I decided to split off in-stock items and customizable outfits into 2 different labels.”

All of the items carried by Princess Tapi and Luxour Academy are made in mEda’s  home studio in Toronto, Canada. Each of the two  clothing lines has a specific focus.  According to mEda, “Princess Tapi  focuses on OOAK and unique pieces that are produced in very limited quantities. I recently started offering an a la carte option so that customers can pick and choose the fabric, hardware, etc. to create their own customized items.  I also accept Custom Clothing Commissions that are outfits created from scratch, usually from the customer’s ideas/concepts or inspired by celebrity outfits. Due to my current joint projects as well as the orders from the two lines, Custom Clothing Commission spots are limited to a few open slots every month. I sometimes accept Custom Face-ups as well, but that usually depends on my current schedule. Luxour Academy is the ‘ready to wear’ line with sizes and a few colour choices to choose from. “  Luxor Academy items are now
being sold at Triskel Fanatasy Shop. “I am ecstatic to have Triskel Fantasy Shop be the first European retailer to bring this collection to the European market.  I am always looking for distributors to carry Luxour Academy items and would be interested in working with retailers from the United States as well as Asia.”

Luxor Academy currently is used primarily as a product showcase/gallery. mEda explains “The Luxour Academy website will always be a work in progress.  I will be adding more items to each of the sections as new designs are created for the line.(The site) contains information on the company, the available products, as well as links to where you can buy the items.  There will definitely be a Version 2.0 coming in the future with a live shop.  At that point I will decide whether to completely move all items over to the Luxour Academy website.”  Princess Tapi also exists as an eBay store and Etsy account. “The Ebay and Etsy stores were opened before the current “version” of the shop launched. Prior to the Ebay and Etsy stores I was selling my handmade outfits via forums.  The official website has the full selection of items available from Princess Tapi and Luxour Academy.  The Etsy store carries only in-stock Handmade clothing/accessories and the Ebay
store carries mostly wigs and shoes.  Since there are fees associated with Etsy and Ebay, the prices will be a little higher than items purchased at the official shop.”  Eventually mEda plans to close out the eBay store in favor of her online shop. “Customers will receive perks such as coupons, special customer appreciation sales, and coming soon…  POINTS and  exclusive editions when they purchase from the official shop!  I plan on continuing and adding more bonuses for customers that purchase through the official shop in the future.”

Recently a new Luxour Academy/Charles’Creature Cabinet project was launched when the doll company released Charles’ 14.4 cm tall  hippo doll Princess Kaba with additional outfits available designed by mEda.  The first outfit, Theodora, consists of a lolita dress and tiny pillbox hat.  The other outfit, Liliana, has a long frilly dress and a ’surprise accessory’. mEda originally met Charles through his Flickr site.  Since she was an admirer of the Alice Cherry Blossom dolls that he designed with Elfdoll’s Rainman, she began to correspond with him. ” Charles was looking for a Graphic/Web designer at the time and I responded to his post with a few of my designs. The next thing I knew I was designing the Alice Cherry Blossom Artbook (unfortunately it was never published). I later helped Charles establish Charles Creature Cabinet and am currently the Marketing and Foreign Exchange Manager for CCC. “  While they talked for a while about working together on
another joint project, both were too busy to collaborate on one until recently. “We had talked about designing and creating outfits for CCC for quite awhile, but there were so many things I needed to setup and establish for CCC (as well as Princess Tapi and starting Luxour Academy), that I just never had the time to start. The hard work really paid off and things are finally settling down and falling into place. CCC will be celebrating its first birthday next month and Charles and I both felt that it was time to start a new collaboration.  I really enjoyed designing and making the outfits for Charles’dolls because they have so much character and can really bring an outfit to life!  Princess Kaba was one of my favourite dolls from Charles’ collection and her grace and character really helped inspire me during the creative design process.”  Although Charles’Creature Cabinet dolls are all very small in scale, this did not daunt mEda. “I’ve been
working in small scale (1/6 fashion dolls) from the start, so it’s actually not too different creating outfits for CCC’s anthro line.  I love working in that size because the outfits turn out so small and adorable!  The only challenge in working in this size is bringing together the little details that I’d like to add to the outfit (lacing, etc).”

There are joint projects between the two artists that will be released in the near future.  According to mEda ” I am working on some more outfits for (Charles’) upcoming releases.  One of them is a default outfit from Princess Tapi for a cute anthro, and the other is a Luxour Academy Edition anthro doll with a special Limited outfit (available only with the Luxour Academy Edition).”  In the near future, mEda states ” I plan on working with Charles on some more joint and exclusive projects for CCC. She added, “I am still pretty new to the BJD customizing and fashion scene, so I am focused on presenting my customers with truly unique and stylized designs for their dolls.  I am continuing to look for more retailers/distributors in the US as well as Asia.” She also hopes to help other cats like her Tapioca. ” I hope to release some special edition items in the future with a portion of the proceeds donated to research and cures for FIV.”

Photos from top: LA Violette White, PT Custom Commission Porco Rosso

Princess Tapi
Luxour Academy
Gallery Album for mEda’s work

PT Kira

Lilyanna for Princess Kaba Charles' Creature Cabinet

PT Lolita Desires

LA Steampunk Pipos Cheshire Cats design concept

Concept for outfit painted on top of Pipos Photo