RESTYLE ICONS: The Shrieking Sixties!

Let's hear it for the only ghoul who broke the SDCC/ILF curse!

And if you don't know what I mean, it's this: Scarah Screams was the only Monster High character who debuted as an San Diego Comic-Con collector exclusive to receive any, let alone multiple, dolls after her debut mass-market release in the I Love Fashion line! The other ghouls who made it past SDCC only got the single mass release. 

But despite enjoying a higher amount of releases and doll variety, Scarah just never did it for me as-is. She was a character with a fun visual identity, but a weak association with her monster type. Down to her name, it seemed like they really weren't that invested in or committed to her banshee theme...but that's probably because she wasn't designed as a banshee. Scarah wasn't initially intended to be a doll character at all-- she was just a "backgrounder" in the animated webisodes-- a generic monster character model filling the cartoon-equivalent role of a film extra. As such, Scarah started off as just a greenish sixties ghoul with blank eyes, and when Mattel moved her to doll status, they had to make the decision of what monster type she could be with that design, and settled on "banshee"...but didn't do a lot of visual design work to bump her past her generic but solid aesthetic identity and further into that newly-established concept. I wouldn't be surprised if "Scarah" was her shorthand nickname from her backgrounder days, too, since it sounds like an oddly generic horror pun for any doll character in the line. It's not a name that connotes banshees, screaming, prophecy, or Ireland at all, and pretty much all MH characters have monster-specific first and last names. "Scaerin O'Teary" or something like it would be probably come across as wildly stereotypical and I don't know if her name should have gone that far, but it'd be more related to her banshee identity...and G1 wasn't one to be super graceful about culture in most cases. It probably would have passed at that time. I mean, the Scottish girl was Lorna McNessie, for crying out loud.

Since I found pretty much no outside doll pieces that fit the motif of screaming mouths or psychic eyes, I was unable to find ways to further Scarah's banshee theme in this project, so this is just going to be a mod icon expansion. And that's far from a bad thing.

I'd previously owned Ghoul Fair Scarah in my original collection. 

Genuine soap suds and green cloth not included.

I liked the character and the visual novelty of her scary blank eyes, but Ghoul Fair was a release I only really bought because it was how the character was easiest available at that time. I didn't like the unworkably short length of her hair or the green streak in it, and the sudsy car-wash theme was too specific for the doll to represent the character on an everyday level. 

And within my new collection, I ordered a semi-complete I Love Fashion Scarah for parts in my alien project, Marcia.

Since I was using so many of this doll's pieces for Marcia, and because this Scarah had prominent yellowing on her forehead, I didn't entertain the idea of working with her as a Scarah in my collection, so I relegated her to parts, and only used one of her arms and hands before getting rid of the rest. I was impressed with the volume of her hair, though.

So now, struck with the desire to make myself an ultimate Scarah doll, I definitely needed to go and get a Scarah. But also, what was I going to dress her in?

Well, there was one piece of clothing the Essential Scarah absolutely needed to have...because it's great and because it's her literal only ever piece directly themed on banshees.

This was the dress from her Student Disembodied Council doll--and it was pretty brilliantly done. The dress was her classic green tone with pop-art comic renditions of screaming female faces as a print pattern! 

Mattel stock photo of Student Disembodied Council Scarah.

Since the piece was so brilliant and the only thing made for her to directly invoke her theme, I knew the perfect Scarah design needed to have it.

But I didn't really think the doll wearing it would be my ideal base.

One thing that really disappointed me about Scarah's mass-market dolls was the total lack of the bangs her limited signature release came with. I feel like the bangs were a strong element of her sixties theming and if any of her mass-release dolls had been rooted with them, it would lend more retro authenticity and open up more hairstyle options that connoted the era she dresses like. Instead, her mass releases were mostly side-parted, and in the case of her Student Disembodied doll, not parted at all. While her Student Disembodied doll had my favorite faceup of the Scarahs in the mass market, I deliberately chose to get another ILF copy (oh yeah, I wished I'd just kept the older one) because her hair volume and her side-parted rooting would allow me to reshape her hair into bangs and get a voluminous sixties style in the way I wanted to. SD Scarah's unparted hair rooting wouldn't allow me to tidily pull hair forward to turn into convincing bangs, and I was concerned her rooting wouldn't give me enough hair to work with. Since the aspect of her faceup that was most important to me was the lip color, I knew that could easily be replicated on the ILF doll. 

I also admit I was trying to vindicate myself a little, because after the time period of the Marcia project, during which Scarah's sunglasses were only found on super-pricey complete copies or really expensive alone, now it felt like every incomplete $20 Scarah had the shades, and I was even seeing offers for the shades alone that weren't nearly as greedy as the price I begrudgingly paid! Annoying for sure, but now that I was actually in the market for a second Scarah base doll...might as well grab a copy with the glasses! And there is someone else I think they'll go very well with in the future, so it'll be genuinely useful to have them. 

Scarah arrived. She had her green dress, her split dress, her tights, her shades, and one of her silver shoes.

I realize in retrospect that I should have been concerned that Scarah was displayed in the listing only with glasses on. That's a big red flag, folks, and yep--turns out, her eyes are notably wonky. Her right eye slipped off the sculpt a little during printing and is too low on her face, and looks distorted and larger because of it. Call it hubris, perhaps, (we'll see) but I'm reasonably confident that I'll be able to wipe this eye off and repaint it pretty cleanly in better alignment with the other eye. I'm sure I can make her bare face more presentable than this, at least.

Her head has yellowed, but it's not as bad as the previous Scarah looked, and I can try to treat it. I have enough yellowed doll pieces at this point to take time out and de-yellow them all. Scarah is a rare MH doll without a unique skintone, since her color is identical (and if not, it's seriously not enough to be notable) to G1 Frankie's. The two dolls have such distinct visual identities that it's not too easy to notice, though.

The hair is a situation of its own. 

It's Scarah's signature black, which is shockingly specific to her dolls. In a world full of goth monsters, it's interesting to me that the mainline had only Scarah getting assigned a simple all-black head of hair with no highlights or streaks of color. Every other mainline character with a black base hair color has something else with it--pink for Draculaura, yellow for Jackson, blue for Robecca, purple for the Headmistress, orange and purple for Casta, etc. It definitely works beautifully on Scarah with the color being black alone, though, so there probably wasn't a better character for this unusual distinction. 

But the color of the hair is one thing. The shape? On this copy? WOW.

ILF Scarah's hair is meant to be pretty thick, about waist-length, and wavy with a side part to her right and a mini-ponytail also on the right. The previous copy I owned in the photo above shows that. But this copy has gone some serious places with her hair.

There were no hair ties reshaping this head of hair, but maybe some kind of product got in and dried out at some point because it's so vertical! The hair seems very dry and extremely puffed-up, and it utterly defied gravity when combed--to an honestly impressive degree! There also seemed to be some incorrectly sparse rooting where the part should be, with gaps of hair in that area. Hm.

This hair shaping is objectively awesome, but it's not for Scarah.

The previous Scarah's hair was much more normal. This doll is a great visual to prove the hair volume on ILF Scarah, though. I feel confident I'll get a style I want from this.

Then Scarah's SD dress arrived. It's simple, but truly, there's no word for it but "iconic". 

There's such a stylish audacity to wearing screaming faces all over your clothes, and I kind of like Scarah taking that ownership as a bringer of (and possible experiencer of) a lot of fear. Banshees are known for weeping as a portent of death, so I've always imagined they'd be emotionally very exhausted by their tragic psychic powers. Having a ghoul who can work with the faces of terror, though, feels almost like bold reclamation--she's owning the pain she's privy to and maybe she's gotten strong enough to make it other people's problem! 

And maybe it's not that deep. Maybe screaming face patterns are just hilariously inappropriate and awesome as couture!

I also like how the faces blur together and get broken apart by each other with the way the pattern works. It's super eerie!

I wiped Scarah's right eye off, then put this project aside for a while until I got some peroxide for treating the yellowed plastic on several dolls I had now that needed it, including Scarah. When I did,  took Scarah for a brief yellowing treatment, and I'm probably going to have to put her back in again later, but I was getting antsy and I wanted to make some progress, so I took her down to get a new eye and some new lipstick. 

I think the eye I repainted onto her looks passable, but certainly not perfect. The eyeshadow color match is off (my rendition is darker) and the lashes and proportions were tricky, but Scarah's eyes are sculpted with high definition, so it wasn't hard to fill the space in correctly. It's definitely a better look now that the eyes are aligned and sat properly on the sculpt. While I had thought of making her lips medium green like SD Scarah, I tried out a lighter bright lime color, something she didn't have on her real releases, and I liked it. 

I then took her hair for reshaping.

For the style (and for this whole post, really), I was inspired by the character of Sandie in the 2021 psychological horror film Last Night in Soho. It's a film largely about deromanticizing the past, framed with a present-day student's psychic visions of the sixties era she idolizes which turn into intrusive and horrible nightmares uncovering the dark underbelly of the glitz and glamor. Sandie is the glamorous confident singer the visions focus upon, who finds herself increasingly demoralized and endangered in the pursuit of her dream. 

Sandie in Last Night in Soho, played by Anya Taylor-Joy.

Student Eloise, captivated and then unnerved by the visions of Sandie's life, soon finds herself at the risk of being mentally undone when a vision of Sandie's stabbing starts to bring the ghosts ever closer to Eloise in the present day. I really liked the way Sandie was iconically styled in the film to encapsulate the sixties nostalgia the film unwinds with the reality checks of the dark side, and by the end of the film, Sandie turns into a haunting tragic figure and her glitz wears very differently upon her. I figured a psychic sixties ghoul whose monster type is defined by having visions of death would be very apt to take visual cues from Soho! 

I was directly influenced by Sandie, but I might also have been subconsciously influenced by the black-haired, blue-skinned, green-dressed go-go girls in the Florence+the Machine video for "Dog Days are Over". 

These dancers could almost be Scarah's sisters. 

 I'd already gathered what I wanted for Scarah's bangs into a binder clip, so I let that down and boiled it into shape. After cutting the front down into bangs, they needed a few more boils in different positions to lie adequately flat against her forehead in an even shape. Then I pulled some top hair into a ponytail, and tied that to a line of hair underneath before pulling the lower hair through the second band so the top hair would be puffed out and stay in place. And I'm so so pleased with the result!!!

It looks worse from the side and back, but I'll take it, because this visual is incredible. She's a whole new ghoul!

These are the same physical doll!

I honestly feel like I rescued this poor doll. This isn't just a restyle, this is a treatment. Scarah's whole outlook on unlife has improved with her new eye and tidied hair!

For the rest of the clothing, I resolved to let Scarah and Marcia share a few clothing pieces. Marcia had two viable complete display looks-- "casual party alien", and the more complex "full undercover spy".

So I figured if I wanted the coat and boots and shades on Scarah, Marcia could easily and glamorously be displayed in her simpler look while Scarah was using them. There was no need to seek out second copies of each costume piece, and having only one of them had the added benefit of ensuring there wouldn't be any visual monotony on the shelf. If I can't display both ghouls with those pieces, then I can't create a redundant display. The only piece I'm allowing both to have in their stock simultaneously is the sparkly green dress--and that's something I got two of by happenstance. The second shades I got are something I'm thinking of for another character, so I'll see if Scarah needs to share on those or not.

Here's a little playing around now that Scarah's a banshee fit to walk about town!

First, I think the trench coat and glasses look so much better on her with the new hair, face, and dress. Compare:

ILF Scarah's default "showstopper" look.

My remix of that look- more retro, fancy, and eerie green.

God, that's mod.

I don't much like the glasses on her face, however.

This feels very "middle-aged, rich, and demanding" to me,
and that is not good for her.

The shades are staying on her forehead if she's using 'em.

Scarah looks pretty good in the green cocktail dress. It's perfect for showing off those sixties dance moves!

The articulation of these dolls is, and has always been, everything.

She's a superstar. But she's not complete. Because I'm passionate enough about her aesthetic, Scarah's getting the same multi-wardrobe RESTYLE ICON treatment as Operetta-- a format that I expect to repeat for more characters alongside simpler one-outfit restyles for others. Here, it's a little ironic because Scarah's getting the ILF-restyle treatment...using her actual ILF doll that didn't do it for me! 

I knew from this point that Scarah needed at least one more core outfit, and probably some accessories for polish.

For the third core outfit, I really struggled to find ideas. I wanted something lime-toned for Scarah to add variety and go with her lips, and after lots of searching and trying to find outside brands' doll clothes that could fit Scarah, I finally checked back in home territory and saw the literal only piece of clothing from MH that would be good--Gilda Goldstag's lime tank top. So I got a set of Gilda's clothing (top, pants, boots) for that piece. To pair with the top, I ordered G3 Frankie's Ghoul Spirit five-pack skirt, which popped up and *haha* screamed "Scarah" among the listings for MH skirts I saw. Being a black piece with a lime stripe, and pleated, it felt very retro and perfect for Scarah. With the lime tank, it seemed like the skirt could make a substitute look to closely evoke the signature SDCC outfit. 

I also ordered some grey hoop earrings from some doll (I doubt it was MH) and Scarah's ILF vinyl belt to dress out her costumes some more.

Here's some of those pieces. Gilda's pants were still in the package when I took this photo, but they're not in Scarah's stock and neither are the brown boots. I also ordered a pair of Roller Maze Ghoulia's green sunglasses. 

I knew Scarah's ears weren't pierced, but I noticed she also had no sculpted guide marks for piercings, and reflecting on it, it strikes me that Scarah's never had earrings on her dolls. I wondered if perhaps this was because she recycled a CAM face sculpt, since those weren't meant to wear earrings and never had guide marks on them, but I'd never heard that Scarah's sculpt was first used on someone else--indeed, the fact that her prototype had a Frankie base head indicates pretty clearly that Scarah's face was sculpted for Scarah. Maybe Mattel just decided ahead of time that she wasn't ever gonna wear earrings and didn't include marks on the sculpt, or just left them out since the signature doll wasn't going to have them and they weren't sure they'd make future dolls for her? Odd. 

Here's Scarah with the unmodified cloth pieces put on. On any other character with any other fashion sense, this would be far too basic, but on Scarah, I think this can count as complete.

The belt came with pink stains on it, which I had seen in the listing and figured I could clean up with nail polish remover, but this turned out not to be the case.  My bigger issue was the belt was too loose around her waist, and I wanted it to be tidy at the top of her skirt when this outfit was on. The worst of the staining was in the section of the belt I chose to cut off to shorten it, anyway, so it wasn't a problem and the rest could be covered with a little paint.

With the skirt, I was disappointed but not very surprised to see that the cut was too wide around Scarah's waist. G3 Frankie is obviously a more filled-out person than Scarah since the G3 doll bodies are so much less skinny, so the skirt being too big was to be expected. I think I can make it work, though.

To make this costume more functional, I took Frankie's skirt and played around with a new piece of hook velcro to attack to the loop piece. I cut the hook velcro from the remnants of the Witch CAM dress I cut the top off of to give my Witch a two-tiered skirt. I put the piece farther right on the skirt than the original piece so the skirt would pull closed toghter, andI cut out the original section of hook velcro so the skirt closed tidier without fabric getting in the way. It now sits tighter and higher on Scarah's waist with the new velcro glued on. I also shortened the belt. I had to work with both in conjunction to test out the fit together, and fortunately got the skirt tight enough so I could fit the resized belt over the top edge so it sat okay on her waist. The waist of the skirt is thick, so it's not gorgeous, but the belt can sit right where I want it to and that's good. I also pierced Scarah's ears with a potter's needle and widened the holes a little with an X-Acto blade to keep them open for her earrings. Here's the full look.

I think this came out really well. With the hair and costume together, plus the lips, this feels like a worthy "substitute-basic" look for the scarce signature doll, striking very similar notes while being distinct enough. It feels very similar to the "second signature" or "first basic" looks of the kind that showed up for the returning characters in the School's Out and New Scaremester doll lines. Those looks serve as another go at synthesizing the character's everyday style and provide a new design that's worth buying for those who had the original, but nonetheless serves as a good consolation and substitute for the original look if you may not have been able to get it. Signature vibes aside, it's also just good to have something for Scarah that's a little less showy and more school-ready. I love formal looks, but basic looks are important to me, too.

As with the other shades, I don't like the look as much when they're off the forehead and on her face, but here, I think opacity would improve the visual.

Since I felt that way, I took some sandpaper to the shades to make them more frosted and opaque. I think this helps the sixties-caricature look. 

And now I felt free to play around with the parts I had. I didn't get a purse for Scarah because I didn't know what would really work, nor did I find it so important for her. If I find a purse at some point, I'll update this post. 

I think the casual outfit looks good with the coat and green glasses.

Not so much with the white ones and boots, though. She still looks rich and unpleasant with them on.

The white belt works well with the scream dress and the shades and hoops go well with it, too.

This dress works pretty well with the green ribbon belt from the coat, too--the belt actually works better here than with the coat!

And since even my ribbon swap didn't make the belt work with the coat, I figured I'd try the vinyl belt instead. It actually can thread through the belt loops on the coat for full authenticity, but I only did it for this photo. It's enough of a hassle to do and I worry enough about breaking the belt loops that I resolved thereafter to just clip it around her waist and not thread it in. Since the coat loses green from the belt, I put more in with the green shades and I think the belt/glasses swap is nice.

It looks good without the earrings or shades, too.

The sparkle dress looks nice with the hoops, belt, boots, and green shades on...

...but the scream dress transforms this look into a campy fabulous comic-book villain! I love it!

Fellow SDCC alum Wydowna would love to cast her for
the Power Ghouls series!

I'm pleased with the display options Scarah has gained. Her basic look is strong, and she has multiple permutations that look nice with her coat. 

Here's Scarah fanging out with her fellow sixties ghouls.

And while I wasn't so sold on their relationship before, I thought it was only right to give Billy and Scarah a second chance now that I had gotten both RESTYLED to my liking. Enjoy this silent musical montage scored (lyrically) to a rewritten form of a song Last Night in Soho stuck deep into my mind. 

You're my world, you're every life I warn
You're my world, you're every death I mourn

Other eyes see love just in the now
But these whites see futures, and futures how!

As the coffins close on days gone by
Our story reaches far on high

With your hand unseen in mine
I feel a power so divine

You're my world, you are my day and night
You're my world, you are my heart's first fright

And if they're lies, these futures I see
Then it's the end of my world for me

Well, I think I'm supportive of the relationship now! I had to leave them embracing on the shelf like that; they were too sweet to separate!

This is the final assortment of stock I ended up with for Scarah. Unlike with Operetta, there were no pieces I entered for consideration and then removed by the end due to not liking them for her.

The list is as follows:

• ILF Scarah base doll with heavy hair restyle, eye repaint to correct wonkiness, and new lip color
• ILF Scarah trench coat (jointly shared with Marcia's stock)
• ILF Scarah trench coat belt with replaced ribbon (jointly shared with Marcia's stock)
• ILF Scarah sunglasses (may be jointly shared with Marcia's stock if I give this pair to a future project)
• ILF Scarah sparkly halter dress
• ILF Scarah thigh-high boots (jointly shared with Marcia's stock)
• ILF Scarah silver heels
• ILF Scarah white vinyl belt (shortened by me)
• Student Disembodied Council Scarah dress
• Gilda Goldstag lime top
• Skultimate Roller Maze Ghoulia shades (frosted by me)
• Ghoul Spirit G3 Frankie skirt (modified to have a tighter fit for a G1 body)
• Silver hoop earrings of unknown origin

In this assortment, permutation is heightened by the two pairs of shades and two belts, since two of Scarah's base outfits are single pieces, but I find this assortment to compare pretty fairly to the one I created for Operetta. While I was really starved for pieces to directly invoke a banshee theme, I think two pairs of sunglasses was a fun idea for a character with psychic blank eyes, so I did kind of reach toward it...maybe just a little.

These are my favorite looks with this doll:

So there she is! While I remain frustrated by the lack of banshee focus offered to her designs, and my inability to find pieces to address that, I think Scarah's become a much nicer doll with these pieces. I found some looks for her that are fun and retro, assembled a style that subs in well for her rare signature doll, and I think my exploration proves that Scarah was very strong with just green tones. Pink was a mistake for her. I think the most work was done by the hair restyle to give her bangs and a sixties bouffant, but I'm also proud of myself for fixing her eye wonk with a whole new repainted eye! I don't think that's something I could pull off other characters who have more detailed or less sharply-sculpted eyes, but it worked here! Scarah's a ghoul I treasure now.