The first male fashion doll I am presenting is the latest release from Jason Wu's Fashion Royalty Cult Couture collection: High And Mighty Darius Reid. He is an African-American male doll, the third man to be added to the FR Homme Collection (the other two are Pierre De Vries and Francisco Leon). his story card is the first to be read only on-line - the one in the box does not have the usual text printed on it.



Darius has the face sculpt of an older Integrity play line male doll, Tariq. The body is the standard FR Homme body, tall and lithe, with articulation at the neck, chest, shoulders, elbows, wrists, hips and knees. FR Homme dolls still do not have articulated waists, but that might be due to the fact that it gives them a better looking "six pack"! Best part of the body, apart from the aforementioned abdomen, are the hands - they even have veins!



His face paint is done very well, he has a strong and firm look. His eyes are very well designed, probably the best made eyes in the FR Homme series up to now. He has no hair, sporting the shaven head look favoured by so many African American men. It also gives him versatility, because it means he can easily wear wigs. His skin colour is a dark chocolate brown, lighter than Nadja R but darker than Adele Makeda.



His wardrobe is exceptional for the most part. He is wearing a lovely coat, supposedly velvet (FR description) but in reality it feels like felt. It has "satin" lapels and it is very well tailored (lined too), with a false single button (it has a hook and eye to close). Under this, he has pinstripe flat front pants with vertical side pockets (but no belt, a major faux pas here), a vest from the same material, which is very well made too (the satin of the back is to die for) and the white shirt we have seen before on FR men - they could have given him a purple or fuchsia shirt, or even a copper coloured one, he would have looked more edgy.



The fun part are the accessories though. He has a fedora, a flocked thin plastic moulded hat with a "silver" chain in place of the classic ribbon. It is the worst part of the outfit and it looks unnaturally cheap compared to the rest of the ensemble. Given the success of FR in making extremely good and detailed accessories, this one seems neglected. There are sunglasses - these have the same lenses as other FR sunglasses but the arms are a whole different story: sculpted to look like entwined serpents, they give the edge this doll demands. The best FR sunglasses I have seen. Darius is wearing black socks and white sneakers, nothing special there.



His jewellery is very well executed: he sports a big "silver" shark tooth at the end of a chain and a lovely "stainless steel" watch that has a secure fastening and looks very good. It is easy to put on and does not look fragile at all, contrary to the one Pierre was wearing last year. The prototype doll had a golden watch on it, which had struck me as odd, considering the rest of the accessories had "silver" tones. Luckily they corrected it on the final product. I hope they improve the hat the same way next year. See the watch below up close:



Here you can check the hat, sunglasses and pendant:



And here are the shoes - they are plain with the ends of laces inside-makes them easier to put on:



Darius is very handsome and suave. He gives the FR ladies a run for their money. With the proper accessories and outfits, he could turn out to be one of the best and most sought after FR dolls. I cannot wait to see what Jason Wu has in store for him next.



Darius is a limited edition of 800 dolls worldwide.