A Doll That Gives Toddlers a Taste for Finer Things

New York Times

23-03-2025

'With Love, Meghan,' the Netflix series starring and produced by Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, immerses viewers in her world of at-home luxury. But for the most part, it diligently avoids mentions of specific brands.
Certain episodes offer glimpses of brand-name items in Meghan's universe. In one, while describing the outfit she is wearing, Meghan names three labels (Loro Piana, Zara, Jenni Kayne) to telegraph a preference for mixing high and low. In a later episode, she identifies another product — a doll belonging to Lilibet, her 3-year-old daughter — that, by Meghan's description, comes across as squarely luxurious.
It has 'a little baguette and a little cheese,' Meghan says, 'and the name of the doll is Stella Al Fresco.' (Its full name, in fact, is Wee Baby Stella peach Al Fresco.)
These plush dolls, which are marketed for toddlers, are from a line called Love, Stella. They have a Cabbage Patch quality thanks to features like round faces and chubby arms. Stella dolls are very popular among customers of the Acorn Store, a toy store in Santa Monica, Calif., which is about 80 miles down the coast from where Meghan and Prince Harry live in Montecito.
As are other toys involving breads and cheeses.
'Baguette toys have been trending like crazy,' said Heather Hamilton, 53, who owns the store. 'It's rampant across Southern California: the baguette, the charcuterie, the cheese boards. Kids really like imitating life, and if this is what they're seeing on their parents' patio, then they just pretend play.'
Stella dolls, which start at around $20, take various forms: Some look like toddlers, others look like newborns and all come with pacifiers that magnetically attach to their mouths. The line also includes a variety of clothing and accessory sets, like an extravagant picnic collection that costs $35 and comes with a checkered blanket and snacks including a plush sandwich and watermelon wedge.
Rachel Sawatsky, 29, who has a 3-year-old son and a 7-month-old daughter, owns a Stella doll and several accessory sets. Ms. Sawatsky, a social media manager who lives outside Toronto, gravitated toward the toy partly because it is 'not too obnoxious-looking,' as she put it.
'They're just cuter than classic baby dolls,' she said, adding that she wasn't too surprised to learn that Meghan had a Stella doll. 'Oh yeah, of course Meghan likes it,' Ms. Sawatsky recalled thinking. 'It's just an elevated doll.'
Lindsey White, 34, who lives outside Chicago, also said the look of the toys was partly what led her to buy one for her son around the time of his second birthday. 'It seemed hip and cool, but still a baby doll,' said Ms. White, who has a part-time job doing marketing for local restaurants.
She added that her son, now 6, 'was always obsessed with babies' and that the Stella doll allowed him to pretend to play caretaker.
Gloria Pruett, a mother of 2-year-old and 5-month-old sons in Lawrence County, Tenn., said Stella products were often cited as toys that promote nurturing when she was searching online for dolls to buy for her eldest son when he was a baby. 'I did a lot of research,' Ms. Pruett, 25, said. 'A lot of videos that came up were about the Stella doll.'
The Love, Stella line is made by Manhattan Toy in Minneapolis, which was founded in 1978 by Francis Goldwyn, the grandson of Hollywood mogul Samuel Goldwyn. It is no longer manufacturing the Al Fresco doll, but some are still available for purchase. (At $49, it was one of the priciest.)
Amanda Molstad, Manhattan Toy's product marketing and brand manager, said the Al Fresco doll and its other Stella products are intentionally designed to reflect behaviors that children might have observed in their parents.
'Play is learning,' Ms. Molstad, 36, said. 'And this is where children are able to learn and develop their skills, by acting out what they see in reality, because they're watching their parents.'
Accessories like the plush pacifiers, cheeses and fruits are geared toward imitative play, she added. Toddlers can feed the dolls in the same way their parents feed them. (In her Netflix series, Meghan says multiple times that feeding people is her 'love language.')
Ms. Molstad characterized the Al Fresco doll as fitting into the type of aspirational lifestyle evangelized by Meghan in her show.
'She's in her own bubble and realm, but yet, she has this ability to be relevant for moms today,' Ms. Molstad said. 'She's created this perfect medium between relatable and also completely unattainable.'
One of the Love, Stella accessory sets, a $20 kit for 'travel adventures,' comes with flower-shaped sunglasses, a tiny passport and soft stamps that can be affixed to it. But instead of the names of faraway countries, the passport's stamps feature ordinary locations: my home, the market, grandma and grandpa's house. By casting routine excursions as an adventure, the stamps recall another ethos Meghan espouses in her show: elevating the everyday.