The Mardi Gras Fashions were designed differently from the typical Hasbro process. While the Girls’ Soft (plush/fabric) Department was designing fashions all the time, a fashion assortment wasn’t necessary worked on until the Girls’ Hard (plastic) Department requested that specific assortment. With the Mardi Gras Fashions, Carleigh Hoff made the Mardi Gras masks for the dolls. Management really like them and wanted her to design fashions to match. Since the masks came first, she specifically designed the entire assortment herself. Usually multiple in-house designers and/or freelance designers worked on the Jem fashion assortments, and would submit fashions for each assortment.

Hasbro sent pictures of the fashions to Sunbow and labeled them "Video Costumes." That seems like a way for Hasbro to connect them to the 1987 "Video Madness" Playsets. It’s hard to know what Hasbro was going to specifically name the assortment and how they would market the assortment – if it could have been the “Mardi Gras Fashions,” “Mardi Gras Costumes,” “Mardi Gras Video Costumes,” or “Video Costumes – Mardi Gras,” etc. It’s also hard to know if this would have been an assortment of 8, as there are 8 that showed up in the cartoon. Or the assortment might have been a 6 fashion assortment like the 1987 fashions -- all new 1987 fashions assortments had 6 fashions and 6 new fashions were added the assortments that were re-released. Only 6 of the 8 fashions seem to have been sent to Sunbow to write into the series. Strangely enough, Shana's costume is missing from the images sent to Sunbow, when it is the plot device of the episode. Somehow the storyboard artist had reference and used all 8 of the fashions. Stormer’s costume was the only fashion not designed by Carleigh Hoff.

6 of the 8
"Mardi Gras Fashions"

photos labeled
"Video Costumes"

As seen on Kimber
of the Holograms
5205-50 - "Mardi Gras"

As seen on Shana
of the Holograms
5205-50 - "Mardi Gras"

Rapture of the Stingers purchases this gown
5205-62 - "That Houdini Magic"

As seen on Roxy
of the Misfits
5205-50 - "Mardi Gras"

Rapture of the Stingers purchases this gown
5205-62 - "That Houdini Magic"

As seen on Jetta
of the Misfits
5205-50 - "Mardi Gras"

Rapture of the Stingers leaves this gown on rack
5205-62 - "That Houdini Magic"

The International Fashions seem like a perfect assortment for the Jem brand, especially since the 1988 inbox promotion was going to be themed "Glitter’n Gold World Tour." But Marketing thought International Fashions made it look like Hasbro was running out of ideas. The impression was that it would be like a TV show that goes on an European vacation or Hawaiian vacation to try to boost ratings. Unless Marketing changed their mind a later date, it would seem this assortment was never going to have an official release. I would like to think Market re-thought their cancelation of this collection when they gave Jem the green light in July 1987, “Jem Lives,” to fill out the 1988 line. Since new development stopped between March through July. That did not give the design department a lot of time to create brand new assortment for the 1988 lines. 

It seems like the line got pretty far along in the Girls’ Soft department, since there was Judith Nelson Presentation Illustrations created. Almost everything we know about the collection is from Carleigh Hoff, but in the Sunbow pictures of the Mardi Gras Fashion/Video Costumes a full set of those International Fashions seem to be on the top shelf, but they are cut off. So we can’t see the full fashions. But like the Mardi Gras Fashion/Video Costumes, there seems to be 8 International Fashions grouped together on that top shelf.

This illustration was on an older version of pranceatron.com, so credit is Krista's. I'm only including it here to give a more complete idea of this assortment.

Fashion designer unknown.

This illistrasion may have been created by the designer of the fashion.

The bottom of the fashion can be seen on the top shelf, with the rest of the Internatinal Fashions.

Like the International Fashions, at least one of the Leather & Lace Fashions made it far enough in the design process to have a Judith Nelson Presentation Illustration created.  Only one illustration/fashions has surfaced, but Carleigh Hoff sketched out a few other ideas. There is no way of knowing how much further her other concepts made it past the initial brainstorming sketches.