The Funna Wardrobe

What this wardrobe holds

I started keeping this page because the Funna catalogue is scattered across a dozen listings and I kept losing track of which princess dress came with a crown and which one did not. Everything here is the same brand, sorted into five shelves, with the sizes, the current price and the accessories spelled out on each card so nobody has to open six tabs to compare two dresses.

The heart of it is the princess dress: layered tulle over satin, a fitted bodice, and a box of small things — a wand, a crown, a ring, gloves, a plait — that children care about far more than adults expect. Funna sizes these from 2T to 8 years, which covers the whole stretch of years when dress-up play is the main event of an afternoon. Next to them sit the mermaid costumes, the mommy and me sets that come in a child size and a grown-up size from one listing, and then the women's shelf: princess gowns with capes and crowns, and the witches, pirates and hatters that come out every October.

How I would choose

Start with what the dress is for. A birthday where one good photograph matters wants a layered gown with a full skirt and the accessories included. An ordinary week of pretend play wants something lighter that can be pulled on alone and thrown in a cold wash afterwards. A school performance wants a colour that holds up under stage lighting, which is why I steer people towards the purple mermaid rather than the pink one for anything indoors.

Then think about the size. Funna's girls' dresses are cut generously at the shoulder with an elasticated back, so a dress bought slightly large is comfortable rather than sloppy and lasts two seasons instead of one. The women's gowns are more exact; the laced ones forgive a great deal and the fitted bodices forgive very little. Each card on this site lists every size that is actually in stock on the listing today, not the full size chart the brand once printed.

Why dress-up is worth the shelf space

A costume is a shortcut into a story. A child who puts on a gown does not simply look like a queen; she starts giving orders, holding court, deciding who is allowed into the kingdom. That is imagination doing real work, and it is the reason a dress that lives on a hook by the door gets ten times the wear of one folded in a box. The magical part is not the fabric. It is what a child does once she is wearing it.

Grown-ups get the same thing from it, which is the quiet argument for the mommy and me sets. Two people in matching mermaid dresses at a party are not wearing fancy dress; they are in on the same joke, and the photographs show it. I find the same is true of the women's Halloween shelf — the costumes that get worn again are the ones that feel like clothes with one strange element added, not the ones that feel like a disguise.

About the prices and the sizes on this site

Prices and stock here are read from the live listing and refreshed when I rebuild the page, so they are accurate on the day of the rebuild and drift afterwards. The size chips on each card show what the listing has in stock; a size that sells out disappears from the chip row on the next pass. If a price on a card and a price on the listing disagree, the listing is right and my page is stale, and I would like to know about it.