Dressing LEGO La Catrina was more complicated than it seems

The LEGO Ideas design team faced an unexpected fashion challenge when figuring out exactly how 21372 La Catrina should be dressed.

We’ve been revealing how the upcoming 21372 La Catrina came together this week, with in-depth insight from the LEGO Ideas design team. The upcoming model is based on a winning fan creation from yop1172 (aka José Miguel Medina Pérez), although achieving the final look of Día de los Muertos was more complicated than expected.

The LEGO Ideas design team recently spoke with fan media about 21372 La Catrina, with Brick Fanatics in attendance, revealing some of the unique hurdles that had to be overcome in order to achieve just the right appearance for the build.

“We had this idea for this structure of the different panels of the dress,” explained LEGO designer Jim Clayton, “and when you build it, you'll be able to see that each layer is flaring out a more than the last. So, it's slowly getting smaller as you go up, giving this ruffle shape.

“It was very hard to pack everything in there and also make it really strong, so you can pick her up. Obviously, you have the stand, but it's strong enough that you can hold it from the dress. I would say that was a good challenge, as I built it and wanted to make it strong enough so that you're not having to worry about it falling apart.”

It wasn’t just the structure of 21372 La Catrina that posed a challenge for the LEGO Ideas design team though, with figuring out which colours to use for the gown also resulting in some essential experimentation.

“Earlier ones we had more of the pink that was in Miguel's alternate version,” said Jim. “He posted a second one, so we had that, and then we also explored looking more at orange, like Miguel's dress.

“He told us about some of the reference he used from the clay statues from Capula, Mexico, and I looked at many different references from there. I tallied up what was the main colour, the accent colours, and the secondary accent colours, and found that black was one of, if not the main dress colour. That's where you got the pinks, the oranges, and the blues as the accent colours.

“So, it took a while to kind of settle on something that was really iconic for La Catrina, but also honouring all the different versions of her.”

21372 La Catrina will be arriving online and in stores on August 1, 2026 and can be pre-ordered right now. The LEGO Ideas set is priced at £109.99 in the UK, $139.99 in the US and €119.99 in Europe, and our full review of the model can be found here.

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