Monica’s Neo-Victorian Wardrobe: A Ballgown


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A fantasy ballgown with a neo-victorian flare for a printable paper doll from paperthinpersonas.com.

Happy Friday!

It seems only proper to close out the week of steampunky paper doll goodness with a ballgown, don’t you think? I mean, after all, it is the most formal of the formal. Ballgowns were just below Court Dress on the formal scale and Court Dress was pretty much as formal as it got.

Plus Court Dress came with crazy rules like it had to have a train and at one point, it had to have panniers and… I could go on.

Since it amuses me (and that’s all that matters), let’s continue this week’s tradition of 19th century style explanations of Monica’s steampunk or neo-victorian outfits, here’s my ballgown description:

An elegant ball or evening dress suitable for a young matron or unmarried lady in pale leaf green trimmed in lavender. The bodice is two tones of green with a lavender side lacing and the skirt is cut in the mermaid silhouette with curved frills of satin flaring elegantly to the floor in pale blue, lavender and green. 

One of the great things about all the outfits this week is that they are in the same color scheme, so if you wanted too, you can mix and match say the bodice of yesterday’s dinner dress with today’s skirt for a whole different look. Or I think Monday’s walking suit jacket would look dynamite with yesterday’s skirt. And those are just the first two ideas that came to me.

Quick reminder: Black and white versions can be downloaded at the top of the post. 🙂

Monica’s Neo-Victorian Wardrobe

I do want to address one other thing. I was asked my a few people (one comment, one email) if it would be possible on Friday’s to combine all the outfits of the week into one page for ease of printing. The answer is No, for two reasons. Reason 1: I actually started this format to get away from having to do layout work which is super time consuming.

Reason 2: (And this is the cool reason) These pieces wouldn’t fit on one page. Back in the old system, I would have draw two skirts and then four tops, two shoes and then a smattering of hats and other accessories. Over the course of the week we’ve had four skirts, four tops, five hats, two pairs of shoes, two parasols, one walking stick and a bag. That’s 15 pieces!

You are actually getting MORE paper doll content this way AND its less time consuming for me. Everyone wins!

By the way, I want to add that both people who asked these questions were super nice about it and I don’t mind at all getting questions and thoughts from you all. Please keep them coming.

So, on that note, questions? Comments? Thoughts? Let me know.

15 thoughts on “Monica’s Neo-Victorian Wardrobe: A Ballgown”

  1. That makes sense! I wasn’t thinking about that, just that it’d be easier to print one or two pages than five. 🙂

    This week’s content was lovely, and the color scheme is one of my favorites. As a matter of fact, I’ll probably be using some of the outfits as inspiration for RP outfit descriptions. 🙂

    Thank you so much for sharing your passion and talent with us.

  2. I have a question. With the current layout, the dolls are going to print out as a different size than when you laid everything out on one sheet. Do you know of an easy way to print them out as the same size as the ones you did layout for?

    • Actually, as long as you print them from the PDF and DO NOT fit to page, you should be fine. The PDF files are all saved to be 8 by 10 inches, the same size as the previous images. In my three test pages with three different printers, they all came out the proper size. However, if you previously printed from the PNG files, there is no way to control the auto-resizing on those images.

      So, I recommend trying it out and then letting me know if there’s any problems.

  3. I just put this weeks outfits together as a png file the same size as the old style so they should be compatible. It took two pages to fit all the lovely outfits on:) I posted the images on the PaperThinPersonas Patreon page available for everybody to see so you can go there to print them. Go to posts by Patreons from the main page and they should be there whether you’re a Patreon or not. I don’t want to make any promises but if this is helpful I might do this most weeks as I’ll probably be making the printable files for myself anyway and it just takes a little longer to upload it.

  4. I LOOOOOOOVE this doll! Do you think u could make one like the girl from Barbies Starlight Adventure? She has sorta warrior\leather look for clothes~no dresses allowed! She also has a hoverboard. Her hair would be blond and styled in a side braid, with a smaller braid going around her head and tucked under the side braid. please m,ake her Marisole Monday or Maeghan. Thnks!

  5. I like to keep the PDF files so I combined them using Adobe Acrobat. It’s still five pages, but all in one file.

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