Last week, I posted Ruffles and Dragons, a paper doll gown that Chinese motifs inspired. After I finished drawing that paper doll, I became fascinated with the idea of doing a totally different feeling dress with the same silhouette of the overdress and a different under dress. So, I ended up with this foxglove princess paper doll.
Stained glass inspired this princess paper doll’s gown. My mother makes beautiful stained glass and I was thinking of stained glass lamps, especially the way the leading on stained glass highlights and breaks things into shapes.
I drew the foxglove, because I really love foxglove flowers. It’s one of the few plants that grows super well in Southeast Alaska where I grew up. Also, as a kid, I thought it was cool how poisonous it is while being so pretty looking. I was trying to stretch a little. I also thought the shape would fit will into the panels of the overdress. So, while it wasn’t really a well planned project, that’s how I ended up with a foxglove princess paper doll.
The underdress I had originally planned to pair with the dragon overdress, but I didn’t think the ribbons really fit in with the dragons. That was when I came up with the idea of the spirals that I used on that dress. So, for this dress, I was thinking about white victorian gowns. Ruching details decorate the sides of the bodice.
I’m really excited about how this gown turned out. It’s been fun to explore new themes and experiment with different influences—stained glass, nature, and princess dresses. While the process wasn’t entirely planned, that’s okay! I think sometimes things are fun as little experiments. As always, feel free to share your thoughts or suggestions for future designs — I’d love to hear what inspires you.
I recently realized I had forgotten to renew my subscription to Paper Doll Review magazine. So, I hopped over to Paper Doll Review and while I was there I decided to pick up a few new paper doll books. I mean, I was there anyway right?
Since both of these are historical paper doll books, I thought I would group them together in one blog post. I did get one other paper doll book, but that one I’ll save for another post.
If you’re thinking… Rachel, are you just writing up a post about paper doll books to justify that fact that you bought them? Why yes, yes I am. But also because I really respect the work that goes into putting these books together and I want to celebrate that.
So without further delay…
A Timeline of Fashion by Tom Tierney
Let’s start with a few of the basic details. A Timeline of Fashion is in the usual Paper Doll Review book format- one book, eight pages. The book is larger than letter size, but I didn’t measure it. It’s got a lovely blue border. As always, the paper used by Paper Doll Review feels like butter.
The dolls are printed on the same weight stock as the clothing. If I was going to cut up and play with this, I think that would bug me a little. That’s just because I grew up with Dover paper doll books which were printed on gloss cardstock all the way through. So, that’s just a little “Rachel has a bias about this” thing.
There’s eight time periods covered in A Timeline of Fashion: Ancient Crete, Medieval (specifically the 1400s), Italian Renaissance (specifically Venice), Tudor, Regency, Antebellum (1860s), the Early 1900s (Gibson Girl era) and the 1930s. If that list feels a little random. It is a little random. I love that this set jumps from 1400 BCE to 1400 CE, like a 3000 year division is totally a reasonable step in a fashion timeline.
I digress.
One thing that really struck me as I was looking through A Timeline of Fashion which I found particularly enchanting was the faces of the dolls. Every doll feels very unique and based on what little I know about the beauty standards of the eras, each one feels like it is attempting to embody them. I loved that.
I also loved the care that clearly went into selecting the borders of each plate. Each border felt very appropriate to the time period and colors of the paper doll and her fashion. All in all, a lovely book I’m very happy I have added to my collection.
Ellen’s Elegant Fashion Plate Paper Doll by Patti Fertel
Patti Fertel’s Ellen’s Elegant Fashion Plate Paper Doll is really unusual. She specializes in adapting fashion plates into paper dolls. How cool is that? (Also I met her in Indiana at the Paper Doll Convention and she’s a delightful person.)
Each dress is based on an illustration from 1864 appearing in Demorest’s Illustrated Monthly magazine. So a little history to start us off – Ellen Louise Demorest nee Curtis invented the tissue paper pattern and, along with her husband, started a magazine to promote the patterns. Demorest’s Illustrated Monthly Magazine and Mme. Demorest’s Mirror of Fashions had very wide circulation in the United States in the 1860s. Not only are the dresses coming from those fashion plates, but the magazine would describe the colors, so each dress is also colored matching those suggestions. These would have been black and white, I assume, so Fertel colored them.
What a fun project. I love it.
The book has one doll and ten dresses. The doll’s profile pose really shows off the shape of mid-1860s skirts where the fullness was moving towards the back of the skirt. In about 6ish years, this would become a bustle, but fashion wasn’t there quite yet in 1864. The shading on the doll resembles the lines used to shade engravings, which are what the dresses are adapted from. Also, look at her tiny feet! Very 19th century.
What really struck me, as I flipped through the book, was how much the care was taken to select each dress. You see a fun cross section of women’s fashions from the 1860s from formal to casual wear and ending, of course, in a wedding gown.
As someone who loves fashion plates, I just find the idea of adapting them in this way really enchanting. As always, the attention to detail Paper Doll Review puts into all their books is really apparent in this one. The frames are beautiful and each one reflects the colors of the gowns. It’s such a beautiful book.
Victorian magazines refer to children cutting up newspapers and other publications to make paper dolls. So, there’s something really fun about the idea of using fashion plates in this way. It feels like a throw back to something a child might have done in the 1860s and I love that.
If you want to grab your own copies of either of these beautiful paper doll books, you can do that from Paper Doll Review. I highly recommend both A Timeline of Fashion by Tom Tierney and Ellen’s Elegant Fashion Plate Paper Doll by Patti Fertel. They’re great books and I’m super happy to have added them to my collection.
I confess that I’ve been struggling to focus on anything paper doll related this last few days. Had I been on the ball, I would have pre-scheduled things, but I didn’t. Eh. The world keeps turning, so here we are.
Moving on from that, today’s paper doll coloring page is my first Asian paper doll for the Cut and Color Couture series. Chinese clothing inspired the motifs on the dress and the over dress. I don’t like attaching ethnicity to my paper dolls, but describing her as a paper doll with an epicanthic fold on her eyes is probably not going to play nice with the search engines. (And like it or not, a certain amount of playing nice with Search Engines is how I have to roll.)
I originally designed this paper doll’s dress as an experiment in layering two pieces over each other. Back when I was a kid, I really love layered bid skirted dresses. I used to buy this one sticker paper doll over and over again called the Storybook Princess paper doll. It was only 1.50 in those days. It is a sticker paper doll book (which I was delighted to find out you can still buy it.) The doll had tops and skirts you could put together to make princess gowns. It’s a great paper doll.
In honor of that love of princess gowns, I designed my own storybook princess paper doll version. The spiral motifs on both the dress and the overdress are somewhat based on the motifs you see on 19th century Chinese clothing. This Han women’s jacket, this sleeveless jacket, or this Manchu woman’s outer gown all have spiral designs on them. It’s a very loose connection, but that’s what was inspiring me.
The dragons were originally going to be butterflies, but I draw a lot of butterflies. So, I thought dragons would be a bit more of a change of pace. I don’t love the design I ended up with, because it feels a little too aggressive. This doesn’t really reflect that you see with dragons as decorative motifs on actual Chinese pieces.
Dragons show up on a lot as Chinese decorative motifs, you can see some here from the Jin Dynasty or this one from a roof tile or these on a dragon robe. My limited understanding is that Dragon robes, also known as gunlongpao, were worn by Chinese emperors. To count as a dragon, it has to have five claws. My dragons only have four claws, which I think means they are not imperial dragons. (I think? I ended up down a whole four-clawed vs five-clawed dragon rabbit hole and I still don’t totally know that difference in how they were used. I do know one had four and one had five claws. That’s all I got.)
Anyway, I digress.
This is the first of two of these designs, because I was having a lot of fun with that overdress. The second version is more floral. That might be up next week.
When I was a child, my grandmother always sent me a holiday card for Halloween and usually it was a paper doll card. This is why I always try to do a halloween paper doll.
Generally, when I think of gothic designs, I think of Morticia Addams from the movies. (Too young to have been a child of the TV show I’m afraid) and she’s a very mermaid skirts sort of design. However, I don’t see why mermaid skirts should get to have all the fun, so I went regency for this one.
All in all, I think the paper doll’s hair is a bit 1920s and her dresses are regency and her border is very much art nuevo. All in all, what time period is this?
No idea, but I think it looks neat!
I hope you have a lovely safe and happy Halloween. Enjoy the paper dolls! I’ll be passing out candy and eating chili.
I have no clue where to start when talking about today’s paper doll. I rarely give up on paper dolls (semi-finished projects not withstanding, that’s using a loss of interest, not frustration), but this fantasy princess night blooming paper doll came close. Twice.
To start with, there were serious layout issues. Confession: I don’t plan my layouts while I’m drawing my paper dolls.
(I had a lovely chat with at a pervious paper doll event and got advice that planning layouts while penciling is a much easier way to get around layout issues. This was such brilliant advice! And then I absolutely failed in all ways imaginable to actually follow through on the advice in anyway what-so-ever. Anyway, I should do it that way and I totally don’t. This is entirely a “me” problem.)
So, anyhow, when it came time to do the layout, I realized that none of these paper doll pieces were going to fit on the page! The dresses were too big. The wig/crown was weirdly sized. The extra bodice… anyway, I wracked my brain to sort out how to make this all happen. It was miserable. It took seven tries.
In the end, my solution was to go right up to the edge of my layout, because I work on an 8 by 10.5 inch canvas and surely no one needs more than a 1/4 inch margin on the page, right? Right… I got it done.
So, yay! Time to color. That would be easy, right? Wrong.
It started well. I found this beautiful color scheme from Sarah Renae Clark. When I saw it, I thought “What a perfect color scheme. It’s dark, but also kind of fun and unlike the colors I usually use.” But halfway through coloring, I thought it looked so awful I nearly threw up my hands and abandoned the entire thing. I came so close to just saying- Welp, this one was a dud.
Anyway, yesterday, I knew I didn’t have anything to post to the blog for this week and I said, “Just color it. Even if you hate it at the end, at least it will be done and you can never look at it again.”
I set a timer (I work well under the pressure of a timer) and I pushed through.
And you know what?
I absolutely love it. The gold and yellow I think goes beautiful with the black and pink. I really think it feels “night” but doesn’t feel gothic at all. I wanted night, but whimsy. Night, but also floral.
So, yes, this paper doll gave me fits. And yes, I nearly gave up, but here I am and I am so happy with how it came out.
Around the same time I was working on my tennis paper doll, I found myself thinking- I should draw some work out clothing for the Ensemble Electica paper dolls. Mostly, I was thinking this, because I hadn’t yet and who doesn’t want to draw paper doll leggings? (Probably plenty of people, but they don’t run a paper doll website.)
Personally, my favorite workout is yoga. I love how I feel after I do yoga. So, I included a yoga mat and the kind of clothing I would wear to do yoga if I was the sort of person who had dedicated yoga outfits. Aspirational yoga attire. My actual yoga attire is leggings and an oversized t-shirt with a walrus on it from the Indianapolis zoo, because the walrus is really cute and I like walrus.
So, this isn’t really a yoga paper doll, as much as a sporty fashion paper doll. Maybe she’s old school and going to step aerobics. (I actually also kinda love step aerobics.) Maybe she’s just putting on cute workout clothing to go out and buy a bagel. Who can say?
The dress was an extra piece from my tennis paper doll that I thought I would use here, as it wouldn’t fit on the tennis paper doll as I was doing the layout. Maybe she’s a really good tennis player.
Since I drew my sporty fashion paper doll and was coloring her at the same time I colored my tennis fashion paper doll, the most important thing to me was that the color scheme feel totally different. I didn’t want it to have the same vibe at all. So, the tennis paper doll’s vibe is very bright and fresh. This vibe is more calming and low key.
Today’s 1940s style paper doll happened because I had access to full digitized sears catalogs from 1942. I don’t know who put together the website simply called Catalogs & Wishbooks, but I am grateful to them on a regular basis. It is a collection of dully digitized catalogs from major department stores- Sears, JCPenney, Montgomery Ward. You can search the catalogs or to just look through. It’s simple and very very internet old school. I love it so much. It’s why this paper doll exists, because it gave me access to fully digitized catalogs of the era.
To summarize the era very briefly, World War II really influenced women’s fashion in the 1940s (not surprising, I know). As resources became scarce due to wartime rationing, practicality and functionality took precedence over extravagance. This led to the emergence of simpler silhouettes, with tailored suits and dresses becoming popular. Women’s outfits often featured shoulder pads, defined waists and just longer than knee length skirts. Plus, military inspired details like patch pockets and shoulder details were popular. Fabric rationing created “efficient” dresses, particularly in England where rationing was most intense. There’s also a lot of whimsy in hats at this period.
Our 1940s style paper doll has dresses, hats, purses, swimsuit, and shoes which all come from the Sears 1942 catalogs. From the Spring Summer Catalog, on page 195, there is the swimsuit (The white one) and the shoes on page 146. I mean, I can’t exactly grab a swimsuit from the Winter catalog. Her hat comes from the Winter catalog on page 119 (I avoided trying to draw the net on the hat.) The dresses all come from the Winter Catalog on page 61, on page 71 and on page 47.
It’s getting chilly up here as winter sets in. I sort of love this time of year- the leaves turn and everything sort of moves toward preparing for winter. The seasons dictate life in Alaska, which is one to the things I really like about it. You can not ignore the seasonal change up here. Winter is around the corner.
While I’ve dabbled in “sporty fashion” before as a trend, this is the first time I’ve leaned into a specific sport. So, why not a tennis paper doll? I do I confess that all I know about tennis I learned from the scene in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead where they play Questions and score it like tennis. (You can watch that scene here from the film version of the play which is excellent.) Still, I have connections to tennis… sort of.
My dear friend works a tennis shop, so I hear about tennis through her. I thought, she might like a tennis paper doll. (She has never asked me for one, but is generally supportive of my paper doll drawing habits.) Also, this summer I read in some fashion publications that tennis fashion was making a come back for summer 2024. As I’m not one to ignore a trend and I do like pleats, I thought- I’ll draw some of that! So, despite knowing nearly nothing about tennis, here we are.
Of course, tennis has all sorts of well-moneyed connotations. So, it has unsurprisingly always had a stronghold on fashion. Tennis dresses are all over the place in summer fashion magazines. Even back in the 1880s when women could play very few sports, tennis was on the list of “approved” options. While I saw more than one article proclaiming tenniscore as the trend of summer 2024, I think I’d argue- “When has tennis not been tied to summer fashion?”
Short of golf (which also has all sorts of specific fashion connotations), I can’t think of any sport more fashion contentious than tennis. Tennis has long been associated with the color white. Even today, the Wimbeldon championship has an all white dress code, because traditions matter in tennis. So, I made sure to include an all white outfit option for my paper doll. I almost included more all white options, but there’s a black and white version. so really… you can mix and match that with the color pieces and get all the white tennis clothing your heart might desire.
I drew a tennis racket based on my husband’s racket. He played varsity tennis in high school and is my other connection to tennis. I also drew a pickle-ball racket, which I guess is very popular these days? Pickle-ball is as mysterious to me as tennis is. Maybe more, because I don’t know anyone who plays. Anyway, I thought a few racket based sports might be fun.
If you need too, you can always print out several of these paper dolls. That way you can get enough rackets for a doubles match going. 🙂
As a librarian, I usually make it a point to cite my sources, especially when I talk about historical stuff. But I have to admit, I didn’t jot down all my references this time around, so… you’re just going to have to trust me.
I know all of these lovely dresses are from Good Housekeeping from the year 1926, but the exact months and page numbers remain unknown. You can read all the issues from that year, over on the HathiTrust website. It’s a cool online library run by a bunch of big research universities in the U.S., so there’s a ton of great info to explore. Seriously, I end up spending hours poking around there, if I’m left unsupervised.
Anyway, this is one of a collection of Cut and Color Couture series paper dolls that I have been working on that are historical. It’s been fun. I can’t wait to share it- even if I don’t have perfect citations for most of it.
