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?
(This was totally my justification.)
So, I picked up A Timeline of Fashion by Tom Tierney and Ellen’s Elegant Fashion Plate Paper Doll by Patti Fertel. Both books are beautiful, of course.
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.