Mini-Series

A Stylish Paper Doll July: A Big Fantasy Gown with Bows and Roses

Fantasy princess steampunk paper doll gown decorated in ribbon bows and roses.

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Sources:

I can’t say that buying a new i-pad after I’d already started this wild project was a particularly smart idea, because it is so much more sensitive than my old one. This means I am having to retrain my hands to know how to get the lines to look like I like and I am having to learn about stabilization in Procreate brushes faster than I thought I would. So, as part of my mission to make things that would make me practice, I decided to do a totally over the top fantasy gown.

It wasn’t until I’d drawn the gown that I realized that the tabs would all need to be floating, because there was no way to make tabs on this gown that would actually be functional.

Opps.

The source image is a color dress from Japan that has always felt a little steampunk to me.

As I understand it (and I am not expert) in Japan women often rent their wedding attire (smart) and change into a dress for the reception that is known as a “color dress” which is often in color (not white) and super fancy. Some women change several times over the course of the day. Kimono are traditionally worn for the ceremony, but not for the reception. I first learned about “color dresses” from Liana’s Paper Doll Blog and she has the actual Japanese which will get you better search results, I’ve found. (I know no Japanese and rely entirely on Google Translate to get me through these websites.)

Here’s some examples of these “color dresses” from a Japanese wedding dress company and here’s some Disney branded ones. I think they’re super fun! And I think renting wedding attire is genius and I wish it was an option in the USA (though I love my wedding dress very much.)

So, I think of this as feeling a little steampunk, but I’m curious. Do others think so? Let me know in a comment.

A Stylish Paper Doll July: Late-15th Century European Gown

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Today’s 15th century fashion paper doll is more cobbled together from a variety of primary sources than my last paper doll attempt at the 15th century. The dress is a late 15th century fashion for women from France, but it’s been pieced together a bit. It’s impossible to know if someone from that era would recognize it.

These dresses are called Burgundian gowns and are named for the Duchy of Burgundy which was super rich and fashionable in the 15th century. France has always had the best clothing, I guess.

About 1450, this style of gown became popular. The deep V-neckline revealed the kirtle (under dress) beneath. The trimming could be wool or fur (mostly fur, from what I have seen). The wide belt was placed above the natural waist and gives the gowns a pregnant look. The belts are decorated in studs or with super fancy buckles and can be fastened in front (like this one) or behind (like this one).

I decided to forgo the more popular fur trimming on these gowns for something else, though I am regretting that a little, because fur was certainly more commonly depicted. The hennin headdress is somewhat of a mix of several styles that I saw. The headdresses in this era fascinate me, but I confess I don’t know much about them. I get the sense that they carry a lot of meaning, but I’ll be darned if I can figure out what that meaning is.

I do have another paper doll from this era drafted, but I haven’t finished her yet, because I need to pick out shoes. I wanted to do a doll, because of the headdresses and the fact that fashionable women in the 15th century plucked their hairline which is obvious in portraits like this one or this one. It helps with the headdresses, I think.

Anyway, the dresses’ motif was handplaced and was drawn off this wool and silk velvet in the V&A, though I did simplify it a lot. I sort of had too. I’m still learning how to do patterns in Procreate and I need to work on that more. So many things to learn. Since I got a new ipad, I am discovering that I need to get used to how it “feels” which is different from how my older model felt.

A Stylish Paper Doll July: Early-15th Century European Gown

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Sources:

Based on these three manuscript illustrations, I worked on this gown. The style is early 15th century French. The headdress is referred to today as a “heart-shaped hennin”, but I don’t know if that was a term in the 15th century for it.

Given that this is paper doll #15, it might surprise you to know it was actually the first or second one I sketched out. Most of the 1910s stuff was the first stuff I worked on, but the 15th century paper dolls were being worked on at the same time. Historical 1400s clothing is not an area that I’m super knowledgable about, but I have been itching to do some for a long time. Even more than the 1910s, it is an era I’ve largely neglected.

This is partly because I don’t know much about it and because I find it all a little intimidating. Also, the headdresses are…. bananas.

I went back and forth about this dress and the headdress. In the end, I decided the sharing things I’m not sure about is an important part of this month long project. Finish it and move on is my motto right now.

A Stylish Paper Doll July for my Patrons: Retro Dresses, Shapes and Blunt Cut Bangs

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A Stylish Paper Doll July: A Strawberry Lolita Dress

A strawberry themed dress with tights and a purse. A paper doll coloring page.

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So, when I did my strawberry doll I somehow got in my head that I wanted to draw a strawberry coordinate in the Japanese street fashion of Lolita. I really love how detailed these styles can get and it was great practice for working on my linework in Procreate. I got a new tablet recently. It’s bigger (which is amazing), but it is also much more sensitive. I am having to learn how to use the stabilization features a little more.

Anyway, this was a challenge for me, but I am happy with how it came out and, as I always do with Lolita fashion, I had lots of fun coming up with ways to include strawberries. I wish I’d gone a little further with the pattern on the dress, but I am still not very confident with patterns in Procreate.

A Stylish Paper Doll July: Paper Doll Pajamas

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I don’t draw a lot of paper doll pajamas. Mostly because I think they are sort of boring. Plus, for years I didn’t own any matching sets. I thought it was still to buy matching pajamas/lounge wear. I picked up “comfy pants” here and there when on sale and tended to pair them with whatever oversized t-shirts I had around.

However, at some point, I bought a set that matched on sale at Costco, I think, and I feel in love with the simplicity of having comfortable tops and bottoms that I was embarrassed to answer the door in or walk to the postbox if I needed too. The pandemic meant I wasn’t going out much. Plus, I had some surgery that I had to recover from, so I needed clothing that was easy to wash and easy to wear.

So, my collect of comfy clothing has now expanded to be quite extensive. I still tend to pick them up from Costco on sale and I have both cold weather fuzzy versions and warm weather knit versions. A lot of them look like this set- jogger pants and a simple top.

I know some people really love paper doll pajamas, so if you’re in that camp, this one is for you.

A Stylish Paper Doll July: A Doll from 1915

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Sources:

Today’s paper doll is wearing a 1915 corset and shoes from an ad from 1913. Her corset is the “Perida” model, which seems to have been a name for several different styles sold by Perry, Dame & Co at a variety of price points. This model was advertised as a comfort model, likely because of the elastic inserts and lack of heavy boning.

Confession: I am not 100% happy with how this paper doll’s hair came out. I started with a reference image, as I do, but somehow between the penciling stage and the inking stage and the reinking stage, because I hated the first inking, the end result doesn’t look like the reference photo at all. I’m hesitant to even state what I was working from, as the resemblance is… not really there.

But I did have a source even if the outcome doesn’t look much like the source. Sometimes, that’s how it goes. I did not put it on the paper doll file, because I thought doing so suggested a higher level of fidelity to the original than exists As a librarian, I think a lot about the idea of constructed authority- if you cite a source, people then assume a higher level of accuracy than if you don’t cite a source. Since most people don’t actually check sources, this can create a false appearance of historical rigor where no such rigor exists.

Is this a high standard to hold paper dolls too?

Well, yes, but I still think it matters, especially because this image will likely be separated from this blog post by the whims of the internet and I don’t want people to get a false impression. Mrs. Ike Perkins and Mrs. Sargent Dorsey deserve better than that. Don’t you think? I think so.

A Stylish Paper Doll July: A Dress from 1915

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Sources:

Popping back to 1915 to continue with that 1910 theme which has been a part of this whole month. I did not finish these pieces in anything resembling the order I started them in (as usual for me), so while this is one of the older ones I drew, here it is on day 10.

Day 10. I am quite proud!

Anyhow, this dress is from Perry, Dame and Co catalog. Perry, Dame and Co. was a New York department store. The dress was described as a bargain, but I have no idea how one assesses a bargain dress in 1915. The price did seem lower than most of the other dresses in the catalog, since the prices range on dresses from about 7 dollars to 2 dollars. To put that in perspective, according to inflation calculator 2 dollars in 1915 is about 60 dollars today.

A better way to think about it, I think, is that in 1912 a union female postal clerk made between 66 to 100 dollars a month in 1912 in NY while a female telegraph operator made between 1.39 and 1.94 per day. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports are just fascinating, if you feel like looking through them. The one I looked at didn’t break out race, just sex, but, in general, black women would have been paid considerably less than white women and had fewer employment options.

Anyway, I assume most people don’t get joy from reading through these sorts of things and I’ll not bore you with more labor statistics from the 1910s.

A Stylish Paper Doll July: Cyberpunk, Sort of…

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Inspiration:

  • So many 1980s/1990s sci-fi movies… Escape from New York, RoboCop, Judge Dredd, The Running Man…

On Sunday mornings, I usually get together with some freinds from grad school on the internet in a private chat and we all play a game of Shadowrun, which is a table top roleplaying game set in a fantasy/cyberpunk future. The game was written in the 1980s and it always feels very 1980s to me.

So, in honor of the the fact that it is Sunday and the fact that I have a weird deep soft-place in my heart for the way the future was concieved in the 1980s, I offer up this 1980s/1990s scifi inspired paper doll.

I think the look works best when you can actually layer it- the cropped top over the jumpsuit look will always remind me of the 1980s. I don’t know why. Maybe because it feels like 1980s work out clothing.

A Stylish Paper Doll July for my Patrons: Farmer’s Market Time

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