French Fashion Dolls were dolls made in the 19th century to help educate young ladies how to dress properly for adulthood. They often had a complete trousseau of clothing which makes them a great subject for paper dolls.

{Click Here for a PDF to Print} {Click Here for a 150 dpi PNG to Print} {Click Here for The Rest of this Series}Florence is a combination of several different dolls. Her face is based on the dolls of François Gaultier like
this one from the Carmel Doll Shop. Her body is based on a
wooden bodied Bru doll which is one of the most highly prized types of French fashion dolls. I think she sure does make a beautiful Victorian paper doll for printing and coloring in.
Since I didn’t want to end up drawing clothing from the entire French fashion doll era (it ran from about the 1850’s through about 1885, though there are some from as late as 1915), I decided to limit myself. This printable paper doll and her wardrobe is from between the years 1869 and 1875. Today, the paper doll has her night gown, dressing gown and night cap.
Next Friday, Florence’ll get her underwear and then after that she’ll start getting dresses to print. Since Florence, like Curves, is a printable paper doll hold over from the old blog, I do plan to post a mixture of dresses some people have seen and some people haven’t. I am still proud of a lot of the dresses I drew for Florence last year (this isn’t true of a lot of things I’ve drawn), so I have no intention to not keep them as part of the paper doll’s trousseau.