I left it until too late, so I wanted to do something simple for today… This is just based off of a fashion plate of an 1893 bathing suit that I thought was extremely cute, even the silly little cap.

Still no one has guessed my favorite Prismacolor…

And also, the voting for the first week of Halloween costumes is still on, so don’t forget to vote! Feel free to suggest topics for the other weeks, too…

I know, I know, AWOL again. I do really well when I get on a roll, and then I get off that roll and start rolling on something else. Yeah, I know… sad, huh.

Well, anyways! This gown is vaguely based on a couple of images of 1885 evening gowns that I have. I really like late 1800s evening gowns, although I’m really a big fan of the gowns of the 1800s in general… Although I don’t think the skirt is draped quite right I do think it turned out cute, and it sure is fussy, so here I put it up for hours of coloring fun, possibly even days if you really bother with every little rose and bit of lace. I really like coloring, and I will admit it is easier sometimes if I already have the outline done like with these – I don’t know how some of my kindred paperdoll blogging spirits can always work in black and white. I just sit here and pile up whatever Prismacolors I’m using, and I always sing to myself if I’m home alone, too.

Click for larger version (PNG); click for PDF version. Click here for the list of dolls.

As for this gown, Melanie Ann who won my guess-the-number-of-colored-pencils contest wanted me to color it in purple and green, so here we have, well, lots of purple and green! (With a little gold, because I just had to have a highlight color…) I hope you like it, Melanie Ann. However, I will say, I don’t think one piece of fabric can actually drape like that skirt does, so please overlook all paperdoll-related warping of reality.

I had fun coloring to someone’s specifications, so I wanted to do another contest. Here it is: Out of all my Prismacolors, which one is my favorite color?

As I have more than 100 different colors, this one might take a while… Here is a list of available colors.. Post your answer in the comments – guessing will be closed at 7:30 AM EST on Monday the 28th, unless no one guesses. Winner gets to tell me how to color that 1885 gown up there :)

Does it look like I’m phoning it in today? Technically I phoned it in earlier this week and then couldn’t upload the finished drawing, got distracted and whoops it’s Thursday already? Sorry about that.

Anyways, How To Stuff A Wild Bikini is one of those 1960s “beach party” movies, and for my money it’s got to be one of the stupidest pieces of entertainment I’ve ever encountered, but since I didn’t pay for it that doesn’t mean much. I watched it on Hulu the other day, for some reason… I think I must have been bored, and the name floated into my mind from when I was on a Buster Keaton kick a while back, because he plays the shaman. Anyways, if you can turn your brain off entirely, it’s reasonably fun and silly, the Bewitched shout-out is hilarious and I liked the costumes (I had no idea until I was reading later that the lead actress was actually pregnant at the time – nice disguising work!) This is the wild bikini of the title – that is to say, it actually spends some time walking around on its own – plus headband. I am not quite sure it would stay on the paperdoll, so good luck with that.

The exact number of colored pencils I ordered was 69, so that makes Melanie Ann’s guess of 72 the closest. Melanie Ann, please post in the comments how you’d like me to color the princess gown and I’ll post it soon!

I’m afraid my dolls generally aren’t cut out for the straight lines that make 1920s fashion look so good, but I did a 1922 dress anyways because I just finished listening to The Adventures of Sally by P.G. Wodehouse, read by Kara Shallenberg. Romantic comedy isn’t so much my thing, but it was amusing (and I often listen to audiobooks while doing things like washing dishes, so amusing beats edifying in terms of audiobook content). And of course Wodehouse is Wodehouse, so it was a fun little portrait of the character of everyone involved. Sally, who of course is the main character, comes into an inheritance early on, so I imagine she went out and bought a couple new dresses, and because everyone spends the rest of the book falling madly in love with her I suppose that they were properly cute.

I really like the idea of doing four main themes for October costumes – give me suggestions and I’ll put up a poll closer to October. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, do see the entry for September 4th.

As for my colored pencil guessing game, no one has hit on the exact number yet…

Janel pointed me to the Commercial Pattern Archive the other day, in the last days of a one-week free trial, and until the gates were closed I spent hours saving pattern images to my computer and posting excited tweets about the experience. Just like the name says, it’s an attempt to preserve patterns, but the exciting thing for me is just how nicely it’s organized. You see, I’m always listening to audiobooks, figuring out when the story is set and then looking frantically for clothes made not in that time period, not in that decade but in that year. This usually involves a few Google Image searches, a trip through my bookmarks (stored as regular bookmarks, on del.icio.us and in random drafts in my gmail account), and long, windy trails of clicking and then forgetting the location of this or that image I meant to save. This is all my fault, because I’m not organized, and so that’s what makes this site so nice. I say “My book is set in 1921,” click and feast my eyes. Now, is it nice enough that I’d pay $120 a year for it? No, I’m afraid not. Happily, Erin from A Dress A Day has set up a COPA co-op, and I’m in as soon as I know where to send the check.

In the meantime, I sure did save some pretty patterns. This apron is from 1944, and I just adore it, especially that entirely useless little ruffly bit at the hem. The dress underneath is just a basic dress, just the same look and shape as one of the ones on the pattern front, so it should be reasonably correct for the 1940s. Also of note is my late 1800s illustration collection – some day soon when I am alert and not busy and have good lighting I want to do a crazy, flowered, ruffly ballgown or two from that era.

So, my husband and I live in Michigan, more specifically in Ann Arbor, one of the cities surrounding Detroit. On the good side, it’s almost spring and there’s nothing like the University of Michigan campus when everything is blooming and the students come out of hiding to play Frisbee by the Diag. On the bad side, the unemployment rate is 11% and our poor state is national shorthand for a grim future. Now, if I was a more diligent, self-promoting kind of artist, instead of the flighty, self-doubting, unambitious dabbler that I am, I would be taking advantage of the sad state of American finances, pitching books, putting out press releases, writing up guest posts for other blogs and who knows what else. Why’s this? Because paper dolls are the perfect toy for the modern recession.

Think of it: Iris and Sylvia can wear anything I draw, so it’s not like a regular old book with a limited number of outfits, and you can print this crazy gown for just as much money as it takes to print this subtle shift. Barbie can’t seamlessly transform into a mermaid or a ninja near as well as my girls do, and I doubt her people would let her dress up in anything too creepy. And you know what else? No Barbie doll, no other paper doll out there, no one in the world period, has a terrifying cross between one of Marie Antoinette’s court gowns and the symbols of American financial catastrophe. Yes, this may be a slightly strange toy, but that’s OK: for those that don’t yet see the tumbling Dow in the skirt, print out this pretty princess instead. We who see the humor of the pink slip petticoat and pouf à la bailout will play princesses of a more desperate time and space. Pass the cake.

Yes, I’m reading Queen of Fashion: What Marie Antoinette Wore To The Revolution and loving it. (thanks RLC for the recommendation!) See, I’ve always thought of 1800s fashions as beautiful and elegant (and OK, maybe at worst endearingly funny-looking) but I never could get into 1700s fashions, with the goofy hair and panniers and all. But this bias is probably because so many classic books I’ve read are set in the 1800s: the Austen books, of course, but also Vanity Fair, Little Women, Sherlock Holmes, the Anne series, Gone With The Wind, Edith Wharton novels, Jane Eyre, Anna Karenina — anyways, I can go on and on, but the point is that reading / watching movies based on / paperdolling these books gave me a vague idea of the 1800s in European / American women’s costume. However, I don’t have a similar basis for the 18th century. The only ones I can think of offhand are the Three Musketeers, A Tale of Two Cities and the Scarlet Pimpernel series, and Evelina which I just finished. Somehow, looking at all the robes a la polonaise for Evelina flipped a switch somewhere, and now I’m intrigued by that same goofy hair and panniers. I’d like to get more into fiction from the 1700s or set in the 1700s. Can anyone recommend anything for me? I’d love to have some 18th century audiobooks from Librivox, but I’ll also go the old fashioned way.

The hairpiece will sort of fit both dolls, but there’s one part of Iris’ hair that you would have to bend back. My next series of dolls will be bald.

In the final book of the Twilight series, Breaking Dawn, Bella and Edward get married. Bella, whose parents are divorced, has never really seen marriage as a desirable life goal, doesn’t want people to think she’s pregnant and she worries about branding herself a desperate, vapid girl insistent on getting married right out of high school. Certainly nothing says “commitment” like forsaking humanity and spending eternity with someone, so what’s the point of a wedding? Old-fashioned Edward, however, wants to be married, and Bella comes around to his point of view, starting to consider it natural and happy for two people in love to be married, and to heck with the gossips and disapproval of society and her family. She keeps thinking of Anne of Green Gables, of the simpler time she associates with when Edward would have been young, of the high-necked blouse and long skirt she would wear.

Bella guesses that the inspiration was from 1918 when she sees her dress, Alice replies more or less and Liana tears her hair out. Here I thought we were using an Anne-centric timeline, but only in the miniseries did Anne get married during the First World War — in the books, Anne got married in 1890, according to this page, and WWI was her daughter Rilla’s turn as a heroine. So what does Bella’s dress look like? Victorian-style clothes play a large role in her fantasy of simple romance, and she says, looking at the dress, that it’s just what she imagined. Yet, a dress from 1918 probably wouldn’t have that Victorian high neck, or maybe not even the long skirt. It must also be noted that 1918 is when Edward was transformed into a vampire at the age of 17, so a dress from this age would probably appeal to him more than something his mom would have worn. 1918 would also be about right, if Bella’s mother, who thought the gown looked like something from a Jane Austen novel, was a hundred years off. Then Alice was stage-managing the whole thing, and I have a really hard time seeing her send Bella out in an unfashionable wedding dress. No one does high necks anymore, not even LDS members going for modesty, and long sleeves seem to be relegated to the Éowyn look. So what exactly do we have here? An Anne-style 1890 gown with puffed sleeves? A streamlined, more fashionable but still modest 1918 gown? A modern dress with vintage touches? I’ve been trying to decide for the last week.

So yeah, at this point I think I may have pondered the dress — possibly overthought the dress — more than the author, and it’s been maddening. Maybe it’s like the prom dress: however you see it is right. (Witness the range of Twilight wedding dresses on deviantart.) That means I’m going to stop trying to come up with something perfect and just go with a pseudo-1890s gown, taking Bella at her word that she wanted to dress like Anne and got her wish. But you could just as easily assume that Bella only saw the miniseries, so maybe I’ll draw a 1918 gown too, another day. Trying to combine the two — yeah, I got some pretty funny sketches out of the idea, but I think I’ll pass. In my sketches of this dress, she has her hair down and even though it’s old-fashioned, it’s still romantic and sweet.

Well, now, it looks like the readers of this blog have what you could call a slight preference for The Duchess’ costumes (a lovely gallery of which can be found at the Costumer’s Guide to Movie Costumes); as I write this it’s garnered 66% of the vote, with the other four neatly splitting the remainder. Not much of a surprise, we do like our fancy gowns around this joint after all. The possible list of leaked Oscar winners would be against us, preferring Benjamin Button instead, but that has all the authenticity of, well, a random list on the Internet.

I didn’t see The Duchess, or, sadly, any of the other Best Costume nominees, but I wanted to draw something inspired by its main character, Georgiana Cavendish, not the least because I recently discovered the The Duchess of Devonshire’s Gossip Guide to the 18th Century (and its counterpart concerned with Marie Antoinette) and since I’ve never been much into 1700s fashion before (I love the 1800s, everything before that I’m real vague on) I’ve been enjoying it. Well, lo and behold there is a style of dress that Marie Antoinette started and Georgiana introduced to England, so that seemed to be the right thing to draw tonight. It’s called the chemise à la reine, and it was quite scandalous when it was introduced in the mid-1780s because it was essentially like wearing one’s underwear out in public, not what one expects from one’s queen. A very simple garment, it was really the precursor of the Regency gowns as the waistline inched upwards.

Don’t forget — livedolling the Oscars here, tomorrow! Stick around the comments section and help me decide what to draw. I’ll be looking frantically for streaming video of the red carpet show (more interesting than reloading Getty Images all the time), let me know if you know where to find it.

So I saw this pattern on A Dress A Day and thought it was just beyond cute and it needed paperdolling. Seriously, look at the little collar and the pointy shoulders. Adorable. Erin thought it made a good airship hostess uniform, so I added a little cap and little airships around the hem. (Yes, that’s what they’re supposed to be…) Check out the original post and a post about a version of the dress being auctioned off.

I don’t have too much else to say about this dress other than that drawing tiny airships is fun and that my scanner is starting to annoy me (see the banding? It’s been doing that recently, plus the blue is cuter in person), so please go create a dress for me on my dress wiki.

So I recently finished listening to the Librivox recording of Evelina by Fanny Burney, which is not a book I knew of before browsing the Librivox catalog but I’m quite glad I put in the sixteen hours necessary to listen to it. I don’t recall Evelina being referenced in any of the Jane Austen novels, but I believe a couple of Fanny Burney’s other novels are mentioned in Northanger Abbey. Certainly Austen would have read Evelina, and her characters might have secretly wished for a Lord Orville like everyone seems to wish for a Mr. Darcy these days. It’s about a timid and innocent girl, who is overly both, I think, for modern sensibilities, but still a sympathetic main character. Her situation was so precarious (she has a “mysterious” background and no powerful friends looking out for her interests) and she always seemed to be getting into so many misunderstandings that I had to look the ending up on Wikipedia to make myself less nervous about the possibility of her being deceived by a rake or exposed to ridicule in a way that would destroy her reputation forever. (Having recently come off of The Age of Innocence, and having abandoned Ruth after skimming its Wikipedia page and finding out that things didn’t end well, I couldn’t sink hours into listening to another depressing novel.) I think, though, that it’s a very fun novel even if I fretted over the heroine and her perils. Sir Clement Willoughby is a tremendous bounder and it’s quite satisfying to despise him, and Evelina’s family and acquaintances are all colorful even if they’re mortifying to her. It might remind a modern reader of Austen, but the feeling that something is always about to go wrong makes it more salacious. Elizabeth Bennett was never caught by Mr. Darcy in the company of disreputable women, that’s for sure.

The book was published in 1778, and there aren’t any time references inside the book that meant anything to me, so I’m just going to go with what its readers might have worn although the book perhaps was set a couple years earlier. Corbis has, for some reason, a great number of fashion plates from 1778 (just search “1778 dress”) and I was struck by how different many of them appeared from what I think of from the late 1700s, the robe á la française and the robe à l’anglaise. The style that struck me is apparently the robe à la Polonaise, and even if perhaps Evelina is supposed to be set a couple years earlier than 1778, I will comfort myself with the thought of her wearing many of these dresses after the novel ends. Don’t ask me about the hat. It didn’t quite work out, but the first draft ended up with antennae and a windmill so this is sort of an improvement.

Incidentally, I was a little surprised to find Evelina mentioned in a recent article about the movie Confessions of a Shopaholic, as it boasts “literature’s first shopping spree”. Yeah, I’m probably not going to see that movie, even if it has clothes like this unholy concoction of neon ribbon and dalmatian fur that beg for paperdolling. I was reading an article a while back (couldn’t find it, sadly) talking about how in this economic climate, over-the-top chick flicks like Shopaholic might be edited so that the protagonists learn a couple convenient lessons before the end, which made me think, yeah, I’d probably fork over $8 to watch a movie like “Confessions of a Shopaholic” if the main character ended up like Lily Bart.

By the way, mark your calendars for the 22nd, a week from now: I’m going to be liveblogging (livedrawing?) the Oscars. I don’t know precisely how that will work, but it’s going to be fun.