Vintage Paper Dolls

Ever since I got in the mood for fashion illustration, I pretended to myself that I could draw cool clothes and then color them with paint or pencil, or maybe even make one-dimensional clothes out of fabric.  But lately I've had good luck finding vintage paper dolls, so I think my work is already done.  The hard part was finding adult dolls - there's plenty of children paper dolls, but I wasn't interested in their clothes. 

I bought this 1940s-era set, already framed, at a flea market last month. It's big!  The doll is 13" tall and the frame is 18" x 24".  I don't think this was ever played with.  It's not like other paper dolls I've seen - this set looks to be hand illustrated, based on the clarity of detail and the overpainting into some of the tabs.

When I was young, I went to a circus and watched, amazed, as an interminable number of clowns climbed out of a Volkswagon beetle.  This box, and its contents, were a recent flea market find.  I was pleased that this vintage box was filled not with stockings, but with paper dolls.  

The seller thought there were a few sets mixed in there.  The box measures 7.5" x 9.5".  At only 1/2 inch thick, it held all the paper dolls (and more) that you're about to see.  Most of them seem to be from the 1950s, based on clothing style.

A friend came over this past weekend, and helped me sort through them all.  I was glad for the help - who knows when I would have gotten around to this without her?  

First we started with the dolls, then did our best to find the clothes that fit.  This poor doll lost her legs from the calf down.

This doll has the same face as the previous, but she's facing a different direction and now she has legs.  I believe that green outfit in the lower left is for ice skating.  Who designs such an outfit for cold weather, I'd like to know.

The poodle duster at the top definitely dates this as 1950s.

This is the third and final doll of this swimsuit set.  She's the party girl - lots of fancy dresses.

I have a Roy Rogers paper doll, can you believe it?  His robe has an "RR" monogram, not that you need that to tell you who it is.

And yea, I have Dale, too.

No Trigger or Bullet, darn.

Next we found lots, and I mean lots, of clothes without a doll.  We called her Skinny Lady because these clothes were too narrow for the swimsuit dolls. 

We threw away some fur, but I see we missed a couple.  

Skinny Lady had a wide variety of clothes, and her wardrobe was my favorite.  There had to be more than one Skinny Lady, based on the orientation of the clothes and arms.

The last set was for a wedding party.  All the tabs were labeled: bride, groom, maid of honor, bridesmaid, flower girl.  No dolls for this set.  Unfortunately, these dresses were longer than the box and were folded to fit.

I had one outfit for the groom - his jammies and robe.  Guess he doesn't go out much.

This is the last of the bride set.  

There were a few other straggler clothes, not very exciting.  And I just remembered that I do have one doll from the bride set - it's the flower girl.  She has an outfit that makes her look like Little Red Riding Hood, so I'm not sure where she'd wear that.

There's no way I'd be able to draw clothes like this, so true to an era.  I'm not even going to try.