Totally natural … ?

Tired of plastics? Had enough of synthetics?
Be more environmentally sound.
Re-use, reduce, and recycle …
Let’s make a start: one doll at a time.

Now more than ever, dolls are a source of refuge and comfort to many of us. The past year has allowed time for thought and reflection. For example, our effect on the environment is an area of concern, and some collectors are looking at ways of minimizing this.

Modern doll collecting is not exactly the most low-impact of activities. We are encouraged by manufactures, and other collectors, to continually add to our hoard of dolls. As Pat Weller, a San Francisco-based collector, points out, “There is also an aspect of addiction to collecting dolls or anything else. A certain mental high of fulfillment at the purchase of the desired object which fades quickly and then must be attained again by buying another doll.”

“Every display shelf and storage area I have is now filled. Logically, I have enough dolls and might stop buying, at least until I sell some. But I still buy. Sometimes a doll comes in for maybe only weeks before it goes straight to [my doll club] raffle almost untouched. It’s faster than selling them and there is that urgency to lower the sheer oppressive mass of dolls around me.”

Collectors of antique dolls may have the upper hand here. Nothing new is being created, virgin materials are not depleted, the only resource used is an appreciation for the past, and any social history associated with a doll.

Perhaps it’s time for a re-think. Rather than constantly looking for the next bright, shiny, new thing and constantly finding ways to add to our collections, maybe it’s time to pause and take stock of what we already have. In most cases, as Pat Weller points out, it’s already far too much. Why not take the Marie Kondo approach – and I’m not suggesting we throw out absolutely everything here – taking time to methodically go through all of our dolls and decide what “sparks joy”. Find ways to re-use and augment our collections with items we already possess. The dolls on these pages are suggestions of how this ethos might work. Whether its concentrating on natural materials or restoring much-loved dolls, and conserving what we already have – this approach applies equally to vintage and modern.

As we all continue to get used to a new way of living, it becomes more important than ever to focus on our inner reserves. For some of us, trying to stay sane can mean striving to get as much play value as possible from our doll collections.

I have rediscovered the therapeutic value of making doll clothes. It takes a good deal of concentration to work at a tiny size. Wrangling all those pattern pieces successfully into a three-dimensional object is not only satisfying, but it forces you to use different parts of the brain. It is also a useful distraction for a short while – there’s nothing better than completely losing yourself in a task. When I had previously made mid-century styled dresses and outfits for contemporary dolls, I would machine stitch for the most part. But this time I was keen to have a go at making a gown more or less by hand, in this case a garment based on an antique pattern, a French fashion ensemble from the late 19th century.

The gown (main image, above) is virtually all hand-stitched. I say virtually because the outfit called for many, many, many yards of ruched embellishment and French bias binding. I realized it would be more than the human spirit could bear to sew that lot by hand, so the edges of these very long strips did go through the machine.

The fabric is wool challis, in a deep sage color, from Donna Karan, that well-known Victorian dress-maker! We like to pronounce challis “shally”, as if the fabric is of French origin. However, it was first made in Norwich, England – in about 1832. This cloth became wildly popular with Victorian society. Thin, soft, and closely-woven, it is a very forgiving fabric, ideally suited for doll dressmaking. As it originated in England it’s likely that the original pronunciation was actually ‘challis’ as spelled. No doubt Queen Victoria had day dresses in this fabric – perhaps the first instance of challis from the palace, but I have no idea if she had a vessel with a pestle, or a flagon with a dragon!

I’ve long admired Miss Revlon, Cissy, and their fab fifties fashions, but have never really been able to justify their cost. So I found the prettiest brunette ‘14R’ doll (as marked on the back of the neck, on a head mold commonly used by a whole variety of manufacturers in the 1950s such as Royal Dolls, Deluxe Reading, and Eegee) for about a tenth of the price of a comparable brand-name doll.

This project was to create a smart, structured look, using lightweight men’s suiting for a streamlined outfit. I enlarged a dress pattern for the 14-inch Lisa Littlechap doll (by Remco, 1963), in Johanna Gast Anderton’s excellent book Sewing for Twentieth Century Dolls, to fit an 18-inch doll. I made a quick muslin toile to check for size. The bodice was a little wide, so I just sliced a little out of the middle and I was ready to make the final pattern.

My doll group was to have a meeting with the alphabetic theme ‘XYZ’. I lightly sprayed some white tightly-woven cotton, cut to 11 x 8 1/2-inch letter size, with lo-tack adhesive to stick loosely onto thin backing paper, and then printed it on an ink-jet printer. The result was a couple of 11 x 8 1/2-inch swatches printed with my ‘XYZ’ design, which was going to make a great contrast for the bodice and sleeves of the dress, (inset picture above, left).

A more ambitious tailoring task was based on one of Kate Mitsubachi’s elegant designs from her book Barbie Mode: Dresses for Classic Barbie Dolls. I had been put off by the apparent complexity of the patterns and the fact that this book is totally in Japanese (not one of the languages on the curriculum at my primary school in rural England). But buoyed with confidence from my “XYZ” success, I wanted to work with a distinguished scrap of dogtooth check fabric I’d stashed away. It was tricky to do at this small scale, and I still find the whole lining methodology completely perplexing. But it worked! The dress is built like an elongated version of a traditional footman’s jacket and yet looks bang up-to-date on Fashion Royalty’s Future Bound Luchia Z – I love mixing vintage and modern, (inset picture above, right).

You might have noticed that I’ve been pretty monochromatic in my choice of dolls and fabrics. This was by design, on the basis that if you’re trying to make high-style on a low budget you’re likely to have more success if you stick to a limited palette than if you go truly garish. Most high-style designers favor muted colors when going for a classic look – think vintage Armani and Prada.

Background images (two Petitcollin photos above): Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division

It’s perfectly possible to have a smaller collection that is truly reflective of our tastes. I have been trying to downsize for the past couple of years. If dolls don’t speak to me – and I don’t mean Chatty Cathy! – or if they don’t really add anything, then out they go.

The single-edition doll also has a certain attraction. Once you have it, you’re done and there’s nothing more to collect, especially if it’s a gift-set. Sometimes it may not have been the maker’s intention to produce just the one doll, but for whatever reason that’s what happened. So dolls such as Lee Park’s Bambola, Wendy Roper’s Milou, and Louis Marx’s Girl from U.N.C.L.E. all have a welcome place in my collection. Not to mention the teeny-tiny Twinkie doll.

On a trip to Scotland, visiting friends and family in Edinburgh, I called into the Museum of Childhood on the Royal Mile. Situated between the big-ticket tourist spots of Hollyrood Palace and Edinburgh Castle, this little gem of a museum is often overlooked. It’s a great place for grownups to re-visit their youth and be reminded of many childhood toys. There is, of course a perfectly respectable doll section too.

In a slightly unloved corner of the museum, tucked away on a bottom shelf, was a particularly poignant artifact. The section was devoted to home-made toys and the power of imagination was to the fore as playthings made from the most unlikely objects were on display. The one that really caught my eye was a doll that had been crudely made from the sole of an old, discarded shoe. It had been roughly marked with a face of sorts, and that was it. This doll resembled the sole of a shoe more closely than any doll, and yet it had clearly been loved and played with by a child in the past.

The shoe-doll gave me pause for thought, to think of how spoiled we are in this consumer age. Virtually any doll we desire at any price is available. We are ready to complain about the slightest thing that is perceived as a flaw, whether it’s decal eyes, or a slightly imperfect hairstyle. Yet I wonder whether, with all these sophisticated manufactured toys, we have lost something in the process. The more we have, the less we need to use our imaginations, and perhaps the less creative we are in play.

I’m not suggesting that everyone tears off the heels of their Louboutins and draws smiley faces on the soles. But I do question whether we necessarily need yet another must-have doll to add to our collections and if we can’t be more satisfied with what we already have.

An approach which may be too extreme for most, is to take the starting point that every single possession has to go. You keep only the few items that have a purpose in your life. A completely unsentimental approach that might be hard for most doll-collectors to stomach, but an interesting place to begin.

In many places round the globe, kids are lucky to own just one doll – if they have any possessions at all. Perhaps sometimes we should remember, despite everything that’s going on in the world, just how lucky we are.

This feature first appeared in the Summer 2021 issue of Doll News magazine.