Clara's 1930 Dropped Waist Dress

Clara’s outfit for this week is a beautiful dress from about 1930. The pleats and stripes are classic for this era in fashion design. The dropped waistline was very popular in the 1920s, and continued in popularity into the next decade.

The hat Clara is wearing is called a cloche, a tight-fitting style very popular in the 1920s and early 1930s. Clara's cloche has a pleated silk band around the crown.

The shoes are simple, low-heeled shoes with contrasting ribbons. If the outfit was for a special occasion, the ribbons would be dyed to match the dress.

In case you are curious, the original dress has a bright pink top with cream neck trim. The stripes and bottom trim of the skirt are in a pink that matches the top. The skirt itself is tan. The shoes were dark brown suede with tan trim.

Be creative as you color the outfit. I simply provide the original colors of the dress as a reference point for historical accuracy. You may also be interested to know that along with white, tan, and ivory, these were some of the popular colors for clothing in the late 1920s and early 30s:


To print Clara's Dropped Waist Dress, use this PDF file:
Clara's Dress 4 (579k)

Clara is a free, printable paper doll. Clara will be available on this blog as long as I continue to post new fashion pages for her. You can read the introduction for the Clara paper doll here.

To print the Clara paper doll, use this PDF file:

The Clara Paper Doll (718k)

If you like my paper dolls enough to want to share with others, please email or post a link to my blog rather than sending or posting a copy of the paper dolls. Refer your friends so they can enjoy the free, printable paper dolls on my blog. Please do not post my artwork on your own sites, modify any of the files, or distribute them to others.