Clara's 1900 Jacket Dress

Today's dress is a cute outfit I would buy for my daughters if it was available... maybe without the wide lace ruffle on the neck. But this dress looks like it would be fun to twirl.

The dress is from about 1900-1904. It has a cute bolero-style jacket worn over a fitted bodice. A belt separates the top from a wide skirt, flared and full. The entire outfit is trimmed with rows of ribbons. Clara has a pair of dancing slippers to go with the dress, decorated with ribbons, bows, and some rivets in a pattern on the toes. Finally, Clara has a cute little straw hat with some daisies and bows to top off her outfit.

For the 1900s, this hat is pretty conservative. Over the first decade of the 1900s, hat brims grew from modest widths to brims of ridiculous proportions. By 1910, hats had extremely wide brims, worn with feathers, bows, ribbons, and even entire stuffed birds. It's funny how fashions that seem reasonable at the time are quite silly in retrospect.

The original dress is a beautiful shade of rose pink for the jacket and skirt, with a white bodice. The original hat is a natural golden straw hat with white daisies, blue flowers, some purple ribbons, and a bunch of green leaves. I skipped a lot of the stuff on the hat, because it was just too much. The original shoes were a dark brown leather with brown satin ribbons, gold edge bows, and brass rivets.

In the 1900s, white and pastels were very popular for clothing. Fancier clothing and evening gowns would have bright jewel tones, but day wear was more muted. Here are some colors found in clothing from about 1900:


To print Clara's Dress, use this PDF file:
Clara's Dress 20 (782k)

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)

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