Clara's 1950s Jacket and Skirt

Finally! It's back to school for most of the country. If they are not already in school, most students will head back within two weeks. So to celebrate, here is a cute dress for Clara to wear on her first day of school for a new year.

In the 1950s, fashion designs had bold, clean lines, and simple shapes. Clara’s dress has a wide skirt in a style very typical of the dresses in the 50s. Think "poodle skirts"....

A cute jacket adds some flair to the outfit, with its straight lines and rounded collar. Three simple round buttons are the only decoration on the jacket.

Mary-Jane shoes were quite popular, and Clara’s are worn with ankle socks.

An finally, Clara has a cute 50s hairstyle with two ponytails tied with ribbon.

The original dress was cherry red with pinstripes.

To print Clara's dress, use this PDF file:

Clara's Dress 61 (755k)

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)

Clara's 1930s Trench Coat

The Nancy Drew series was first published in 1930. My daughter is currently reading as many Nancy Drew books as she can find in the local library. She aspires to own every single Nancy Drew book, but that is not very likely, since there were 175 books published in the original series. I didn't know how many had been written until I looked it up a few minutes ago. She gets to stick with what she can find at used book sales and the library.

This week, Clara gets to wear a 1930s double-breasted coat, the uniform of sleuths in every clichéd mystery book and movie. Clara is wearing a similar coat and hat in the black and white illustration from an original copy of The Bungalow Mystery, one of the first three Nancy Drew Books published in 1930. The original cover has Nancy in a very cute blue suit with a stylish yellow scarf. The familiar yellow spines for the Nancy Drew book covers were not created until 1962, when the books were republished. 

After seeing the outfit for today, my daughter has requested some of the outfits from the other Nancy Drew books for Clara. We'll have to see if any of them will work as paper doll fashions.

Although trench coats were created sometime in the mid-1800s, they did not gain much popularity in the general population until after World War I. During the war, soldiers found that trench coats were very important to keeping warm and dry on the battlefield. After the war, designers began to create nicer styles, and women began to wear the double-breasted trench coat. At some point, the trench coat became the symbol of detectives and spies, but probably not as early as 1930, when the original book illustration with Nancy in a trench coat was created.

Clara has a cute double breasted trench coat, worn with a drapy scarf around her neck. She also has a floppy rain hat to match the coat. And finally, she has some galoshes to finish off her rainy-day outfit. Galoshes were pulled on and worn over whatever more fragile shoes were being worn underneath, thus protecting the shoes from mud or water.

 Clara's Dress 50 (762k)

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)

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)

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.