This is a standard day outfit for all classes of people in this land. (I really need to decide which one of my fictional lands this wardrobe style belongs to so I can stop referring to it as 'this land'.) The peasants wear this style most, but even the middle and upper classes wear this for a morning of supervising servants or just relaxing at home. It consists of a gown with contrasting trim on the v-neck, a stiff fabric (possibly canvas) corset that laces in the back and a matching armband that laces underneath the arm.
This next one is from Ladybird as well. You will find the description on page 214.
"to find her lady arrayed in a smart street suit." There is not much to that description but if you are like me and love 1930's fashion and have researched it like I have, you get a picture in your mind when you read that. I did some Pinteresting and Googling to find images I could draw from. (I have to have a picture most of the time.) This is a simple suit; it probably would have been made from silk or wool. I made her have a scarf at the neck and there is a hat to go with it with feathers in the hat band. This is what the women of this country wear for nightgowns. It is a simple gown with long sleeves that are folded back in cuffs during the summer and left long over the hands in the winter.
This dress is based on a dress description from the book Ladybird, page 199.
"like some stranger in a wonderful sleeveless low-cut gown of deep rich velvet in dark red tones. There were ropes of little pearls about her neck and hanging low on the front of her gown." When I read this description I thought of a dress I had seen on Pinterest. I think the dress in the book would have had a belt but I took artistic license and drew MY version of the dress =). Using the the picture linked above and this one (third one from left) as well as the description from the book for inspiration I drew this dress. I made it a bias cut clingy dress with a slouch neck. I've stated before that I love studying costumes. One of my dream jobs is to work as a costume designer for historical and fantasy movies. That will likely never happen, but I love designing costumes for paper dolls and the many stories I write.
Jolene's wardrobe was born when I was experimenting with medieval-style costumes for one of the countries in my medieval fantasy world of Quivira. I really liked a few medieval dresses with various corset styles that I had seen on Pinterest and began thinking about what it would be like to have an entire country dressed like that. Jolene's costumes are my answer to that thought. One of the things Mel and I had talked about, when talking about what we wanted to do here on the blog, was taking descriptions from books and drawing dresses based on them. I think it's safe to say that the 1930's is my favorite costume era. My favorite author Grace Livingston Hill, wrote many books in the 1930's, several of which I happen to own. So, for this doll I went through the books I have that are set in the 1930's, taking the dress descriptions from them and basing Emma's dresses off of them.
I hope you will like seeing her wardrobe as much as I liked drawing it. With each dress I will include the description and a little about what I did to make the dress the way you see it, how I changed it, what I added and why. Frank and Josa are playing dress up again. This time they are playing a medieval game. Frank is wearing a page costume of tights, an under-tunic with loose flowing sleeves, and a sleeveless over-tunic with trim of a contrasting color at the arm-holes, neckline, and hem. The belt that fastens the over-tunic is of the same fabric as the trim.
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