Your hair *does* look like Princess Diana, Jenny!
Julia: We actually got to six pages of posts when Ria posted for the first time that the Samantha and Nellie holiday coats were sold out with no more to be ordered.
I was thinking the same thing, Julia! I think I am the person who takes these threads on a tour. You should talk to me in person sometimes...that's really bad! [img]redface.gif[/img]
Your hair *does* look like Princess Diana, Jenny!
Julia: We actually got to six pages of posts when Ria posted for the first time that the Samantha and Nellie holiday coats were sold out with no more to be ordered.
Oh...what a pretty picture, Ann! I think I might dig one of mine out. I graduated in '83, and it was the height of the "let's try to look like Princess Dianna" era. Hmmm....I think I'll go look for it.
On the subject of wedding dresses, my sister just got married summer of '04, for the first time, at age 45, and she wanted to wear my mother's wedding dress. My mother passed away about 8 years ago or so, and she was married somewhere around 1948. She wore a dress that her sister had made and that 3 of the 4 sisters wore for their weddings. It was made of a kind of satin, I believe, and was a classic style, with gazillions of little buttons down the back and at each wrist (all of them really used as buttons, not like with the velcro closures sometimes used today).
When they went looking for the dress, they found it in my aunt's attic or somewhere similar, wadded up in a ball, in a brown paper bag with some other things. My aunt said that it was literally a brown-ish color. She sent it to the cleaners and told them to do whatever they could and that it didn't matter if it came out in shreds because it was already so bad that they had nothing to lose anyway. She said that they drycleaned it, then washed it with water and detergent, then did something with some kind of "oxy" cleaner, and then drycleaned it again. I can't remember if there was another step in there somewhere or not.
Anyway, it came out perfectly white! She had to go through and resew most of the seams, but since she's had a career as seamstress all of her life, and still has a seamstress shop, that wasn't much of a stretch for her, although it was a lot of work. She had to re-do a couple of the buttons and a couple of the button loops. She put in new shoulder pads, and possibly added armpit pads. She had to add a piece in the back hem where the cleaners' pressing had shortened the train--something to do with the fabric being cut on the bias and the pressing pulling it the wrong way, I think. She also added some buttons and loops to the back of the waist, so that the train could be buttoned up out of the way for the reception. And I think she repaired the lining (facing?) for the neckline. But it turned out perfectly--like a new dress, and just beautiful! And it fit my sister perfectly--both in personality and in size.
If you want to see a picture of her in it, you can email me, or tell me how to post that picture in this thread.
Joy
Just had a realization. I mean, call me stupid to have taken so long to figure it out, but I'd never really thought of it before. As the dolls currently are priced, they are really only about sixty dollars. The outfit is about 20 and the book is 6. So, they dolls themselves aren't ridiculously priced at $58. I know, I'm a little slow, but it really puts it in perspective. At least for me.
<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I'm not sure the original price of the dolls, and only located the inflation rates based on CPI through 2000.Originally posted by judiaci:
Although I don't like the idea of price increases, I am quite surprised at how stable the price of most AG items have been for years and years. I have an AG catalogue from Christmas, 1995. The dolls were $82 - that is 10 years ago and they are only $2 higher.
If the dolls cost $76 in 1986 that would be equivalent to $119 in 2000 $$'s. If the 1986 cost was $78, it would be $122 in 2000, if the cost were $80 in 1986, it would be $125 in 2000, if the cost were $82, it would be $128 in 2000. (sorry, couldn't figure out how to do columns)
Conversely, a doll costing $84 in 2000 would be equivalent to costing $53 in 1986.
So by not increasing prices, in order to maintain current profit levels, costs must be reduced. Mattel did this by moving production to China to reduce labor costs and substituting cheaper raw materials-MDF for wood, etc.
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