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I love Samantha's Talent show dress and have read on the board its a reproduction of a real dress. I would love to know more, and have tried searching, but have found nothing. Do any of you have a link to the original thread or any information/ pictures of the "real" dress.
Thank you!
Jessica
It is in the book Welcome to Samantha's World and the caption says that it is in the collection of the Wisconsin Historical Society.
I took some photos just for you. It pictured on page 30 of Sam's World book. I have the old version of the book.
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b3...i/e-bay001.jpg
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b3...i/e-bay002.jpg
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b3...i/e-bay003.jpg
<font color="#33CCCC" size="1">[ March 28, 2006 05:05 PM: Message edited by: judiaci ]</font>
Thank you!! What a beautiful dress....
I think the information on it might be in Welcome to Samantha's World. I recall seeing a picture, but I don't have the book (I checked it out of the library about a year ago), so I can't re-check.
However, from an internet search:
The page on the dress on the AG site says it's "copied from an original in the Museum collection of the Wisconsin Historical Society," and here's the museum's
site. They have an online catalogue of Children's Clothes that I'm looking through. If you go to "Online Collections," and then "Museum's Digital Collection," and then "Tour The Children's Clothes," and then accept their rules, and then pick your era, and gender, and the type of garments, and you'll find this pretty little pink dress:
http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y21...d/Z0002504.jpg http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y21...d/Z0014503.jpg
"Pink wool gabardine girl's dress, black velvet and lace trim, 1900-1901"
The dress was made of wool (textile) , velvet , satin , lace , silk (textile) , cotton (textile) , mother of pearl" and was "Worn by Eleanore (Brown) Haydon McGowan (1892-1992) in Madison, WI." The article continues with "A version of this dress is worn by American Girl Co.'s Samantha doll". There's more information on it here, if the link works. We had some members saying they doubted the dress was actually a dusty rose color. The actual dress here seems to be a very vivid pink, not the dusty rose.
There are many other outfits that are similar to ones Samantha has,
including:
http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y21...d/Z0004524.jpg
Her Lawn Party dress, minus the flower-thing, "Off-white cotton lawn girl's dress, detailed off-white floral embroidery, 1905-1908" More information here
They even have some actual AG outfits up, like
http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y21...d/Z0002741.jpg http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y21...d/Z0002740.jpg
"White cotton middy-style dress, 2-piece, American Girl, 1989-1991"
All pictures taken from, and I assume property of the Wisconsin Historical Society Site. Really interesting site for outfits to reproduce for ALL of the girls, and other eras, if anyone needs some clothing help for their own dolls.
Edit: obviously I was writing this when there weren't any responses yet, so I didn't see others answer the question about the World Book. I wonder if AG manipulated the colors for the World Book pictures to make it look more like the doll dress? The Wisconsin Museum's sites pictures are very, very pink.
<font color="#33CCCC" size="1">[ March 28, 2006 05:25 PM: Message edited by: cami713 ]</font>
It doesn't say much in particular about the dress, but here is what it says:
"This fancy dress is the same style as a play dress, but it's made of finer fabrics - silk, velvet, and lace."
Great pictures, Cami! Very interesting.
<font color="#33CCCC" size="1">[ March 28, 2006 05:27 PM: Message edited by: judiaci ]</font>
Cami,
Thank you for the nice long reply! I can't wait to check out this site, and I'm happy to see that lots of my favorite Samantha dresses were once "real" dresses.
Thank you again.
The Wisconsin Historical Society is in Madison, Wisconsin and is open on Saturdays from 9 - 4 PM. If anyone is going to the MCM sale, they could check it out as a side trip. It would be interesting to see if that dress is dusty rose or brighter pink.
In some of the earliest Pleasant Company catalogs, in the dress like your doll section, they had photos of the inspiration for some of the dresses. Kirsten's Meet dress is based on a brown prairie calico cotton dress in the Wisconsin Historical Society; Sam's school dress is from an illustration in the Delinator; a fashion magazine; and Molly's birthday dress is from a photo of Pleasant Rowland as a little girl!
If you don't have time to look through everything... here's the list:
This is the dress they based Kirsten's Meet dress on.
Kirsten's Housecoat
Kirsten's plaid dress
Kirsten's midsummer dress which it says is from 1859. I knew it wasn't accurate for Kirsten's day!
Addy's Cape Island dress OK this says it is a girl's dress but the pink one in Addy's World is a toddler's dress and I've seen it listed as a boy's dress. I'm confused!
<font color="#33CCCC" size="1">[ March 28, 2006 05:52 PM: Message edited by: QNPoohBear ]</font>
Wow, that looks just like it! [img]wink.gif[/img]
Very neat site! Thank you to all that have responded to this post.
Here is a like that can take you to all the clothing, I can't wait to look through it all!
http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/muse...arentID=376567
Jessica
<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">That's great. I wonder what other inspirational outfits are pictured.Quote:
[img]graemlins/wonder.gif[/img]
<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">That's great. I wonder what other inspirational outfits are pictured.Quote:
Originally posted by judiaci:
</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Originally posted by QNPoohBear:
Look! it's Kirsten's Housecoat
[img]graemlins/wonder.gif[/img] </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I edited my post to include more
Thanks, QNPooh. [img]graemlins/thumbs_up.gif[/img]
<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Thanks for finding this one! I knew it was based off of a real outfit, and was going to look for it on here.Quote:
Addy's Cape Island dress OK this says it is a girl's dress but the pink one in Addy's World is a toddler's dress and I've seen it listed as a boy's dress. I'm confused!
Can you post the link to the information page on the outfit?
I'm not very good with proportions, but it looks too big to be a toddler boy's dress. I'd guess that, like with other eras, boys were out of dresses at about 4ish, and the dress doesn't look properly sized for a 4 year old. I could be totally off, though. And, I'd like to think AG wouldn't model a dress for Addy after a little boys dress [img]wink.gif[/img] .
Edit: NM, I found it myself.
Here's some suspenders that are the same material as Molly's School jumper.
Judi PMed me to let me know the link doesn't work. It's not working for me, either.
http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/muse...bjectID=180009
Is straight to it. Clicking on the pictures isn't working, so perhaps the particular garment's page isn't working right now [img]frown.gif[/img]
<font color="#33CCCC" size="1">[ March 28, 2006 10:11 PM: Message edited by: cami713 ]</font>
Anyone else see the one that looked like kit's b-day dress?! It was pretty close [img]rolleyes.gif[/img]
<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Can you copy and paste the link?Quote:
Originally posted by llama_dreamdancer_5:
Anyone else see the one that looked like kit's b-day dress?! It was pretty close [img]rolleyes.gif[/img]
http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/muse...y=OBJECT:54174
Hope the link works! [img]smile.gif[/img]
<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Yes - the link works. It does look like Kit's dress. [img]graemlins/thumbs_up.gif[/img]Quote:
Originally posted by llama_dreamdancer_5:
http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/muse...y=OBJECT:54174
Hope the link works! [img]smile.gif[/img]
EXCELLENT INFO cami713
THANKS for the GREAT picts too! [img]graemlins/thumbs_up.gif[/img]
Cami - thanks for bookmarking this site in our website sticky. I have a feeling we might want to check back and look at this site from time to time. It is very interesting, but there is so much information, it will take some time to look at a lot of it.