AG Identifications: Historical Underwear

Insert "Panty shot" jokes here, with Cécile.

Hey, so as of tomorrow I will have been AG blogging for a year. Not bad work for a year. Let's keep going.

So a discussion came up on the AG Collectors board¹ about the historical underwear--basically, if Addy and Caroline had the same underwear. And they do and don't. From that I decided that it would behoove us to have an ID post showing the slight--and the not so slight, in some major cases--differences among the historical panties, bloomers, and undergarments that the historicals came with. And so snapped pictures as I was changing everyone around. That way if your girl comes without her panties, you can--if you so choose--seek out her drawers and bloomers and cover her ass, as the case may be.

A little history before we start looking up skirts and down pants. Most of the historicals have white underwear. To modern eyes, white underwear might not seem to make sense, because white is traditionally harder to keep clean and shows dirt fast. But here's the sitch, Mitch: white can be sun bleached. As in laid out in the sun and allowed to fade. And in the days before Clorox² this was was the best way to get out major staining without scrubbing the entire hell out of clothes. Other colors will and do fade (which is why old clothes can often look really pale, when they likely had vibrant bright colors.) So underwear were white because you wore those often and maybe had one or two sets (one to wear while the other got washed) and you had to get those stains out with vigorous abuse of the cloth. Sure they might get dingy and faded, but honestly no one was looking at your underwear most of the time anyways. Also, why would you waste expensive dyes on underwear? Again, no one was looking at your underwear.

Furthermore, the girls between the invention of pantaloons and the later shift to bloomers--from Caroline to Addy--have sealed drawers. That is, not split crotch. Split crotch drawers weren't wide open, but there was an opening front to back so that when you squatted down to attend to nature's call, you didn't have to pull down your pantaloons. Like elastic instead of tie strings, we're letting it go. I could go into historical underwear all day, but that's for review posts.

Listed in Reverse Historical--starting with Julie Courtney (as of 2021) and going back to Kaya. Note that the petticoat Cécile is wearing under her meet dress isn't one that's made by AG. I have a Laylie³ who got out of all that frilly historical stuff and Cécile now wears her petticoat as ruffly cute under her dresses.

Pajama Jammy Jams: Slumber Shirt with Mini Bear (1995), Slumber Shirt (1996) and AG Bear Slumber Shirt

Four versions of the same outfit. The 90s was a highly creative time.

Where have you been for two weeks, my loyal readers said. The answer on the morning of the 13th was going to be "working on my Nanowrimo novel like I do every year, because I am a self publishing author."¹ I was going to say how I won early but not as early as I did the year before, and since I hit the 50k barrier on the 12th from writing about 4k a day, I could ease back to only maybe 3.5k since writing is my dayjob, and get back to yelling about AG's bullshit.

But then my father died on the 13th as I was starting to work on this post and instead of getting this posted and snapping pictures of my magazines for Magazine Monthly, it's been a string of bourbon shots (shit you not, that was my modus operandi for five hours yesterday), writing out my grief in my novel, and last minute flight booking to Wisconsin. If you were just here for clothes reviews, advice and bitching, you might not be happy with me. So what? It's my damn space. Welcome to American Girl Outsider, the blog where I will talk about how Mike and the Mechanics just made me do an ugly hideous "I miss my Daddy" cry for five minutes before talking about doll clothes. Writing is how I cope with deep shit, be it about doll shit or in a novel.

Here, it's doll shit.

In 1995, as I said in previous posts, American Girl launched their modern line which has been highly successful for the company to the point that everyone with Nostalgia Goggles set to "Pre-Mattel" seems to think that it's dragging the entire line down the tubes. And since the line was designed at the start to parallel the historicals, they frequently sorted things into the same slots they had: a "school" setup, a "holiday" setup, and so on. This included a "sleep" setup. The first nightgown that your adorable little 18" American Girl of History could have was the Slumber Shirt and Mini Bear, a red nightshirt with a hair tie and a miniature version of the bear and outfit you could have for your Miss AG Bear for the low low cost of $16. The red version only lasted about a year in doll sizes--1995 to 1996--before it came out as the Slumber Shirt, now two dollars higher at $18, sans mini bear, plus a mini copy of the book Games and Giggles, and much more similar to the one Miss AG Bear had (which priced at $10 alone, $28 if you got the bear dressed). This set lasted as an option until 1998 when many more creative nightclothes started to emerge. That's right, there are four versions of the same outfit, two just for dolls. 90s AG was slick as shit for making dollar bills come to them.

The outfits show up here and there on eBay for a high of about 30 bucks. The red set almost always is found without the bear, or Bear Sold Separately. The hunt for a set for Miss AG bear might be harder, and might be listed as a set for a doll. Mini bears are sporadic, but often dressed. The green set I can't pin down when I got it; it was probably in a surge of AG purchases. I remember Mellie wore it to bed soon after her arrival.  I had the red shirt just kicking around from a swap box, and got the actual hair tie for it for 4 bucks off eBay. The bear's outfit was about $20 or so, and the Mini bear cost me 15 bucks with shipping, so it probably all balances out.

Naomi is sporting the 95-96 set, Marisol the 96-98.

Our gang member models today are Naomi Kirkland and Marisol Luna, who decided that this was a good time for an AG pajama jammy jam--and if you have no idea what that is from, you might be too white and too young for me to have a sleeping in the bed sexual relationship with. Google it.

We'll get more of the gang in other posts. The holidays are coming up, and nearly everyone here has an adorable outfit for the occasion.

AG Identifications: Ballet Wear

Ballet sets are Marisol's sole ownership right now.

American Girl has come out with a lot of ballet sets since starting up the modern line. At least one ballet set has been around every year since 1995, with the noted exception of a two year gap between 2004-2006. Which was covered by Marisol's collection, as she was the 2005 girl of the year and had two ballet outfits. So that's pushing to 20 years of toe shoes, leotards, and tights. Including Marisol's collection there's been nine ballet outfits:

• Ballet Costume I
• Ballet Costume II
• Swan Lake Ballet Costume  
• Marisol's Ballet Outfit 
• Marisol's Spotlight Outfit
• Ballet Recital Outfit 
• Two-in-One Ballerina Set 
• Ruby Ballet Outfit 
• Ballet Outfit

So how many of that list modern ballet outfits do I own? All but one--the Ballet Recital Outfit--and I'm keeping eyes open for a complete set since I have completes of all the others.¹ I like ballet, though I've never taken a class ever. Read a shit load of books. Own some textbooks. Look things up. Try to know most of what I'm talking about. Watch Princess Tutu. Sketch ballet outfits.

Because of the semi-uniformity of ballet, the outfits tend to repeat themselves in one way or another. There's only so many variations of tights/leotard/ballet shoes that exist and a lot of them are pink because ballet seems to yell "pink all the things." This means high potential for mix ups, especially in the pink shoe department.  Hell, I've mixed them up tons of times. And while all my sets will get proper reviews, this is more of a "which shoes go with which set of tights?" list, so you won't be seeing the whole outfit. Take note of the Marisol Spotlight Outfit shots. You will see them later in a review.

I reiterate that I own no Bitty things and I don't care about Bitty Things beyond news.

*~*~*

AG Identifications: Leggings

Naomi puts up with the 90s. She thinks they're bitchin'.

If there is one thing AG has been doing a lot of lately, it's leggings. While they did them in the past with some of the 90s stuff, lately they've been slapping them under every skirt they can find. I apparently own more than seven different outfits that have come with a form of stretch knit pseudopants. Gods help us all the day they do a 90s doll. Baby doll dresses and leggings everywhere.

Hey, they can go back into their own catalog. I slay me.

Six sets of leggings. And that's not all there can be!

Now, some people store their outfits precisely by outfit, in zip lock bags on hanger. I don't have time for that. I have a semi-job, don'tcha know. So I tend to store all my clothes in plastic drawers, and then dig them out and mix all the matching. So I forget what's what. Consider this a brief little article: how to tell apart some of the leggings that have been offered from AG.

Well, almost all of them. I don't bother with Bitty Baby/Bitty Twin shit.