If Real Life Don't--(A Micropost with Nellie)

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Historical Clothes Reviews and Historical Accessory Reviews: Samantha's BeForever Meet Outfit and Accessories

Nellie: Pretty in all that pink.

I continue to gush and gush about how much I like the BeForever revamp, in great contrast to a great many older AG collectors who grew up with the original looks. There's some bits I don't care for--there's not much that has my undying love without at least one thing to complain about¹--but overall, it's been a good thing. And when AG went for the relaunch, they relied on their regular fall back for all-new historical product launches and first tries. Yep, that's right. They reached back into the Historical Character vault, pulled Samantha out, shook her off and gave her an all new look. Same brown hair and brown eyes, but nothing from her prior collection came with her, not even her meet outfit and accessories.

And for that I'm glad. I never liked her original meet outfit or accessories. Oh, the underwear and black stockings had their usefulness, but the dress was mediocre at best and blech at worse and helped highlight the idea of turn-of-the-century sepianess and dull colors. And don't get me started on those pitiful ass plastic ugly shoes² or the high neckline that had to cover up that poor ugly white body the first three started out with. It wasn't even shown in the illustrations until the 1998 redraw. Away with it. Now Samantha comes to you in a much more pink set: a pink lace and dotted swiss dress, bloomers, white tights, black Mary Janes, and a velvet ribbon on a ponytail holder that that I don't have. Cause while all the new BeForever outfits come separately for about $36, they don't come with any of the hair decs. Either buy a new doll, clip your own ribbons, or see if you can obtain replacements for the hair clips. The accessories also transmogrified: a headband, velvet purse, and "locket" necklace for the standard accessory cost of $24. This was sold out the day of the BeForever launch--and also, I was getting all the Addy I could get--but later trips to AG got me a set to put on gang members such as Marisol and Nellie. So far there's no reason to touch eBay to get a set--even when it's not sold separately anymore, there's always the possibility of stripping a Samantha to get the hook up, though of course that's the more expensive option. There's also a matching sundress and headband. If you're like Zagat Editor Molly Moker you can fit in the set. I am plush and fat and can't do that.

With Nellie around, she can help share the Edwardian reviews with Marisol. She does an excellent job.

Crafting Creatively - Things I've Made: Samantha/Nellie's Pink Dress and Pinafore

The perfect dress for keeping clean and neat. Maybe.

Huzzah! My photocorner has been set back up, and in such a way that I can potentially get a lot of natural sunlight to drape and not have to use the flash every time I want to take pictures of things. I took a backlog of review shots in giddiness, including a craft project I did this winter. And it has been some time since I showed off what I can do. (And why people can and often do listen to me when I say things about crafting.) Let's fix that. I'm an awesome craft guru.

This time on Crafting Creatively, let's look into the fine details and designing of what I've titled Samantha/Nellie's Pink Dress and Pinafore. I say it with the slash like that because I made two sets like I do for gifts. The gift set went to Brazil¹ for Bea (thedollrookie)'s Samantha, and the set here is for Nellie. AGC did a gift swap, and when I was selected with Bea and saw her Samantha didn't have much in the way of wardrobe, I jumped at the chance to make her a Neth's Original Outfit. Me and Samantha don't get along re: Pretty Pink Princess, but designing Edwardian clothing is awesome. I love making historical outfits more than modern stuff, because I feel like I can be a lot more creative with it even in restrictions. Modern stuff is okay, don't get me wrong, but historical clothing design has become one of my passions over the many years I've existed.

ETA, 2/29/16: Retroactive description!

"Samantha"’s Pink Dress and Pinafore

Samantha can’t wait to see Gardner and Cornelia after their honeymoon! She has a brand new white dotted pinafore to wear over her best pink floral print dress. There’s even a big pink grosgrain hairbow to wear in her brown curls!
Hop under the cut for background and details.

Historical Clothes Reviews: Samantha's Play Dress and Pinafore

Nellie-girl, looking properly Edwardian.

Aooga! Aooooga! Less than two weeks to the BeForever Launch! All hands on deck! Batten the hatches and hard to starboard! It's the return of Samantha and her ruffles and new books and people mewling that Teal Wasn't Around in 1932¹ or that this is "extremely traumatizing"--which if the redo of a doll line from a major company that isn't catering to you specifically is your biggest trauma in the last year and change, I am glad you haven't really had major problems. I for one am so excited I can barely sit still for the want of new things for Addy, Kit, Josefina, Kaya, and the others. I may be at the launch--working things out with buddies--and will likely give y'all my happy reviews that Friday, seeing as I won't be at PAX til Saturday. Doll blogging gaming nerds unite! Our moddies have a 3DS and take pics with nerds.

If you have spent any time on this blog, you've heard me nearly pop a vessel at the fact that AG marketed Samantha Parkington as a bright "Victorian" beauty for a majority of her release. This is because it's wrong. I refuse to let her be referred to as Victorian. Samantha, and the time period from 1900 til about 1910 is better called Edwardian, if we're going to tie American eras to British monarchs. Queen Victoria of England--who the era was named for--died in 1901, and while most eras don't have a definitive end date we have this as a record so good goddamn there's no excuse. Sam's series not only is set in the US--despite the whole "England was the center of Western culture" thing going on til about WW2--but in 1904, which is well into the Edwardian era. The Edwardian era was big on fighting the rigid class hierarchy and societal positions and assumptions that had been thought of as default in the prior era. Women sought rights, the common laborer was pushing back against the idea that it was all right for them to be exploited in the name of progress, and people of color were fighting back against the idea that they just had to put up with white people shit and their colonizing everything and killing people just because they could. In the US, the better term is probably the Progressive Era, which ran from about the 1890s to the 1920s and was characterized by the reformation of government, society, and economic policy. Samantha's books--well at least the first two²--emphasis a rebellion against the class structures that characterized the Victorian era. Grandmary is Victorian minded, but even by the end of the main series she's opening up her mind. So for the sweet love of fucking ruffled bloomers, hairbows, and gingerbread, stop calling Samantha Victorian. Addy is more Victorian--at least Queen Victoria was alive then.

I may not have tons of love for Samantha the doll, but she's starting to be an okay distant character and I do like her time period. Which, at the launch of AG, was one of the big throwbacks of the 80s; there was a huge revival of late Victorian and early Edwardian fashions and trends. So Samantha and the AG launch took a bite down on that and held on, and that's why so many years we're looking at her again to be the bridge to support a relaunch of the Historical Line. When I first started having AG pop on my radar in the late 80s I was not much into Samantha, because I much more preferred the idea of the Pioneer era thanks to it being a huge thing at my elementary school. I did like some of Samantha's clothes, but I was very much of the mindset that each doll kept to her own era, and that was that. You stayed in your lane, and I didn't like Princess Samantha, and her stuff was not allowed. And since I didn't want her, I didn't have her stuff. This carried through my first years of actually collecting after I got Addy--with a few exceptions such as kimono and yukata--until Kaya arrived. Kaya was not going to stay stuck in the Braids Beads and Buckskins mentality and pulled on a set of jeans, thus becoming my first Historical/Moddie blend. Then, several years back, I and a collector friend of mine, Jane, came upon a store locally that sold secondhand AG clothes. They had Samantha's Play Dress and Pinafore among some other older, retired outfits. I decided that if I hated it that much, I could always sell it secondhand and bought it and the Tea Dress. I put it tentatively on Marisol, Marisol looked goddamn gorgeous, and that was all she wrote.³ I started picking up Sam's things for her and then Rebecca's, and expanded my collection focus.

But the outfit. When Samantha launched with Molly and Kirsten in 1986, she only came with stuff and things from her first three books, followed later by her last three books and the stuff from that. Then in 1989, she recieved an outfit not on the cover of her books but mentioned in her very first book, her Play Dress and Pinafore: a blue checked dress, a matching hairbow, and a white pinafore for $22. Samantha, being rich, did not have a work dress. Originally the outfit did not come with the lacy socks--but these were later added by 1999 when the huge Wishes Catalogues came out. I think I paid about that much. I got the socks and shoes--which are part of this review--in Samantha's Shoes and Socks set for $15 when I was building up Marisol's turn of the century wardrobe. The pinafore was retired in 2006 and the shoes and socks set went down with Sam's initial retirement. Right now we don't know for certain that it's on the way back in a few weeks or a new version of it. Ignoring the stupid spikes on eBay for the outfit, it can be gotten for about $25-30 bucks with everything. The shoes and socks go for dumb prices and I would not pay them. My dress is a PC version, but I'm sure there's little to no difference in this one and the Mattel one.

Since Nellie recently joined my gang this January, she now has the beautiful distinction of getting to model a lot of Samantha's clothes for reviews. I dickered on getting Nellie before her retirement in 2008, so I got her more recently when a buddy of mine in AG collecting wanted her to find a good home when she was downsizing her collection and held on to her for me for a long time. Nellie O'Malley is a mix of moddie and Historical, and now she can wear all Sam's stuff for reviews (cause gods knows Tara has to be dragged kicking and screaming into it). I don't have much for Nellie directly out of her collection except her meet dress, so she'll be rocking Sam's stuff. Nellie shares my birthday--October 15th--and is a much more practical, sensible, thoughtful, and knowledgeable girl than flighty, froofy, head in the clouds Samantha. It's really terrible how she got shuffled off in the books by Valerie Tripp/on AG's order because she really sort of smacked Samantha out of her privilege just by being her friend, and her being pushed off until book 6 was terrible. 

Freckles everywhere!

Also, fun fact? I didn't like the sparse freckles on her and so added a ton more, including three on her chin and one on her lip.

Review ahoy~!

AG Complaint Department: The Ten-Year Rise and Fall of the Best Friend Line

So long, girls. The Era ends with you.

Have you been living under a rock for a few months in the AG community? I haven't, even if I have no need to post something every day on this blog. This is not Tumblr¹ and I'm not a news blog cause I don't need to be. I've got stuff coming up that y'all will like--the gang is up to another girl--and tons of reviews and shit. But I'd like to address the end of the Best Friends line before the launch of BeForever at the end of this month, so that on occasion my articles can seem timely.

If you've had a pulse on the AG community for any time since about January to March, you'll have heard whispers of both Samantha's return and the retirement of Marie-Grace and Cécile. Many people saw the end coming through whispers, catalog scans that didn't include the others, and jabber from personal shoppers. Finally in May, AG officially stepped up and said that Marie-Grace, Ruthie, Ivy, and Cécile are going into the Archives. This is in preparation for the launch of BeForever--a rebranding of the Historical characters to focus on the main AG characters and appeal to girls again. This includes new clothes, the return of the emphasis on girls being the same in essence through history, using new ways to appeal to old ones--aw yiss, apps and nets--and rumors that include removing illustrations from the books to appeal to older children.² This does not include their best friends or the NOLA Girls. There's several articles that have been published on news sites and around discussing how this removes the only black character that hasn't been a slave and the only Asian-American character in the lineup. I'm not going to knock them in any way. They're right in saying that with Ivy getting booted, we don't have a Asian American character represented in history anymore--and that Cécile is the only well to do pretty princess we've had that was black. But neither girl really got a chance to hold down the fort herself, and the best Friends Line was a poor way to put both of them in. 

For the most part, the Best Friends Line did not do much for AG's bottom line or their appeal to the historical characters, and the one time it touched the moddies it tanked hard. While the Best Friend Line had its appearances of successes, it also had its problems--lots of them. I do kind of like the idea of best friends and two girls sharing an era, and a lot of my historicals have theirs. Edith has Dorothy, Kimmy has Tyanna, Addy has Sarah, and Felicity has pretty brunette Elizabeth. I'm even debating finally creating Charlotte's stepsister/close friend from Caroline.³ And the most technical sense, I have several of the Best Friends: Nellie, Cécile (though she's not a best friend, she's a split collection--more on that later), Kimmy ("Ivy"), and Sonali. A lot of people will talk about the good of the line. But I feel like the AG community and the purchasing population at large didn't really feel the Best Friends Line, and that it going down is going to overall be a good thing.

If you haven't clicked onto this, this is all my perception. I'm not a marketing mogul, I've never worked for AG in my life, and I majored in English. These are just my opinions as someone who came into AG at the small start of the Best Friends Line, and saw how things came--and now, how they're going, along with things one of the members of the forums has observed and I'm alright with passing along. You're not here for numbers. You're here for my opinions, education, snark, and to learn better about the kyriarchy and how to tear it down. 

Let's start the same way AG did: with Samantha and Nellie.

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.

Rambled Opinions and General Snarkiness: Feb 2014 Releases (Now with Historicals!) and a New Board of Messages!

This can't be Seattle. We don't do umbrellas.¹ 

So, AG has made a semi-expected release of all new things for Historicals and Moderns alike. Semi-expected in that AG had announced new things on Facebook,² but AG isn't often known for their mid-February releases. Whatever, at least these things didn't get lost in the Wonderbread shuffle. And I will likely have better opinions once I get to the AG store and take pictures and buy the hell out of some things, but for now, we're using and linking to the Wiki pages. Yes, even if they're not up yet. They will be, so. Go under the cut for the jibber-jabber--and a new announcement for the AG fandom!

Clothes Reviews: Petal Pink Outfit (2001) and Pink Tank and Brief Set (2014)

Pink. Lots of pink on Nellie O'Malley.

And then I didn't blog for ten days, because seasonal/personal depression is a horrible on and off thing to deal with. (Love my posts, deal with my issues.) I'm actually coming up on my one year anniversary of having this blog, and soon will have something that I hope will be a boon to the AG fandom as well. I've also decided that, while I have about ten more holiday sets I could cover--including the ones I have designed for my made historicals--that it won't do to blow out all of them now and have nothing for the next time the season rolls around. So I'll be holding the rest of my holiday wear for my gang til next winter, After all, it's not like there won't always be holiday wear to do. Plus, my blog. So let's do one more winterish outfit--which kind of fits for the fact that Valentine's Day is this Friday--and introduce you to someone new to the gang in the process.

Yep, that's right, I've got a new member of the gang. A buddy of mine was looking to send Nellie O'Malley to a new place, and I do adore Nellie more than Samantha. Practical, bold Libra Irish girls who share my exact birth date are pretty awesome. She actually got here mid-January along with her meet dress and some accoutrements. Welcome, Nellie, to being a member of the AGGiB. She's still a historical girl from the 1900s--and will be getting and wearing stuff from the era along with Marisol. But like Kit and Kaya, she likes wearing modern stuff.¹ And she's debuting here in the Pink Petal Outfit. 

Like the Ice Blue Outfit I reviewed on Michi, the Petal Pink Outfit was an early Mattel set that came out in 2001 and was gone by 2003. The set has a pink angora style sweater, pink glitter skirt, pink stockings, and pink shoes (and a snowflake necklace) and sold for $24. AG later recycled the name in 2010 for a completely unrelated outfit that was more spring than winter, so you're going to have to filter for that in your searches, ask questions, and make sure you get this one. It actually goes for a sensible cost of about $15-25 on average. It's a little surprising how low some of the older outfits go--it's generally the "new" stuff people try to gouge you on. I got mine in a private purchase way back in 2010 or so, and can't remember precisely how much I paid but it was around retail costs. I don't have the necklace, so unless you're planning on getting me one as a gift, there's not going to be a review of it. But there is a bonus review: the Pink Tank and Brief Set² that came out at the start of the year with Wonderbread. I had to put her in nice underwear that would fit with the modern clothes.