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~!

Historical Clothes Reviews: Samantha's Cranberry Party Dress and LE Mini Doll

Holiday Party Time with Tara Johnson!

Holy Baby Mithras, it's a week til Giftmas. Last minute purchases abound. If you haven't ordered it online, it's not going to get there before the holidays unless you rush that shipping.¹ If you haven't got it in the store, you might not get it cause the shelf could be cleared out. And if you didn't get Molly and Emily before they sold out, then hie your ass to eBay cause they're gone, and their stuff with em. Play Taps, y'all. This is why, if you are sensible like me, you make all of December and the first two weeks in January extended holiday gifting, so that if things don't get there day of, everything isn't spoiled.

As I said in my complaint department about Molly and Emily heading out the door, while they won't be available from AG direct there's ways of getting your hands on stuff post retirement. Molly's second ed Floral PJs and Yellow Bed might be a little harder since they were only out for a year. But the stuff that had been out since 1986? Take your time, you'll find a bargain. I got a lot of the Samantha stuff I have for my gang post retirement. Like today's review.

The Cranberry Party Dress --also known as Samantha's Christmas Dress--was released with Samantha Parkington back when she was released in 1986 along with her meet stuff, school dress and supplies², and extra holiday gear--all fresh and new for 1986, ready to become the icon of American Girl for the next decade and a half. The outfit came with a red slightly high waist (for the fashion) dress with lace trim, ribbed white tights, and one of Samantha's signature ribbons to tie enormously into her hair--this one white with v-cut ends. Purchasers were expected to use Samantha's meet shoes with the set. When Mattel took over, they changed the ribbed thicker tights to thinner, white generic AG tights. The original cost of the dress was $20; as inflation costs rose, the dress went up to $22 before being retired in 2008 with Samantha's archival. I got the dress--a PC version--in Spring 2009 in a private sale from a friend. I think it was about $20 for the dress alone. I originally had plain white tights from buying Samantha's Shoes and Socks set, but at some point I got the ribbed white tights from a private gift before I was message board destroyed. The shoes came with Tara--our model--back when she first arrived, and the hairbow is my own doing, a long length of wide white ribbon cut just so. On eBay prices range from $10 to well over $50, though the average selling price is about what it was for retail with maybe $5 over. 

A bit more about Tara: Tara Johnson was sent to me by a buddy as a gift back in September 2009 to join the gang. She arrived in a homemade dress, with Samantha's meet shoes, black stockings, and bloomers, with her hair in four awesome hair wraps and needing a set of glasses and a good bath. And while she does look like a PC Samantha, she will adamantly inform you that she, madam or sir or miscter³ or neither, that she is not Samantha. She almost didn't put this dress on, in case anyone wanted to get bright ideas about calling her so. But when I explained that it wasn't fair for Marisol to have to do three clothes changes for the holidays--Marisol being my go-to-model for Edwardian and Titanic Era wear--she grudgingly said she'd put the set on. But she will only wear Edwardian clothing if she doesn't take off her glasses, lest you mistake her for anyone but her nerdy, steampunky self.

Do note that there will be two tights reviews, along with the bonus of Samantha's bloomers, meet shoes, and the LE Mini Doll. And that most of the pictures are taken with the plainer tights. Damn it, Samantha.