Becky and Malibu Franci in vintage wedding gowns

I have already shown Malibu Francie in Wedding Whirl, but I did a scene with reproduction Becky in a clone? White Wedding dress from 1972-1973 . I cannot find anything in the Barbie reference books, but plenty on Google Lens and Etsy and Ebay. It is referred to as 'White Wedding 1972 or 1973" and sometimes as a clone dress. It does not have a Mattel tag in it, but looks suspiciously like a Mattel dress. I tried it on Becky who is smaller than Barbie and it fit her, I am going to try it in another photo and see it on my vintage Barbie or PJ and see if looks a little more fillled out, since Becky is more of a teenager than Barbie. 

 

Vintage Best Buy Patriotic Dress

As I stated in my previous post, I have been gathering the dolls together in red, white and blue for Fourth of July decorating. I have also been purchasing dolls on my list that I do not have or have wanted. 

One of these vintage outfits was a Best Buy 1976 Patriotic Freedom Barbie dress. I recently picked it up on eBay for a very good price, no accessories but it was in mint condition. I am hoping to find the matching one for Skipper. Here it is on my Free Moving Steffie. She is wearing Sweet 16 Barbie's shoes. 

I have always adored the Revolutionary soldier's on the skirt of this dress! So adorable. 

Here are the rest of my vintage Barbies from the 1970's decked out in red white and blue outfits. 

The Malibu Ken and the Walk Lively Barbie are both, childhood dolls and quite special to me. The Free Moving Steffie and the Francie were purchased in a large lot of dolls and clothing with cases at an auction I attended. The Francie and the Steffie I kept and Francie's outfit was complete in the box of clothing I found, I could not believe how many Barbie outfits this little girl had- she was so lucky! Francie's foot was partially chewed but she was intact. I never had a Francie as a little girl, always wanted one. I pick them up now whenever I can. 

Enjoy!

Vintage Finds...

It is a new year and I have written nothing about my new dolls. In December 2018 I attended an auction and had the chance to bid on a huge lot of Barbies with 2 cases, clothing and assorted dolls plus other items like vintage games and some other items; it was what we call in the auction estate sales as a table lot. I scored at $30 and have been sorting ever since. 

In the lot were Tuesday Taylors, a Kenner Dusty doll, some Mego Charlie's Angels dolls , a Dinah-Mite DOll with her clothing, and some wonderful Barbies and accessories and clothing. 

I found a Free Moving 1974 PJ, who I was able to get some help identifying and I cleaned up her hair and restored her ponytails. Though they are not as sleek as I would like, they are pretty. I found her tennis suit on ebay since it was not in the lot of clothing and finding her skirt is a little harder. 

There was also a very nice Malibu Ken, in good condition also. As well as a Francie, who had an issue with her foot. I cannot tell which Francie she is, still working on that but I decided to keep her and dress her. There were alot of Francie clothes in this lot. 

So here are my 'finds' all dressed up, and hanging out in my Town and Country foldup MOD dollhouse with my other vintage dolls. 

Here are Francie, dressed in Long in Leather, Free Moving PJ, and Malibu Ken. All are dressed in clothing from the estate lot. 

Free Moving PJ needed a spa treatment as her hair was a mess. Ken however, came exactly like he looks in the photo, all tan and dashing looking in his velour sweat pants outfit. 

My two Francies together. Malibu Francie I purchased at the doll show in November of last year nude, to complete my Malibu family to display with my country camper. Now I have Malibu Barbie, Ken, PJ, Skipper and Francie. I do not have the African American dolls in this Malibu set so I need to look for them to add them to display with my country camper . I am slowly looking things up in my reference books so I can figure out what dolls/ outfits I want to pursue collecting first and then go from there. 

Ken and Francie in the living room with my Walk Lively Barbie. One of my most treasured dolls from my childhood. She came with a stand that you moved /rolled across the surface and she 'walked' . I took very good care of her and rarely used the stand with her as a kid because I was afraid it would damage her legs. My mother I think impressed on me how much she cost and NOT to try to make her ride a HORSE! LOL. I had two Breyer horses my Grandfather had given me that resembled ponies and horses of the cabin down at the river he and my grandmother rented where I learned to ride from their landlord and I was always trying to make my dolls learn to ride the horses, hence, their legs were always breaking. I guess to this day that is why I love my articulated Fashion Royalty and poppy Parker dolls. 

In the kitchen...this is my favorite room of this particular dollhouse. I remember with my original house I spent hours making Barbie and PJ cook. I adored the table and chairs. I guess my frustration as a child is we didn't have REAL plates, forks knives and spoons, just paper renditions on the table and that was not good enough for me. My mother bought me teasets at the dime store for my dolls. I used acorns and a bunch of things that resembled food for my dolls until I got older and began making food for my dolls. Yes, the cookies and cake were made by me. lol. 

Skipper has been in my collection for a while now and so has Buffy. I love Buffy from Family Affair, it was one of my favorite shows. 

Hopefully I will have some more photos of more vintage for you soon. All for now. 
Lisa

Va Fashion Doll Club October meeting Part 1 Francie Presentation

I am going to break up this meeting into several blog posts because there are SO MANY photos. We combined two meetings/themes into one meeting because our next meeting is the Christmas tea being held at the Jefferson hotel in December which I probably will not be able to attend. So this meeting was packed with alot to see and do- Francie's 50th birthday- and Va's tailgating/sports , and also our raffle to defray the cost of the Christmas tea in December. 

So let's start with Francie's 50th Birthday presentation. As always, the ladies go way overboard. There were a total of 143 dolls, vintage and reproduction, and only a few rare dolls and outfits they could not get together from their combined collections of Janice, Debbie, & Jodie and other members? for this massive presentation you see. I will go over the raffle, and the sports presentations in later blog posts. 

Francie was presented as the guinea pig of Mattel to try out the fashions of Carneby street in the late 60's and the massive 'British Invasion' of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. Francie was billed as Francie Fairchild, Barbie's British cousin who had moved from England back to the United States and that explained all of the interesting mod fashions. She was an instant hit and outsold Barbie in her first year. This is what decided the designers to make Barbie go with straight hairline and mod fashions from the bubble haircuts and updos of the fifties. 

The ladies also did a great presentation board of Francie through time

These were some of the magazines that included spreads on Francie. The most recent was Fashion doll magazine, the summer 2016 issue. It also had a wonderful article on Francie as well.

This was the Francie board containing photos of all the different Francies through the years, with her different hairstyles, and swimsuits. 

I took photos of this with my phone for your reference as my phone has a better camera. They included the really rare Francies too. 

That's all for now. Part 2 will be up tomorrow!
Lisa