London Fashion Doll Festival 2019 - day II: the salesroom

The second day of the London Fashion Doll Festival was dedicated to sales. Sellers had booked tables in advance and were in the Summerly Room early Sunday morning to prepare for the day. When I arrived, a little bit after ten, the place was buzzing with excitement. As it was a day open to the public (with tickets), the room was full of people walking among the tables, checking out the dolls and stuff on offer and making their purchases.

The raffle sale was also on for the draw at the end of the day, benefiting the Children With Cancer UK charity. I got myself an iced coffee and mingled in with the crowd, talking to old and new friends, checking out the lovely dolls on sale and enjoying the atmosphere.

Navdeep Sikand was there with Mark and of course, Anouk, La Poupée Mannequin! You can see some of his dolls on sale below, they are gorgeous.

Probably the smallest fashion dolls on sale in LFDF 2019 were the Irena Barto dolls. Her latest collection of 9” resin dolls, The First Spring, were on display along with some more of her work.

I was so happy to finally meet the talented Julian Stanislaw Kalinowski in real life and see his amazing ladies up close!

I spotted a Twiggy doll from the 60s!

Another creator with exquisite resin dolls on sale was the talented Alessandra Nicolin from Italy. Her dolls are so beautiful!

The day ended with the raffle of the donated dolls and outfits to benefit the Children With Cancer UK charity - resulting in many happy people going away with awesome wins and the charity receiving £3.420 total along with the OOAK auction on ebay.

We had the chance to find out the theme of next year’s festival, and see the trailer above - it’s Royals! See you in London Fashion Doll Festival 2020!

Where some of my dolls are being interviewed!

An incredible lady I met on-line, Athena, liked my dolls so much, she decided to interview them and post them on the brilliant and eclectic blog of Avaton Kortez. I cannot thank them enough! Here is the post translated for you:

5 Goddesses I loved on my timeline, unlock themselves tonight

Sometimes Avaton gives me the keys and goes down to meet the sailors and his lads. Those few moments I am free to walk the neighbouring clouds and meet mythical persons that come out of celluloid, dreams and your fantasies. I met the girls in evenings and afternoons in different places, away from the crazy and arrogant world that made them Goddesses. And here is what they said about themselves:

The incredible Poppy Parker:

1. How old were you when you fell in love for the first time? How was it? 15 years old with a village boy in my summer holidays, so romantic!

2. Favourite restaurant? Whichever serves spicy curry.

3. Which star do you love to hate? Hate messes with my Zen.

4. Which film would you like to star in and with which part? In a remake of The Letter, the scorned woman.

5. Which song makes you want to fly? Fly me to the moon by Frank Sinatra.

Mythical Cher

1. What do you cook best? I do not do everyday things, I leave it to my chef.

2. Where and how would you like to die? Cher will never die my dear.

3. Cabernet or Sauvignon Blanc? Only champagne dear, those are for mere mortals.

4. Ashton Kutcher or Justin Timberlake? Why? Justin of course - and if you need an explanation, you're doing something wrong with your life!

5. Which song makes you feel like a teen? The Shoop Shoop Song.

The dramatic Brenda Starr

1. Best kiss in your life? Soundtrack? Whenever Basil St. John kisses me and Amado Mio plays in the background.

2. How do you sleep at night? With Basil.

3. What does a man have to do to never win you over? To be rude.

4. Best place you ever had a swim? Bora Bora.

5. Which song brings a tear in your eye? Someone To Watch Over Me.

The irresistible Poppy Parker, or should we say Twiggy?

1. What are you afraid of the most? Using ordinary mascara by accident.

2. Paris or New York? Only London baby! Swinging Sixties!

3. Favourite novel? Tell me a quote that has imprinted itself in your head from it. Valley Of The Dolls - ''Yes, there's one thing I do want. I want to be aware of the minutes and the seconds, and to make each one count''.

4. Ever shot someone? Which star would you easily shoot? Never touched a gun in my life, nor do I want to.

5. Which song makes you want to fall in love? The Kinks - Waterloo Sunset.

Seductive Lilly

1. Favourite designer: John Galliano

2. Red-carpet look that has gotten you jealous? None, I do the best ones.

3. Have you ever kissed a woman? Sure, we must try everything!

4. Your opinion of Russel Brand? Pffff

5. Which song reminds you of the biggest love of your life? Billie Holiday - I Get Along With You Very Well

You can meet your own goddess at http://instagram.com/sandman_gr and talk with her at http://fashiondollchronicles.blogspot.com/ I simply thank @sandman_gr for the ride up there! :)

Bus Stop Darla Daley - swinging sixties!

As mentioned before in this blog, the 2012 Poppy Parker collection was mod themed. Darla Daley was no exception. One of the two Darlas released was added to my collection - she has already made a guest appearance in a previous post. Here she is in all her glory.

She is wearing a striped chemisier mini dress with white piping, taken directly from one Twiggy wore in the '60s:

As you can see in the sketch above, it is a down-pat reproduction even to the shoes and accessories. The gloves are substituted by a pair of painted hands which work nicely.

The outfit is completed with a gorgeous orange bag - one of the best in this line.

The white "eyelet" tights and "spectator" strappy shoes are pure perfection. 

She has very neutral colouring which suits her skin tone well, adding to the doll's versatility.

Her hair is pulled back in a ponytail which curls at the end. Cute spit curls are framing her face, a very nice touch that compliments her immensely! White hoop earrings finish the look.

In my opinion she is the best Darla released up until now and should be in everyone's collection.

Below she is wearing Poppy's She's Not There Avengers dress while Poppy gets to wear hers - a match made in heaven:

The Twiggy clone: She's Not There Poppy Parker

When, back in spring 2012, Integrity Toys announced their line up for the year, one of the most talked about dolls was She's Not There Poppy Parker. The dominant theme of the Poppy collection was swinging 60's and London back in the days of Mary Quant and Vidal Sassoon but this one stood out as she channelled uncannily the model that defined the image of an era: Twiggy. Her short, boyishly cropped hair, her mod outfit and accessories, her bold make up, all reminded us of her. Anticipation ran high, until collectors started receiving the doll. Many complaints were written on boards and blogs about how different she was from the prototype, how washed out she looked and many people felt disappointed. I was one of the people who got the doll so let's see how she measures up to expectations.

First impressions: she is a very beautiful doll. Even inside the box she looks lovely and cute and does remind me of Twiggy a lot. People complaining she looks nothing like the promotional photos should remember that photos can be retouched/overexposed etc.  to make them look a certain way. Even Twiggy did not look like her photos did. The trick would be to see how she looked in photos taken of her and how close she would come to the prototype (which for me was not that different to begin with). 

A major problem was immediately apparent: the hood of her coat could not be fastened under her chin. Not only was the strap a bit smaller than it should have been, the hood itself could have been cut a tiny bit bigger. And the design of the hood is completely different than the one shown in the promo photos. This was indeed disappointing.

On a previous post I had written about the inspiration for this outfit and how it came from an identical (minus hood and boots) one that Diana Rigg as Emma Peel was wearing in the Avengers series. The same dress and coat were also photographed for British Vogue on Jean Shrimpton (who is another Poppy Parker look alike) and was designed by Jean Varon for the Avengers Collection.  I love the outfit. If you can forget the hood mishap, it is pure mod sixties in it's best. It consists of the white coat over the black dress with contrasting stripes, red fishnet stockings (which stain terribly, remove them immediately from your doll), boots, handbag, ball striped earrings (Twiggy was wearing many pairs in this style in editorials) and red Jackie O sunglasses like the white ones that Sweet Confection Poppy is wearing.

The bag is one of the prettiest I have seen on this line so far. And she comes with a second set of white painted glove hands to maximize the mod effect. The boots are nice but I would have preferred them without the open toe. The original outfit had shoes that looked more like a negative version of the ones Bus Stop Darla is wearing.

Her make up is, to my eyes. just like the promos - neither washed out nor pronounced. I forgot to set her eyelashes properly for most of the photo-shoot but she still looks great. Her hair is nicely cropped and I have seen many people who washed and re-set them with even better results but I still have not tried this.

When I got Bus Stop Darla, I had to re-dress Poppy with that outfit: it is one that the real Twiggy was wearing in many photos and is very iconic. The results are breathtaking.

She looks even better with this outfit than with the mod one (which looks great on Darla, but that's another photo shoot). It inspired me to have a series of photos tampered with to make them look vintage, like they were lifted off magazines of the 60's. I hope you like them.

The set was made by using Karim Rashid's chess - the colours and design matched mod-Poppy very well!

Fashion inspiration - what is Poppy Parker wearing?

When I saw She's Not There Poppy Parker, I knew I had seen the dress before - not necessarily on Twiggy but it was engraved somewhere in my memories.

Looking around at old Vogue issues, I discoverd why. The original dressed was designed by John Bates a.k.a. Jean Varon for his Avengers collection. Take a look at Diana Riggs sporting it along with the coat in an Avengers episode:

I also found Jean Shrimpton wearing the coat over the dress in a British Vogue 1965 issue, photographed by Bailey (small photo, bottom right).

Some more photos of the dress.

(Vogue scan courtesy of Youthquakes - Avengers photos courtesy of Vintage Chic)