Sunday Randomness: Cissette and Elise move in

Greetings, comrades.  Looks like my AG Spotlights aren't the most popular things, since no one comments on them, LOL.  If you're not a fan, all I can say is buckle up because I've got plenty more to do.  Lindsey's personality hasn't been the easiest to put together, I must admit (she's my next doll).  But today I'm gonna swig some water and do something I haven't done in awhile.  I haven't done a post on Madame Alexander dolls since heck was a pup, and since two new-to-me dolls just moved into the house I figured I'd show 'em off now.  This little one is Cissette.  

In the time since I took the above photo both of Cissette's cute little shoes have disappeared.  Shoes or no, one of Cissette's sisters made a cameo appearance here many moons ago, but she belonged to the lady who owned and later gave me Mary Jane.  This Cissette is mine.  She's MINE, MINE, MINE!!!  LOL, pardon my excitement, but I've always had a fondness for Cissette, who has all of Cissy's beauty packed into a smaller frame and a smaller price.  I don't think my doll is vintage like my friend's doll is, but oh well, she's just as good.  Here's how she compares in size to my decrepit old Cissy doll, Peaches...

...and because I love Little Miss Revlon, here's how Cissette compares in size to Wendy.

I'm hoping but doubting that these two can share clothes since their measurements are a hair different.  Anyway, older Cissette dolls date from 1957 to 1963 (the line was apparently felled by Barbie).  Like her larger companion Cissette has been a ballerina, and she's also worn bridal garb, Southern belle costumes, and other frilly stuff like that.  Some dolls have knee joints and some don't, with my doll being in the "have" category.  Notice that she's also got little nylons.

Ugh...I have a love-hate relationship with this type of knee.  It bends to a nice sharp angle, but it's also hard to bend and bad to break if treated roughly.  Peaches has a broken knee, for example.

I need to bite the bullet and send Peaches to a real dolly doctor.  I don't have what it takes to return her to her former glory.  Now...I said that Cissette was discontinued in 1963.  That being said, Madame Alexander still makes her from time to time.  She's not as ubiquitous as Wendy, the little girl doll that everyone seems to love, but she still exists, most recently as Clara, from The Nutcracker.

Speaking of ballet, here's a better look at Elise.  Ugh, those reflecty Madame Alexander eyes!  Cissette doesn't look too bad, but Elise looks like she could be dangerous!

Elise is a bigger doll at seventeen inches.  She's thus closer in size to Peaches, though not quite her size.

According to a fellow blogger Elise became Madame Alexander's "tall doll" of sorts after Cissy was retired.  After her release Elise enjoyed about three decades of production, and it should be no surprise that she came in other costumes besides ballet costumes, though there are plenty that ARE dressed like ballerinas!  I've even seen one that looks like Maria Tallchief, red dress and all.  As far as I know Elise is no longer being made, with her run ending in 1992.  Also as far as I know Elise does not see modern-day revivals like Cissette does, but never say never, right?  By the way, Elise's joints are your standard joints that only pivot, meaning that though she's dressed as a ballerina Elise can't strike many ballet poses.  For want of a stand I had to hold her in this position, so pardon my fat white lump of a hand.  This is about as ballet a pose as I can get Elise to strike, stand or no stand. 

Compare that to Aida, my Valentine ballerina.  Valentine did a lot of ballerinas, some more jointed than Aida is.  I wonder if Aida's name is supposed to be pronounced "aid-uh," or if it's "eye-EED-uh" like the opera and the broadway show?  I guess I could do either one.  Regardless, Aida outposes Elise by a fair margin.

Oh well, Elise looks the part, right?  I always thought it was funny, by the way, that Madame Alexander dolls sometimes wear pointe shoes, but their feet are clearly NOT in the proper position!

Now this, I can explain, since Cissy and Cissette and Elise were all meant to be undressed and redressed if the owner so chose.  Or I assume that, since Beatrice Alexander wanted her dolls to be played with to some degree.  Sharply pointed feet would mean the doll couldn't wear regular shoes, whereas high-heeled feet mean that she COULD wear regular shoes.  So this part, I get.  It still makes me giggle, though!  I guess it makes sense though, since ballerinas don't live en pointe.  Indeed, just looking at a doll like Aida makes my legs and feet tingle, as she's eternally on her toes.  How painful would that be???  Not all Valentine ballerinas have feet frozen en pointe, but Aida does.

Elise looks more comfortable, though I doubt she could be super-comfortable in all that scratchy tulle.  Maybe she's waiting to go onstage, or she's milling about at a dress rehearsal like some of Edgar Degas's subjects were.  Either one works.

So that's a much-needed break from American Girl blather!  Don't get comfy, because next Thursday is cobalt-haired Lark's turn. 

Cheers and pirouettes,
RagingMoon1987

More little visitors

The patrons at the library where I work have caught wind that I am fond of dolls, and every so often they bring one or two up for me to look at.  Such was the case today, when one of my older friends brought in two of her girls.  This first one is one I know quite a bit about, but have only seen one other time.

Or I thought I'd seen her once before.  It actually turns out that I've NEVER seen this doll before!  I thought that she was Terri Lee, of whom I've seen exactly ONE, but it turns out that she's actually Mary Jane, a Terri Lee clone!  Mary Jane has a bit of a convoluted backstory, one that has a few similarities to great Barbie vs. Bratz battle of my adolescence.  More information on Mary Jane's production can be found HERE and HERE.

Mary Jane is seventeen inches tall and made of hard plastic, suggesting that she was created before Terri Lee's makers caught on to her existence and began suing (the head became a soft vinyl head after the lawsuit).  She has sleep eyes and she "walks" like Saucy Walker.  She looks a little more "grown up" in the face than Terri Lee does.

I love Mary Jane's haughty expression; it's almost like she KNOWS she was created to derail Terri Lee!

My friend's other doll is a familiar face for any Madame Alexander fan.  She's Cissette!

Again, I don't often get to see these, and since I own a Cissy doll I'm more familiar with her.  As the name suggests, Cissy and Cissette are related, with Cissette being a smaller version of Madame Alexander's beloved Cissy.  Sort of like Little Miss Revlon in a way, one could say.  I also thought I read somewhere that Cissette was the older sister of another popular MA doll named Wendy, but don't quote me on that.

Like Mary Jane, Cissette is made of hard plastic.  I absolutely loved holding her, in fact, because she was so smooth.  She's the same height as Little Miss Revlon at ten inches, but her head is quite a bit smaller.

Cissette was used as a plaything and thus has to contend with a mussed wig.  Her elastic is also beginning to play out, hence her stooped posture.  Underneath her dress she has bendable knees, though my friend joked that Cissette could not bend them any better than she herself could.  At the risk of sounding like a complete know-it-all I warned my friend not to force the knees to bend, lest something break.  My poor old Cissy doll has that problem, though I didn't do it!  I'M INNOCENT THIS TIME, I PROMISE!!!  LOL, anyway, my friend lamented Cissette's floppy joints, and I told her I'd happily restring her if she ever needed it.

As is often the case, I felt honored to see these lovely relics of yesterday, and I hope y'all will enjoy seeing them as much as I enjoyed holding and photographing them.

Cheers and cherry bombs,
RagingMoon1987

Flipping Cissy, part 2: new clothes

Part two of my Flipping Cissy series.  My beat-up Peaches has a new wig, and today I'll be talking clothes.  No, I unfortunately haven't gotten around to any of the hard stuff yet, restringing or repainting or any of that, but I promise that should come this summer.  For now, though, clothes.

This dress actually belongs to what could be considered the poor woman's Cissy:  a doll of similar size and jointing named Candy.  Candy was produced by Deluxe Reading (much later by Charisma) and thus could be considered a cousin of Penny Brite and a more distant relative to Suzy Cute and Dawn.  The Candy dolls that I'm aware of came with four full outfits (one for each season), and complete sets can cost a pretty penny, but loose dresses are fairly affordable and easy to find.  This dress is the spring dress (I assume) and it is done in kelly green fabric with white trim.  It is missing its purse and shoes, but it still has the cute little pillbox hat so dear to fashionable women of the early sixties.

Pillbox hats are making a bit of a comeback, in fact.  Princess Kate certainly isn't ashamed to be seen in one!  Fashionable dolls of the Camelot era often wore what fashionable ladies wore, and thus pillbox hats were not unheard of for dolls like Vogue Jill and her buddy Jan, Little Miss Revlon and her larger Revlon sisters, Barbie, Tressy, and the like.  Well...maybe Tressy could be considered post-Camelot since she was created after the Kennedy administration, but she still wore a pillbox hat on occasion.  Anyway, I have never owned such a hat for myself OR for a doll, so I'm glad to have this little chapeau aboard.  The hat has four little evenly spaced gathers, which at first threw me off a bit since I wasn't sure what was supposed to go in the back.

One side of the hat has a fabric plume, which I hoped would help me get this all sorted out.

Plumes like this usually point towards the back, but according to this old advertisement the plume was supposed to be worn in the front.  I'll try both ways and see which one I prefer, since I don't guess placement of the hat matters terribly.  The inside of this hat is not lined, which surprises me since the dress is partly lined.

Now, the dress.  The dress is in reasonably good shape, but there is one tiny little spot on the front of the bodice.

I wasn't able to get this off with my usual fix-all (spit), but a deeper, more thorough cleaning might do it some good.  For the time being I've got a tiny vintage stick pin, which I got off Etsy.  The vendor listed these as sold out the night after I bought this one, so I suspect I got the last one.  There were about thirty small pins in the pictures provided on Etsy, in the shapes of birds, insects, flowers, cats, turtles, giraffes, so I had no idea which one I'd end up with.  As y'all likely know by now I love cats, and I ended up getting...

...A CAT!!!  This little guy is a very little one indeed.

I still haven't established whether that quarter is phony or not, by the way.  Anywho, Mr. Cat is a very pale lilac (lilac?) with black spots and off-kilter facial features.  He's not particularly well-painted, but on something that small I'm not entirely surprised.  The insides of his ears are even painted!

Of course no cute little outfit is complete with a pair of shoes, which Peaches has been needing for awhile anyway.

Plain, versatile white plastic heels, the type that would probably also fit Candy or a larger Miss Revlon.  These snap closed in the middle of the strap and were a little tricky to get fastened.

To be a proper sixties-style outfit I should probably also grub up some gloves and some seamed stockings, but I don't dare do the latter until I get Peaches' broken knee fixed (the edges are sharp and would do a number on stockings of any sort).  So for now, here's what my girl looks like.

Unfortunately Peaches will never fit on that stand properly if I don't restring her.  See how her head is tilted back?  I CAN get a picture of this doll's still-attractive face, but I have to re-position the camera.

Notice that I chose to put the plume of her hat on the left.

Oh yeah, I also got Peaches a stand.  It's wood and fits her below the arms like so.

The armrest screws to the post like this, so the height can be adjusted.  It's a VERY nice stand.

During the course of this little chat it occurred to me that I've never once photographed Peaches with my Little Miss Revlon doll, Wendy.  The two are supposed to be besties despite their difference in size.

Peaches has come a long way since her first appearance in this blog, but she's still got a long way to go.  It's possible to see in this picture that she's still orange, which she should NOT be.  I've got my magic eraser ready to go, but I still need some other odds and ends before I try to take Peaches apart and clean her.

Final thought (prepare for a spate of griping).  I did some browsing on eBay, a dangerous thing to do when one is supposed to be saving up money, and I found a healthy quantity of Cissy dolls available for sale.  Get this, though:  even dolls in less-than-mint condition can go for two hundred fifty bucks, maybe more, and yet here is my poor little Peaches, knee broken and exposed to cigarettes, sitting in a junk shop with a twenty-dollar price tag.  I wouldn't have been able to afford a Cissy doll at all if not for all that damage that knocked down her price, but I still shake my head in disgust at the previous owner(s), because even when these dolls were new they weren't exactly cheap!  I can only imagine what that person's lungs must've looked like, and their teeth, and how their clothes must've smelled...ewww.  I'm not a huge fan of cigarettes as it is, but Peaches must've been around a supremely heavy smoker to get to the point she was when I found her.  Oh well, I'll fix her up and give her a chance at reclaiming her former glory.  Oh, and if y'all want to see a truly beautiful Cissy doll, check out this post.  This doll is a knockout in her vintage blue dress.

Cordially yours,

RagingMoon1987

Flipping Cissy, part 1: new wig!

This will be a semi-regular series of posts chronicling my attempts to give my old Cissy doll a face-lift.  Some of y'all may remember her; I call her "Peaches."  This is what she looked like when I first got her.

There's a good reason why I call her "Peaches" instead of "Cissy."  Firstly, I think "Cissy" is an idiotic name, even if it does conjure up images of higher-end Madame Alexander dolls for some folks.  But admittedly "Peaches" is a bit of a silly name too, at least for a doll.  No, I call my little poppet "Peaches" because she's peach-colored...and she's peach-colored because at some point in the past she was around a heavy smoker or two or three.  When I first got this doll she was in rough shape with a broken knee and loose joints, clad in an ill-fitting pair of shoes and a dress that was stained and reeked of Eau du Cigarette.  Her wig was unkept and her face was bright orange.  I was able to wash Peaches' wig and dress, and Mama got her a new dress to wear while the old one was being washed.  As a result, Peaches ended up looking semi-presentable, like this.

Much better, but still not fabulous.  Notice that Peaches' hair is still mussed in that picture, and that she still has a faint orange cast, AND that she still has a broken knee (notice that her left leg is at a funny angle).  But at the time I decided to leave well enough alone and just let her hang around in my collection.

So that was last year.  Then about New Year's Eve I decided to give Peaches another hairwash.  Her wig still smelled bad and was frizzy, so I busted out the trusty Dawn, threw a towel over Peaches' eyes, stuck her head under the sink and...a piece of her wig broke off, cap and all.  So I said a lot of swear words and peeled the rest of the wig off, leaving poor Peaches bald.  When the wig peeled off it revealed a lot of groad and filth that I'd not been able to reach when I washed her face the first time.

Since Peaches needed a new wig, and since I didn't want a bald doll sitting all forlorn in my dolly room, I got her this.

This wig is from Natrume on Etsy and is a size 9-10.  It was originally intended for a Pullip or a larger ball-jointed doll, but it looks okay on Peaches too.  She looks a little like Denise now, in fact!

So I don't know when the next installation of this series will be, but y'all are along for the ride now!  I'll keep y'all posted on Miss Peaches' makeover.

Hugs,
RagingMoon1987

On DollSewChic clothes

So these were originally supposed to be birthday presents, but they came in the mail yesterday and Mama decided to just hand them over.  These are handmade doll dresses from an Etsy shop DollSewChic.

Peaches (the beat-up old Cissy doll on the left) is wearing a dress sized for a large Miss Revlon doll; I've forgotten the measurements already, but I think it was for a 21-inch Miss Revlon.  Wendy (right) is my Little Miss Revlon doll, and she is wearing a dress sized for her kind.  I can't identify the material, but it's substantial and has great drape.  Peaches's dress closes with a strip of Velcro, and Wendy's dress has snaps.  Both are nicely shaped and hemmed, and both came with cute matching panties.  I haven't given the dresses a super-thorough looksie so I can't really review them too well, but they look very nice on my girls and I'm thankful.

DollSewChic offers handmade dresses and jewelry for Miss Revlon and like-sized dolls, Little Miss Revlon, Crissy and Velvet, Tiffany Taylor, Ellowyne Wilde, and Hearts 4 Hearts Girls.  The jewelry will also fit dolls with slender necks like B.F.C. Inc dolls.  Prices are very reasonable, so if you like handmade stuff for your vintage and not-so-vintage girls, then I recommend this site.

Happy First Day of August,
RagingMoon1987