movies

My Fair Lady dresses from Liana’s Paperdoll Boutique

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Click for larger version; click for the doll.

A weakness of mine, nine or ten years ago when I was drawing dresses like these for the Paperdoll Boutique, was always letting my desire for perfection (or completion, perhaps) take over, ultimately impeding what I actually wanted to do. It wasn’t enough to have one great outfit from a movie: they all had beauty and value and it was only worth doing if I did them all. Ideas and dresses I felt obligated to do crowded my mind and at a certain point it is easier to accept getting nothing done than it is to accept you can’t do everything you want to do. I do this all the time, and not just with paperdolls; I combat this tendency by drawing one thing a day, none if I’m just not feeling it (like tonight *yawn*) and not holding myself responsible for paperdolling every beautiful dress humans have ever created, or feeling guilty if I can’t draw everything waiting for its turn in my head.

But now I look back and I’m sometimes pretty impressed by the dedication I had to chronicling every single bit of something that I felt needed paperdolling. There are five in this group, here are two: and I guarantee you that at the time I felt bad that I didn’t get her dress from the ball.

Ginger Rogers’ White Dress from Swing Time (Updated 2/28/09)

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Brian refused to watch Swing Time with me. More specifically, he said: “I don’t believe this is worth watching just because it’s on some 100 great films list. Do you know how many ‘hundred great films’ lists there are? Obviously someone mistakenly placed this movie on one.” Well, I don’t watch his creepy horror-sci-fi movies, so it works out. Most of our time, our Netflix queues co-exist happily, but on some things, we may never quite see eye-to-eye. (And he was right, he would have hated it. But the dancing was gorgeous…)

This is a dress Ginger Rogers wears towards the end of the movie, most prominent in “Never Gonna Dance.” As may be guessed from the general lameness of the bottom third of the dress, I wasn’t really happy with how it turned out, and I don’t know how the skirt works at all. But, oh well.

Edit (2/28/09): I didn’t like the way this version of the dress came out originally, so I redrew it. The neckline still isn’t quite right, but that’s because the doll’s underwear doesn’t work with the way the dress should be. You can click here for the old version of the dress, or if you want to see the original, you can see how it works on this video of Never Gonna Dance.

Rachael’s Black Suit from Blade Runner

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“Do you like our owl?”

Yeah, this owl, the Official Kerr Family Owl:

Brian and I saw Blade Runner on the big screen the other day, and it was glorious, much like Rachael’s hair when it’s freed from those tight rolls. I don’t know if the book described really ugly clothes as Ubik did (now there’s a paperdoll I haven’t done yet that cries for a yellow houndstooth poncho and green leather boots!), but if it did the movie was ever so faithful to it. I just about cried whenever there was a closeup on Deckard’s shirt, that thing was perfectly hideous. But this outfit that Rachael wears in the beginning I liked, even if I can’t quite add the achingly noir cigarette smoke, and even if it did turn out a shade more “grey” then “black,” and even if the shoulder pads aren’t quite padded enough…

(Yes, incidentally, Brian is a graduate of the Calvin School of Art…)

Showgirl Outfit from “We’re In The Money,” The Gold Diggers of 1933

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You know this song — you’ve probably heard Bugs Bunny singing it. “We’re in the money, we’re in the money / We’ve got a lot of what it takes to get along!” Or, if you’re not a Bugs Bunny fan, perhaps you’ve seen this very scene in Bonnie and Clyde, as a short bit of sardonic commentary on their exploits. It’s from a movie called The Gold Diggers of 1933, a goofy, shiny Depression-era musical that, as far as I know, is the only movie to feature Ginger Rogers singing in Pig Latin. Upon reflection, I wonder if the coins shouldn’t have been silver…

I wouldn’t envy you, by the way, if you tried to cut this out and actually put it on a doll. Maybe drop the trailing coin boa on the one side and pretend it goes out behid her instead?