Pedigree Brighton Belle

Cute, but probably going to kill me in my sleep eventually.

  Meet this month's victim, Jenny, a 28 inch Pedigree Brighton Belle. Pedigree dolls were very popular in Australia, England and New Zealand in the 1950s. These hard-plastic dolls fade over the years to look like they've been carved from bleached bone. They have flirty eyes and a walking mechanism and a "Mama" voice box. They look a lot like the American Saucy Walker dolls. Perhaps they were made from the same moulds?


 Mine originally belonged to a family friend who got her for her birthday in about 1956. She held onto her for years, planning to pass her down to her daughters, except she only had sons. So when I was four, she passed her down to me. At that point she still had her original dress, shoes and petticoat, (although I don't remember her ever having socks or underpants) and she was wrapped in a dry cleaning bag and put away on the top shelf of our bedroom wardrobe, to keep her nice. Her original outfit was a simple, sleeveless frock of pale blue lace over a bone-coloured, nylon, taffeta petticoat.


 A few years later my mother decided that I was old enough to have her on display in my room and washed her clothes. Her dress did not survive the washing machine. Her petticoat fared better but the press stud that did it up came off and was lost. Since then her hair's gotten a little thin from being brushed and my sister cut her fringe. At some point she lost her eyebrows and eyelashes, but I don't know whether that was before I got her or not. Her eyes are a little funny and cloudy these days, she has a chip in the back of her neck because when I was ten her head fell off. The rubber band that held it on had rotted through. My Dad replaced the rubber band but her neck got chipped in the process. Her lip paint chipped off, and my Mum repainted her lips with nail polish. Her talking box was removed so it could be taken to the doll hospital to get a replacement but for some reason it never actually got replced.

This dress probably wouldn't look so frumpy if

I gave the poor kid a petticoat.

  Over the years she's had a lot of clothes. Mostly re-purposed baby clothes but my sister and I also made her clothes. Some stuff we actually sewed. Some stuff was us adding lace or puff paint to tops our brother had outgrown. All of those clothes were lost in a house fire and for a few years she just wore her petticoat. I tried making her clothes as an adult but nothing I made suited her. The cut was wrong or the colour was wrong. And then one day, by chance, I found the dress she's wearing now in an op shop. And it fits like it was made for her. . . but I hate it. The pattern looks like old sheets, the bib is too dark, the lace is too big, the bow is too bright and the little pink appliques make no sense. So when I drew 1950s for this month's theme, I decided to make her a new dress. A proper dress. Hopefully a dress that I don't hate. So far I've drafted a basic bodice pattern but haven't fitted it yet and done some research into 1950s clothes. That has surprised me. Because of the big skirts, I always think of the 1950s as being like a romanticised version of the mid-victorian period or "Gone with the Wind" but with shorter skirts. All fluffy and frothy and pretty. To my surprise, I'm finding that despite the big skirts, the fashions of the 1950s actually tended to be cut and trimmed in very structured, masculine designs.

Jenny is terrified because Petra Wobbly Legs keeps falling over on her

  I really love this doll in a way I can't really explain, possibly because I've had her forever. And she is really well made. I have a second Pedigree doll, Petra, that's about ten years younger than Jenny. Petra is 30 inches tall and she still has her original dress and shoes and a working walker mechanism but nowhere for a voice box and the quality is just not the same. Jenny is smooth hard-plastic of the kind that's almost like bakelite. Petra is mostly hard vinyl with a hard plastic torso but it's not the same hard plastic. Petra's torso is a thinner, brittle plastic with an uneven surface that feels cheap. Jenny's hair is wigged and while it has suffered in the last sixty year, it's still nice. Petra's hair is a lovely colour butit's poorly rooted and really the fact that it's a nice colour is probably the only nice thing you can say about it. Jenny's face is adorable and lifelike with an open mouth with little teeth and a tongue inside. Petra's face is pretty generic and her eyes are weirdly squished over to one side of her face. Even Petra's shoes, which are the same size and design as Jenny's, aren't as nice. The plastic feels cheaper, the moulding isn't as crisp and they use a different kind of press stud to do up which is threatening to tear through the plastic.

Poor wobbly, wonky Petra

  So I'm going to take advantage of drawing 1950s to clean Jenny up a little (nothing drastic, just a wipe down and possibly scrub her shoes because they're filthy) and make her a new dress. Something blue and faded that hopefully won't make her look washed out.