As you know Naomi and I have been spending some time sorting out a giant box of vintage paper dolls and clothes that she bought from eBay recently.  We have made very good progress in identifying many dolls and outfits but there are still some we are having trouble with.

Naomi thinks that the seller was probably not a collector and bought the dolls as a job lot then portioned them out as different eBay lots without sorting them out so we have dolls with no clothes or not all their clothes and clothes with no dolls.

One particular costume has been hard to identify and last week she said to me “Could you show this on your doll blog and see if anyone out there knows where it came from because it is driving me around the bend. ”

So here it is.

This is a very old outfit we think as the paper it is on is quite yellowed at the back. It looks to us as if it is meant for a member of a royal family and I’d say it was twentieth century. I’d like to say I think it is a member of the British Royal family but who?

There were several paper doll books of the British Royals made but this outfit does not appear to be in the Coronation set which is where I’d hoped to find it. Nor is it in the one featuring the Queen Mother. It is certainly not from one of the more recent Tom Tierney books.

This is for a large paper doll as the outfit measures about 22 cms (about 8 3/4 inches) from the shoulder to the bottom of the train. My guess is that it would be from the 1950s or earlier.

So are there any Paper Doll  Detectives out there that may have seen this before?

We do have one other outfit which Naomi thinks may be from the same set. It is about the same size and the paper is pretty much the same although it may not be for the same doll. Here it is.

As always if anyone has any information please leave it in comments or email me. I do not want my sister to go round the bend.