Revisiting paper dolls: Fashion design goes retro

We’re up at a rustic cottage in Maine for a few days and invited our cousins up for some fun at the lake.  Santana, Madeleine and Maeve are designing paper dolls and creating many beautiful outfits for their paper dolls – the old fashioned way, without any templates, all by hand with some love and lots of attention to each detail.  Talk about inspiration.  These girls have designed some amazing creations and patterns that could be incorporated into beautiful, trendy fabric patterns.  I particularly like the yellow pattern with flowers.  Very colorful and reminds me of our sunny summer afternoon spent by the lake.   This reminds me of the time I spent with my mother designing clothes together when I was Maddie’s age.  Sewing seems to be a lost art these days and so few of us have the time or the talent to really create the masterpieces we dream about wearing.

Santana told me she wants to be a fashion designer when she grows up.   We don’t see them nearly as often as we’d like and we rarely talk about our business, so I was so happy to hear her say “FashionPlaytes is totally awesome.  It inspires you to be creative.” She rattled off all the designs she has in her collection and called many of them by name.

It’s a real treat for our kids to get together and an even bigger treat for me to hear how much others LOVE playing on FashionPlaytes.  For Madeleine, she keeps a keen eye out for girls wearing FashionPlaytes and pretty much lets me know when she sees girls she doesn’t know wearing custom designs.  Going to our kids’ end of year receptions and plays, it was special to see girls wearing dresses that they designed on FashionPlaytes.  Some of the mothers tell me that their daughters wear their outfits at least once each week, and would wear them daily if they’d let them!  What a complement.

Keep designing ladies! We want your help in creating our next graphic designs, fabric pattern and silhouettes for our product line.  Please send us pictures of your designs (and photos of you in your FashionPlaytes outfits, too!) and let us know what you’d like to see in our line next!  Look for upcoming contests where we ask you to help us with designs.  We love your ideas and absolutely adore hearing from you!

Sarah McIlroy

Founder/CEO, FashionPlaytes