I’ve been having trouble with two of my historical dolls, Little Will and his mom Leonora. Both of them are from the 1870s, so they should be wearing historically accurate [or historically approximate] hair and clothes. To add to the fun, Leonora should be in some sort of wheeled chair. To make the fun even funner, both of them need to be more slender than my usual robust CG base because they are sickly, scrawny characters.

After a frustrating consideration of many possibilities, in the end, I’ve decided to modify articulated Barbies for both of them. I’ll just masectomize one and drastically reduce the legs for Little Will. *ominous sounds of hand saw and Dremel revving up*

I found a historically approximate outfit for Leonora. It’s from Victorian Lady Barbie. I am, however, having a hell of a time finding something for Little Will. A detailed investigation of Ebay and barbiecollector.com demonstrates that Barbies are not a reliable source of historically accurate dress, especially not for children’s fashions. I thought I’d use an “Alice in Wonderland” dress + pinafore combo, but Mattel doesn’t produce any; Azone is out, and I really don’t feel like importing one from Japan for $30.00. GRAR!