Digital fashion, as seen in a previous post, can certainly be a fun game as it offers people the chance to pick garments and accessories and play around with them, using them to dress up models in a videogame or an app, or overimposing the designs on their own pictures.
But can you think of a time when there were no computers or smartphones, and can you think of a medium that still allowed ordinary people to play with outfits and share them as well? Yes, the '40s and comics, correct!
Among the earliest examples of this trend there is "Jane Arden", a daily newspaper comic strip created by writer Monte Barrett and artist Frank Ellis. It ran from 1928 to 1968 and featured a brave girl reporter busy on infiltrating and exposing criminal activity.
On Sundays the daily strip turned into a Jane Arden paper doll accompanied with several items, all of them designed by readers, who would therefore use the comic to share their fashion style tips.
Another interesting example is "Flyin' Jenny", an adventure comic strip created by illustrator Russell Keaton and distributed to newspapers by Bell Syndicate from 1939 to 1946 (Gladys Parker and Marc Swayze took over after Keaton's premature death).
The daily and Sunday strip focused on the adventures of Jenny Dare (modelled on Keaton's wife Virginia), a test pilot at the Starcraft Aviation Factory, always ready to fight against spies, saboteurs and criminals and to take part in missions for the Army Intelligence and in combat missions in Europe.
Jenny was a strong woman in a world dominated by male pilots, that's why the character and her stories became a hit with girls.
Yet Jenny wasn't just into planes: "Flyin' Jenny" featured on Sundays a special section, entitled "Jenny's Style Shop", consisting in a paper doll with clothes and accessories.
The latter were designed by readers who were encouraged to send in their suggestions.
On the Internet you will easily find scanned strips from this comic, with Jenny and various outfits, from workwear to evening gowns, swimsuits and items ideal to go on a mountain holiday.
Including a paper doll in a comic was a popular trend in the '40s and the '50s, and the tradition of having readers suggesting clothes for a comic book heroine continued in different publications.
Among the others we can remember Dale Messick's chic "Brenda Starr" for the Chicago Tribune Syndicate; "Patsy Walker", created by writer Stuart Little and artist Ruth Atkinson and published by Marvel, and super cool African American heroine "Torchy Brown", by African American cartoonist Jackie Ormes.
One of the most popular of such comic heroines remains Katy Keene, a character created by Bill Woggon, that appeared in several comic book series published by Archie Comics since 1945. Katy was a model, actress and singer marketed by the publisher as "America's Queen of Pin-Ups and Fashions".
Readers would submit original drawings of outfits and accessories as well as designs for automobiles, homes, interiors, rocket ships, trailers and boats.
The best thing was that Katy had a lot of friends and readers would dress them according to their personalities, so Katy's kid sister Sis would often wear designs with candies or ice-creams; Lucki Red Lorelei's fans opted for clothes and accessories with clubs, spades, hearts, diamonds and horseshoes (they seemed to have anticipated Franco Moschino's styles...) and Bertha Bumples' fans came up with a wardrobe for a curvy pin-up.
In a way there are parallelisms between this trend and modern apps offering users the chance to play around with fashion.
The main difference stands in the fact that, in the case of the comics, the outfits were more original as readers created their own pieces, while users who want to have fun with digital fashion in an app can only use garments and accessories by specific brands sponsoring that specific app or collaborating with it at some level. So, is anybody interested in reviving this tradition of dressing up comic book heroines in paper clothes designed by readers?
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