Doll-Inspired Fashions

I'm just sitting here in my basement on a block of ice, trying to recover from my friend Stephanie's spin class. I feel like I've been attacked and I cannot figure out for the life of me why it's not "cool" to wear padded biking shorts to spin class. You're sitting on a bike, aren't you? A little extra protection might be nice.

But I digress. We have much more important things to discuss: Someone out there has noticed that my girl Kate Middleton is a living, breathing Samantha doll. I'm ashamed I hadn't already noticed this - but it is true, as you can see from a few of the photos from Huffington Post:

I'm not one to criticize Kate, ever, but I think Samantha had a nice idea to add a hat and muff to this presh coat. I'm sure Kate agrees and is having one made as we speak.

Now, I must admit that I was never a big Samantha Parkington fan. No offense to all you Samantha lovers out there, but she was a little too uppity for me with her brass bed, rich grandmama and perfect hair. I preferred Molly McIntyre with her bangs and braids. A little nerdy, sure, but I felt like I could really take her under my wing and make her almost as cool as me (as you'll see in the pictures to come, I was VERY cool at this stage in my life). Then Felicity Merriman came along with her velvet covered horse, and I liked her too.

I liked Molly so much, in fact, that I dressed as Halloween Molly on not one, but two consecutive Halloweens:

circa 1991

Totally amateur the first time. As you can see, the flowers in my hair are red, which was clearly never part of Molly's costume, and Molly had no creepy Halloween mask like I did. I also did not have Molly's sweet saddle oxfords.  Very lame.

circa 1992

The next year, we did much better. I had a yellow flower in my hair, just like Molly, and got Molly a mini mask to match mine. I hope you appreciate my red socks, which also match Molly's, but still no saddle oxfords.  I remember being infuriated that my mom made me wear stretch pants under my skirt. Molly's mom clearly did not make her do that.  Also, the mini-werewolf was a nice addition.
So, having clearly excelled at being Molly for a couple of years and having received Felicity for my birthday, I turned my attention to being Lissy.  In fact, I may have just unbraided my Molly braids to achieve the carelessly beautiful waves below:

circa 1993. At what point is one too old for this? I was 9 here.

I truly hope this picture was taken on the next Halloween and not, like, the first day of school, but that's a question we may never have the answer to. I must now give a shout-out to my cousin Katie, who passed this get-up down to me after she was done with it. That's what family's for.

So anyway, thus ends another chapter of "Princess Kate is just like Allie." Though this time, I think it's clear who inspired who. I was into American Girl Doll fashion twenty years ago, while Kate seems to have just bought in in the last year or so. But I forgive her. Trends do take a while to get across the pond.