The IT Convention Collection Photos

While I'm waiting for the official Saturday night photos to be posted, I thought I'd post pictures of the convention collection for those who have not seen them yet.
These were optional purchase dolls. Attendees could order in advance, sight unseen, or buy one or all at the event.

It's hard to judge from these photos, but I think the winner out of this group is Natalia and the Veronique (if it is Veronique) in the white suit. The pose is hot! That suit is one of the outfits I'd like to get my hands on. The convention Natalia reminds me of the first ever Natalia, Cosmetic Takeover—the colors, the long wavy hair. Gorgeous. I think the original Natalia did not need a face lift at all. She was quite popular the way she was - with a little retained ethnicity.

The Adele is awfully under-dressed compared to the rest of the gals. She looks quite out of place. Agnes, meh. Nothing new there. The others are OK but not inspiring. At least they are not laughable which is a huge improvement over last year's bunch. Someone said "keep it simple" and that's what happened. It's all good.

Integrity Toys Convention Post #2

Here are the dolls from Friday.
The Poppy luncheon centerpiece is beautifully dressed and sophisticated.

The Poppy give-away doll has a gorgeous face.

The evening meal centerpiece was Natalia in orange! I'm not a fan of this doll but it could be worse.

 

The give-away doll was Kyori. Simple and appropriately dressed with an interesting hairstyle. I liked the old Kyori mold.

Whoever took over the reins this year has done everyone a favor...even those of us who didn't attend, (although there's less comedy involved in the review.) The dolls are prettier and the fashions aren't  immature as most were last year.

I'm wondering if Vanessa will make an appearance. I guess I'm still coming from the old school of Vanessa lovers. Perhaps she made enough appearances already in other ways this past year. What about Adele? Dasha?

Herve Leger Barbie Deboxed

I could not resist deboxing the Herve Leger Barbie Doll set.
First I took out the black and white dress and this Misaki doll who had previously been switched to a NuFace body got to try it on. The boots belong to another doll as do the earrings.
Perfect!

The dresses are made extremely well. I haven't removed the red dress or the harness belt from the Barbie doll but I could see the quality of construction. The harness has a zipper! That was quite unexpected considering that Mattel uses Velcro so often.

I wish this doll was articulated. It's ridiculous to have such beautiful fashions on a rigid doll.

Integrity Toys 2013 Convention

While I'm listening to the news about a shooting at LAX...a few miles from there the IT convention is taking place. Hopefully it's not causing any concern to the attendees although it is cause for concern that this keeps happening over and over again in the US.

So far the dolls look very nice. This Monogram was a give away in the welcome bag:

Here's a gorgeous 'hair workshop' Elise. I think she's may be the convention winner since the eBay prices are going sky high for her.

Eugenia was the first centerpiece and is styled with a vintage flair. Her hair is gorgeous. I like her grey eyebrows as they don't overwhelm her face.  Eugenia collectors will be thrilled. I understand she's got the new FR2 body.

Looks to me like there is more control over the designs this year...no freaky colors - so far. If everything is black, no one can complain about color.

Cirque! New Bitten Sybarite Available Today

This is Cirque. She is posted for sale at Superdoll.
Here is the description (for those not inclined to go to the page themselves.)

CIRQUE DD_070


GEN 3:2
Fugu clone: 0702
HALLOWEEN 2013

SET THE BATS FREE!

Eyes of oxblood, lids dusted in ruby and charcoal eyeshadow, multiple liner in grey & black. Lips of blackened blood.
Lounging as she does in a nude silk satin kimono bearing custom 'free the bats' print and gilt SUPERDOLL seal. All of this with 2 tone tie belt. Underneath she wears bleeding skull and crossbone corselet and panties with matching hose and stiletto's.
Hair of beige, coiffed to within an inch of her vicious brows and cascading into tumbling retro curls.
Accessories consist her mask, matching skull and crossbone armlets and 'gold' AW tag earings.

Includes doll stand and applied eyelashes.
Production may vary from prototype shown >!!VIEW SUPERIMAGE!!<
In stock

Price: £397.00 (Excluding VAT at 20%)

I think she's the most glamorous Fugu yet. Her eyes, the color of her lips, the wig all contribute to a smoldering, sexy look. As far as the bite marks...the jury is out on that for now. It's better than fangs in any event.

How much is £397.00 you ask?
USD $636.73 or Euro 467.67

And then there's shipping, of course.

Robert Tonner Featured in Ulster Magazine

Reproduced here is a fascinating biography which appears in the current issue of Ulster Magazine. Ulster is an upstate New York county in which the Tonner Doll Company is located.  It's very worthwhile reading!

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Robert Tonner is “one of the most influential doll designers of all time,” says Pat Henry, publisher of Fashion Doll Quarterly magazine and a book about Tonner

Doll Doyen

Robert Tonner’s designs set the industry standard

By Steve Israel

Photos by Michael Bloom

ROBERT TONNER'S DESIGNS SET THE DOLLMAKER"S LONG, improbable journey to Paris’ Louvre Museum and Hollywood’s “Harry Potter” and “Twilight” films starts in the small Midwestern farming town of Bluffton, Ind.

That’s where Kingston’s Robert Tonner was the shy son of a mother who was so sick for so long – from encephalitis, sleeping sickness and then cancer – she literally spent years in bed. Tonner’s father, who designed truck bodies, had to pay so much for his wife’s medicine – $125 per week on his $100-per-week salary – that he would move his family from one home to another because he could never afford the mortgage payments.

Robert Tonner escaped this bleak world of the 1950s and ’60s by doing the one thing he knew he could do since he was 3 years old: draw, especially the immaculately detailed, colorful superheroes such as Superman, who took him further away from that gray world.

“I would literally draw for hours and hours,” he says in his wood-paneled office in Kingston, surrounded by glass-encased shelves of the fruits of that drawing, his dolls, from his world-renowned, multimillion-dollar Tonner Doll Co.

Robert Tonner would draw, design and sculpt his way to become “one of the most influential doll designers of all time,” according to Pat Henry, publisher of Fashion Doll Quarterly magazine and a book about Tonner.

Not only have his dolls been displayed in the Louvre – the home of the Mona Lisa – his exquisite, immaculately proportioned designs have earned him the exclusive rights to bring Harry Potter, Superman, Spider-Man and a slew of other film and comic book characters to doll-like life around the world.

They’ve also earned him the praise of fellow doll designers who say he’s elevated doll making, and marketing, to an art.

“He’s like Steve Jobs; he has that innovative spirit,” says Helen Kish, head of a doll-collector business, Denver’s Kish and Co., who describes Tonner’s dolls as “objects of beauty.’

“He’s not only a fantastic sculptor and awesome clothing designer, he’s also a great businessman. He has his pulse on what people need, and he’s right there to give it to them, even if they don’t know it yet.”

Tonner’s dolls, priced from about $60 to $400, may bring the meticulously real world of glamour, fashion and fantasy to millions, but the story of the man who dreams them, designs them, draws them, sculpts them and sells them is grounded in a harsh reality.

So sure, as a chubby little boy who even put a towel on his shoulders to make believe he could fly like Superman, Tonner dreamed of superheroes with superpowers. But his own life often seemed like the stuff of a bleak Dickens novel. Tonner was so poor that the best childhood gift he ever received was a stack of blank newsprint on which he could draw.

His other thrill seems old-fashioned in these instant-gratification days when kids take to Twitter, Flickr and YouTube as naturally as they once played with dolls. On those rare days when Tonner’s mother was well enough to get out of bed, she showed Robert how to use the family’s Singer sewing machine. It wasn’t long before he was creating designs for clothes that again took him away from his grim reality. He still marvels at his first design come true: an Easter dress for his sister.

“It was a whole thing where you have nothing, and then all of a sudden, you have something,” says Tonner, 61, who now actually embraces Twitter, Flickr and YouTube to sell his dolls.

So it would seem logical that Tonner would use his drawing, sewing and designing skills to escape Bluffton, especially because the “painfully shy” boy discovered he was gay at a time and in a place no one mentioned – let alone acknowledged – such a thing.

“You got the impression nothing was worse,” Tonner says. “You got the idea your core was flawed.”

But as for embarking on a life of art right after high school?

Who did that in Bluffton, Ind.?

Everyone there, says Tonner, had something to do with farming or the town’s hospital.

Besides, magazines that might have inspired Tonner – such as Glamour or Vogue – were practically unheard of in Bluffton in the ’60s.

“Just Corn (Corn and Soybean Digest) magazine and American Tractor,” he says.

So Tonner decided to study medicine, which he did at colleges in Indiana, Louisiana and Colorado, even though his heart wasn’t in it.

But when three friends moved to New York City and invited him to join them, Tonner jumped at the idea, even though it meant working in a factory in New Jersey, doing something far removed from the fashion industry that would embrace him: stuffing garbage bags into boxes.

Then, one summer’s day in 1973, he found himself in Greenwich Village, walking past one of the great art schools in the world: Parsons School of Design. Amazingly, its summer session was offering a course in drawing and sewing, the prerequisite for fashion design.

Hundreds of dolls are on display at Tonner’s retail store on Hurley Avenue in Kingston.

 

 

Tonner was so good at what he’d already been doing that he won a scholarship for the fall semester.

By 1976, he ended up with one of the top fashion designers in the world, Bill Blass, thanks to a model who suggested he apply for a job. But he was still shy enough – “very, very, devilishly shy,” says Kish – that when he met with Blass’ lawyer to draw up a contract, he only managed to ask for the relatively paltry yearly salary of $25,000 – still enough to pay for his $125-per-month five-floor walk-up apartment between 21st and 22nd streets on the East Side of Manhattan.

But this is how the withdrawn Midwestern kid began to expose himself to the world. When Blass sent him to Paris and London to check out the latest fashions and fabrics, Tonner, who says he’d “barely stayed at Holiday Inns,” marveled at something as simple as a hotel room mini bar.

“I took all the candy, all the peanuts, and then they’d fill it up again,” he says, his voice still tinged with wonder, even after some 30 years.

Not only was Tonner designing everything from down jackets to women’s sportswear, but he was also learning to sculpt his designs. And then, just as his life changed when he’d walked past Parsons, it changed again when, in the early 1980s, he walked through one of the world’s ultimate toy shops, FAO Schwarz.

He saw a display of European-designed Sasha dolls, with their trademark mitt hands and bodies that were, he says “so beautifully proportioned.”

When he decided to try his hand at sculpting his own dolls, he realized that “all my interests were coming together.”

He began collecting dolls, reading about the history of dolls and experimenting with material and form to create his own dolls – papier maché first, then dipped in peach-colored paint for a real look. Every night, after working 12-hour days as a designer, he’d work on those dolls.

“I was obsessive about it,” he says, “like drawing.”

Finally, frustrated that he couldn’t be creative in the supposedly creative business of fashion design – not being able to design a skirt in the perfect color because the buyer said it wouldn’t sell – Tonner decided to give his all to doll making.

His career – and life – changed forever in the late ’80s when he bought a house in the Hudson Valley spot where his friends had a home: the postcard-pretty Ulster County hamlet of Stone Ridge, where hipster stars such as Daniel Craig and Rachel Weisz now live.

That’s where, instead of the flat fields of Indiana, there were trees, streams and a waterfall – in his backyard. That’s also where he met the man who would become his husband, his partner of 27 years, Realtor Harris Safier.

As Tonner grew comfortable with his new surroundings, and himself, he also grew as a doll maker, experimenting with material such as porcelain or plastic, and with the types of dolls he would sculpt: fashion dolls such as Betsy McCall, who represented a “change from the chubby infant to a thinner young girl,” Tonner says on one of the many videos on his web site.

He also changed how the dolls were sold and manufactured, at first enlisting his sister-in-law to sew the hip fashions this former Bill Blass designer designed, then enlisting his brother-in-law to create an assembly line. When he found an overseas manufacturer who could produce his dolls at, say $12 per figure, instead of the $23 it cost him for parts alone, Tonner Doll Co. really took off. He grew so successful that in 2007 he was able to buy one of America’s oldest doll companies, Effanbee, which made the porcelain Little Orphan Annie, Patsy and Brenda Starr dolls. He not only won the exclusive rights to make what Pat Henry calls his “ridiculously perfect” dolls for Hollywood blockbusters such as the “Harry Potter” and “Twilight” series, but he also acquired the right to design perennially selling dolls for such timeless movies as “Gone With the Wind.” And as every new media technology emerged – from YouTube to Twitter – Tonner was always the first in the industry to use them to publicize and sell his dolls.

But for all his success – enabling him to donate to local causes such as Kingston hospitals and the LGBTQ Community Center – he’s never lost that little shy boy obsession with creating something from nothing. Even though he has a staff of about 20, Tonner still retreats to a tiny 8-by-10-foot room in Tonner Doll headquarters to sculpt his latest designs. It’s there, near an old Singer sewing machine, that he was recently sculpting an anatomically perfect version of a character that remains one of his all-time favorites: Superman.

_____________________________________

Article and Photographs

© 2013 Hudson Valley Media Group      

40 Mulberry Street, Middletown, NY 10940

Picture of the Day by Patty in Hawaii

The boards are awash with Halloween themed photos this week. This one from Patty in Hawaii is quite unusual. How did she get Phoenix Gene into the arms of Dracula?

Gene doesn't look too concerned.

Picture of the Day by Lisa

Lisa at "Every Day A Dollie" posted two gorgeous fall themed photos on her blog today. I love both of them. This one reminds me so much of where I used to live.

Not only is Lisa a wonderful photographer, but she writes beautifully as well:

Autumn is in full swing. The chimney’s been swept and flames crackle along the logs in the fireplace. A nip is in the air and a wicked wind blows. The trees have taken on burning hues, molting their leaves and spicing the cooling breeze with their scent. Time to bundle up the dollies and capture it through the lens of a camera…

LINK: Every Day A Dollie

Sometimes you have to see things differently.

Arrived: Herve Leger Barbie

She looks as good as the promo photos. I like the mixed blondes used for her hair. which is even prettier in person than in the pictures!

Herve Barbie reminds me of Katniss. Is this a unique sculpt? Perhaps an expert out there can tell us.

The dresses are perfection. They appear to be very well constructed. The fabric used stretches which means that they will fit my other 12" dolls. If and when I debox, I'll check on her harness to see if it fits.

 

 This bag looks sloppy with lots of strings and uneven edges. It can be trimmed.
 The plastic boots are meh. I don't care for the doll herself primarily because of her body.

If enough people can get past the price, the doll will be very successful. Many Barbie collectors do not debox and this is the perfect presentation for that purpose. The packaging is zombie-proof. The fun print inside the box of photographers taking pictures is great as a backdrop. I'd like a large fabric print of that to use.

I ordered two Herve Leger Barbies, one for me and one for a friend. The first one I ordered from Amazon.es (Amazon.com in Spain) on 9/10/13. The price came out to be a little lower including shipping and I have her already. I guess they went directly to Europe from China cutting out the overseas shipping and/or duties. Who knows?

Superdoll's Third Annual Convention: The Dolls

Here are the three new Sybarite dolls from the convention which took place in London over the weekend. I hope to find full length pictures soon. These are from Superdoll's Facebook page.

 Friday

 Morpheme

Sitar

Back in the Doll Room Again

I'm happy to report that today was the first full day without a horrible back spasm. I did not miss them at all.
Yesterday I kept busy by photographing an assortment of new and redressed dollies.
Two of the latest Tiny Kitty dolls arrived and they are lovely additions to my TK collection.
Besides the rise in price, I do notice a lack of detail and accessories. Tonner always impressed me with his handling of fabric in that there would be some sort of embellishment be it embroidery or beading or something. That's not included with these gals. There are no purses and the shoes are the kind that has the twisty elastic. But I do love their faces and hairstyles so I'm happy with them. First up is "Dinner Dance."

Below is "Pink Champagne." She is also seen in the third photo along with the TK from MDC.

They did come with earrings but I took the pictures before inserting them. One of these days I am going to set up all my TKs with their furniture and other props for a big photo shoot. One day.....

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Before an Integrity Toys convention there is always a flurry of great sales. Luckily I'm not particularly in the market for any of their products but when someone offered this two piece outfit from A Fashionable Life Gift Set, I snapped it up. I sold mine so long ago and I thought it would look divine on one of my Silkies. I was right. 

The quality of design and construction was so good under Jason's helm. If you didn't already know, all of the fashions made to fit the dolls prior to the "tall body" fit Silkstones perfectly-including the shoes. So if you see a gorgeous fashion from that "era" buy it if the price is right. Your Silkies can show it off to it's best advantage. They can also wear "Monogram" doll and "NuFace" doll clothes as well as shown below.

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One of the outfits I purchased at Metrodolls, "Smoking," fits the Tyler body best of all.

The pants and shoes fit the resin Gene body beautifully but the rest of the fashion (halter, bustier, jacket, skirt) fit Tyler (Sydney, etc.) best. 
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A new Cissette joined the tribe. She is The White Witch of Narnia. So cute!!!!

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The Ficon doll known as Miss G White arrived. I am very happy with her. I have her in her sister's outfit and a wig by Ilaria. 

She is posing with Toxica who is wearing part of an outfit from Every Day's a Holiday. 

Toxica's wig is by Chewin and was made to fit a JamieShow male. Unfortunately that male is not Alejandro and I have no other wigged males. Soooo, I heated this wig in a heating pad a few times to shape it and I trimmed it a little. I like it on her - for a change of pace.

_____________________________________

Violet was also in the doll room trying on one of Sandra Stillwell's fashions from Radio Days.

I'm not thrilled with it. The background is too busy anyway. It is a busy room!

Now you want to know who that handsome Devil is, don't you? He's Devil Damon, an Integrity Toys' doll. Yes, I do still buy some of their dolls if they are extraordinary. He is definitely not ordinary.

They say the horns are removable but I don't think I'm taking them off just yet. 

He is a dangerous character having already attacked one of my Elises.

Well that's about all I'm going to stuff into this overly long, run-on post tonight. 

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Wait.....I forgot one thing. Here is a picture of the largest sunflower head I ever grew. It  measured 14" across (not counting the petals or anything.) Do you believe this? We have the worst fricking soil and this thing grows 12' tall and 14" across. And it's not the only one. 

"Forever Ellowyne" Revealed!!!

The Wilde Imagination Convention souvenir, "Forever Ellowyne," is stunning. She has pale 'skin', platinum rooted hair with dark streaks made into braids, red lips, blue eyes and a delicate off white dress.

See more pictures on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Wilde-Imagination/178266462209673