Pink-Gingham (English version)

Pour la version française, voir article suivant...

When you hear Pink-Gingham... what does it make you think of ? 

In France, it immediately evokes Brigitte Bardot and the little dresses that she contributed to make fashionable in the 1950s... (Hang-on, you are thinking right now, this is not a blog about celebrity, isn't it ? Or even about fashion ? And if you do, you would be right, just read on and you’ll see...)


It does not only evoke the Pink-Gingham dress created by Jacques Esterel for Bardot's 1959 wedding with Jacques Charrier actually (photo under on left)... As we can find her several years before wearing the same Pink-Gingham fabric, elegantly dressed in a pure “Southern” style straight out of “Gone with the Wind” with crinoline, lace, little basket & all on the cover of the August 1953 Elle magazine. 

Elle Magazine - 17th August 1953

This Pink-Gingham dress is really showing her as a well-behaved young woman, rather a far cry from her first Cannes Festival photos on the beach and her audacious -for the 
time !- bikini of the same year. At only hardly 19, a pretty young age in the early 50s, she is still playing both sides successfully...

This fabric, in the 50s / early 60s, was all the rage and before it became the pin-up trademark, often also used in children clothing ranges, blue for the boys and pink for the girls... And so it is also normal to find it on their toys and dolls...

As soon as 1955, Bild Lilli (which, as we know, was not exactly a little girl toy when it was created) counts a Pink-Gingham outfit for the beach in her wardrobe.

This fabric is definitively associated with summer, youth... and novelty.

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In the 60s, the fashion doll Mily de Gégé and the Peynet doll add Pink-Gingham to their wardrobes too...

Left : Mily by Gégé wearing Fraîcheur (1964) - Right : A Peynet doll called Starlett (1960)
Doc Stylb

Lace is included in these above summer dresses for a slight villagery note (but not any village, please, St-Tropez to the least !) and a little girl touch for innocence... Mily’s 1964 outfit is “Fraicheur”, which would translate well as “youthfulness” and the 1960 Peynet doll is called Starlett of course - which is the name given to the young newbies in bikini trying to become stars at the Cannes Festival since the early days ! - so straight back to the sender !...

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But in fact, it is Patou, an Ets Jumeau baby who was the first baby doll to launch the gingham fashion in the 50s, long before BB !, a fashion followed by many other doll makers at the time :

Doc & Picture Stylb

Even Clodrey includes gingham for their dolls in 1958, for their famous JetPartout.

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All along the 60s, Pink-Gingham is still very much in fashion for dolls...

*1963 “Pimprenelle” of Bonne Nuit les Petits *1966 “Soubrette” Tressy by Bella *1965 “Me N’ my Doll” Skipper by Mattel
*1968 "Bain de Soleil" Tadie-Muz by Idé France *1942-1948 "To Market" Nancy Ann Story Book dolls USA
*1971 "School Mistress and Pupil" by Galba *1962 "Mariolina"
Dolls Stylb & Ysé / Picture Stylb

The lovely bisque little doll (second from left bottom rank) dating 1942-1948 (a Nancy Ann Story Book doll) is an example of gingham in doll fashion already in the 40s !


Gingham is lovely, so feminine and so appealing that it comes back regularly into fashion - could one ever get too much of it ?... Actually, yes !

Beauté & Bien Être (1964)
Doc Stylb

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