Nothing to Wear

MICHAELA: 

Hey, I’m Michaela. I work at First Person Arts. And I’m a native Philadelphian.

So Baby Evie is my doll,

MUSIC IN

I got this all when I was probably two, and I went to a Waldorf preschool. And that is significant only because Baby Evie is a Waldorf doll.

And if you don’t know what Waldorf is, um, it’s very crunchy, hippie education.

From what I understand it’s all about, like, the kid being able to use their imagination as much as possible. there was nothing in my preschool classroom made out of plastic, you know?

Side note, I didn’t learn the alphabet in preschool. So super minimalist education, very focused on play, imagination. And so Baby Evie is a doll that is very much in that Waldorf philosophy.

Really minimalist features, doesn’t have a full head of hair, just little eyes and a mouth for their face, and then, like, made out of wool and cotton, and like a knit material for the skin, a little knit hat, and then this like full body jumpsuit that is velvet.

There’s like a little tuft of, blonde hair made out of I think embroidery thread that sort of like pokes out of, her hat.

I  don’t ever know how to refer to this baby because, like, it’s so minimalist that I remember, like, there were times where, like, Baby Evie was a boy and times where Baby Evie was a girl. Baby Evie, queer icon.

Baby Evie is just this like comfort object.  Baby Evie has sort of always just like lived in the bed. Because I think there was also, like, a period of time where, like, my parents started to realize, probably, how, like, this is not an object that we could lose. And so, Baby Evie doesn’t come to sleepovers, or school, or anywhere. I remember, like, going on trips and kind of being like, I want to take Baby Evie, but then if I lose her in Blah, blah, blah, you know, there’s no coming back.

As I got older, I had other dolls.  Barbies, which I got as a gift, my mom was not happy about that, Polly Pocket, an American Girl doll that I used to spend all of my allowance buying all these outfits for.

All of these dolls are very much about buying things… accessories… you can change their outfits… which is kind of the opposite of Baby Evie.

Like, you could not change his outfit, there’s nothing to add. It’s, like, the intention is, for it to be what you imagine.

 So, yeah, even through high school, I slept with baby Evie, living in my bed, and then when I went to college I just didn’t take her with me.

I had like teddy bear that I kind of wanted to take, I didn’t want to be the person with a bunch, with a bunch of stuffed animals at college, so I just took the one and Baby Evie stayed at home.

And again, part of the calculation is like, Baby Evie lives in this bed. Like, that’s his safety zone, so I think college also felt like an environment, like, what if something happens to Baby Evie? I go to college, Baby Evie stays in my childhood bedroom at my parents house.

 I remember, leaving, and making my bed, and Baby Evie is lying on the pillow. Waiting there for me when I come home. And then over time that became less significant. I didn’t tuck them in to wait for me. Because leaving for college and coming home for college became more normal, and less of a ritual like it was the first time. It’s still all love with Baby Evie, but, there isn’t this attachment.

And so I think at one point, there was a basket of a couple of stuffed animals that all got lovingly placed in the closet, and then as more things came home and got shoved in the closet, this basket of toys and dolls is now, at the bottom of the closet, crushed under boxes.

And Baby Evie’s in that basket.

JAMIE: You’re listening to Philadelphia Revealed.

I’m your host, Jamie J, executive director of First Person Arts, a nonprofit organization that believes everyone has a story to tell.

Across 10 episodes you’re going to get a tour of the Atwater Kent collection, sometimes called Philadelphia’s attic.

It’s a collection that’s grown over the decades, acquiring Philly’s material culture from individuals, families, institutions and shuttered businesses. And sometimes literally from the trash.

In every episode of this podcast, you’ll learn about an object in the Atwater Kent collection and hear a story inspired by it from a storyteller working with First Person Arts. We think every Philadelphian will be able to see themselves in this collection, and that learning about Philadelphia’s many histories can help us understand its present — and future.

This is Episode NINE: Nothing to Wear. With storyteller Michaela Prell.

Michaela is a native Philadelphian. By day they work as the Operation’s Manager and Archivist at First Person Arts. And by night they follow their favorite band, Soup Dreams, all over Philly.

They were drawn to the Atwater Kent’s extensive doll collection. There are about 250 dolls in the collection, spanning over two hundred years, from simple handmade dolls like Michaela’s, to porcelain dolls, Vintage barbies…

But there was one doll in particular that really caught Michaela’s eye

It’s a doll from 1864, nicknamed Flora McFlimsy

MICHAELA:  I was drawn to Flora McFlimsy because, this doll and this doll’s preservation made me think of my doll from childhood. And its lack of preservation.

Flora has sort of a baby face. It’s like very round and cherub like, but then, she has the body of an adult doll. She’s wearing this, very fancy, um, old timey dress a waistcoat and a big skirt, kind of a Peter Pan collar, and then she has a lot of hair and it’s braided up into almost, like Leia from Star Wars buns, she’s very like postured and upright.

She looks very hoity toity.

STACEY:  Flora McFlimsy is this wonderful porcelain doll, hand painted. With a porcelain head, cloth extremities, and a fairly extensive collection of clothing and apparel and accessories.

MICHAELA: She has like tiny little lips, the thinnest eyebrows, and then these like big Eyes.

STACEY:  Just a lovely, Victorian doll

That’s Stacey Swigart, director of the Atwater Kent collection. Michaela had questions for Stacey

MICHAELA:  Is this doll meant to be, like, an action figure in the way I might have a Spider Man doll or action figure, or is this a doll that also has a story to go with her, kind of like American Girl Doll? // Or if this is, like, someone’s baby doll, was this object someone’s actual doll that they owned and played with? And if so, do we know whose?

MUSIC

STACEY:  She was created in part because there was this satirical poem that was published in Harper’s Weekly and the author’s name was William Allen Butler

Flora McFlimsey didn’t start out as a doll, but as a character in a long rhyming poem called Nothing to Wear

STACEY: It’s a poem, but it’s kind of a long poem, They published it in parts over the course of a series of months in 1857 // kind of a serial that came out in dribs and drabs

This writer was actually an attorney who liked to write satirical poetry and it became an instant hit. And it was all about Flora Mcflimsy and The aspect that she had nothing to wear.

By the end of 1857, the entire poem was released as a book

STACEY: We didn’t have it in the collection, but I found it at an antique book sale. And so it’s this slipcovered copy from 1857 of Nothing to Wear, and you, you pull out this great little cover, and it’s this embossed book. With the gold gilt nothing to wear illustrated

And so it says, “Nothing to Wear, an episode of City Life. Ms. Flora McFlimsy of Madison Square has made three separate journeys to Paris, and her father assures me each time she was there that she and her friend, Mrs. Harris, Not the lady whose name is so famous in history, but plain Mrs. H without romance or mystery, spent six consecutive weeks without stopping in one continuous round of shopping.”

It talks about all the things that they’re buying and seeing and buying and seeing and eating and drinking and buying and seeing and still has nothing left to wear.

Why it resonated with the American public. I don’t know, but it sure did. People loved the story.

MICHAELA: So I read this book, long poem and, yeah, it just is like a read on all women who like to wear clothes everywhere.

Michaela didn’t know what to make of the poem at first. It’s supposed to be a satire but… what’s the satire? The book is narrated by a man who seems to be dating Flora, observing her shopping habits.

MICHAELA: It just is very, like, women be shopping. It’s just like, no matter what she wore, she was never happy, and I asked her to go out to the ball with me, and she said, I didn’t have anything to wear, and I was like, what about the purple one?

And she’s like, no, I can’t wear that one. I wore it last time he’s like, what about the teal dress? And she’s like, no, teal isn’t right for this kind of weather. What about the tan dress? Uh, that’s, that’s being cleaned.

But then she’s like constantly going to Paris and buying more clothes.

It’s just like this very particular version of womanhood of like having high expectations. she gets engaged to the guy in the book and then is still like dating other guys and he’s like, I thought we were engaged and she’s like, we are but I want to date other guys and he’s like — this is all in like rhyme, of course — he’s like, well, I’m not going to date anyone else. And she’s like, yeah, you can’t.

I just, like, don’t know how to feel about it. I can’t tell if it’s, like, oh, this is funny or, like, oh, this is extremely sexist.  And I really wanna know like how it was received at the time, if it was like satire and people liked it or if it was like just kind of this guy being rude.

STACEY: The satire piece of it, it was sort of like, // I’m not gonna call it the gilded age, but the time period where there was a lot of excess.

Stacey said yes, there was probably some old fashioned sexism to the humor of the poem. But it was also being published at a crucial moment. In 1857, the Civil War is a few years away. There’s a financial crisis, known as the panic of 1857. The gap between rich and poor in America is growing

STACEY: And so Flora McFlimsy was from New York, and you had all these rich people, and they have all this stuff that they’re accumulating, and yet they still don’t have enough. // It’s this story, this poem that’s talking about, um, excess and, um, even in 1857, this was resonating and it continued to resonate for a while.

The Civil War began shortly after Nothing to Wear was published. By 1864, it was clear that Union troops would need better supplies to carry on.

STACEY: As you can imagine with any kind of turmoil, war, fighting it’s hard to keep up with, um, the supplies and things to just keep people alive.

Groups like the Sanitary Commission and its Women’s Association started to raise funds.

STACEY: They realized with all the letters home from all the different soldiers that a lot of their, you know, Loved ones were not really being cared for by the federal government // And so the Sanitary Commission was raising funds so that they could help support, send food, send socks // Anything for the benefit of their loved one that was, you know, fighting this war.

They held a “sanitary” fair in Logan Square in Philadelphia in 1864, called the Great Central Fair. It was sort like a church bazaar. Like a World’s Fair in that there were exhibits to see. But also, there were just all kinds of objects people brought to sell and donate the proceeds to the war effort.

One of those objects was a beautiful, porcelain Victorian doll.

STACEY: The doll was purchased by Mary Kuhn at the sanitary fair and she ended up commissioning all the outfits and accessories

Now we don’t know who made this doll, or how they advertised it. We don’t know if the doll originally had a name or a character.

But we do know that it was bought by a woman named Mary Kuhn. And Mary commissioned over a hundred outfits for the doll. Just like Flora McFlimsy, in the poem Nothing to Wear.

STACEY: it’s interesting because the records really don’t say, but what if we don’t know, but what if she just bought a doll and it inspired something because whatever in nothing to wear the poem resonated with Mary that she felt like she wanted to do this and, Flora the doll needed her Parisian outfits just as much as Flora in the, in the poem.

Who was the seamstress that was working on that? Cause can you imagine all these great dresses and clothing for something that’s not even 18 inches high, you know?

So I don’t imagine that it was played with. I think it was something that she could display and then change out the outfits because she was a Barbie. Old timey Barbie.

Flora has wigs, and dresses, jackets and skirt, bodices, socks, extra sleeves, extra collars, even a pair of boots

STACEY: And so she could have her winter skating outfit on during the winter season, her summer dress. If she was going to be out on the sleep porch, she would have her little night shift and, and robe that she would wear different shoes and her parasol.

She does have this look of being well loved. So I could see, Mary Kuhn, a grown woman, dressing up her doll in the different outfits at different times of the year.

The Atwater Kent collection doesn’t just have the doll. It has her whole wardrobe. Which requires careful preservation.

STACEY: For example, we have a great pair of skates and a skating outfit that belongs to Flora McFlimsy, but the leather on the skates is really thin and so over time it’s gotten a little bit what they call red rot. so some of the leather has gotten powdery. And so there’s some things that you can do, we can sort of contain it. Let’s say, um, we can’t make it fresh again. // We can do things to stabilize it.

That’s important because while Flora McFlimsy’s character was famous at the time, this doll in the Atwater Kent collection is one of a kind. Dolls had been largely homemade things, made out of rags and corncobs, but the era of the porcelain doll was just beginning. Soon, mass-produced dolls with characters and backstories would be the norm.

STACEY: I look at Flora McFlimsy not in shape and style but having some elements that you can sort of compare to like the American Girl doll because look at all the things that you can buy and you can take her to New York and have her go to the salon and have her hair redone and buy all the dresses and clothes and accessories

 I think Flora McFlimsy probably would have been an influencer if she were a real person. Totally would have been Instagramming or making TikToks about whatever her latest shoes and the parasol or jewelry that she needed to buy.

MICHAELA: Oh. My. God. That’s wild. That’s so wild. Okay, cause, I was thinking very much like, this book got so popular that they went into production of like, Take Home Your Own Flora, but there was like, one doll. And Mary Kuhns made a bunch of dresses. She was so maximalist that she had to have all these outfits for her doll.

Very much the equivalent of, like, a TikTok influencer who, like, does, like, maximalist fashion

After learning the history, Michaela saw the satire differently — and it still resonated.

MICHAELA: I’m, like, totally imagining, like, someone living on a townhouse on Delancey Street where, like, she’s, like, wealthy enough that she doesn’t have to work, buys all these doll clothes and her, like, husband who works in, like, whatever fancy Rich man job.

He has like comes home and he’s like, what’d you do today? And she’s like, got another flora outfit. And he’s like, you know, shaking his head and pouring himself a glass of scotch.

MUSIC

Learning about the Sanitary Fair also got Michaela thinking about their childhood home in Germantown.

MICHAELA: You know what’s interesting? The house that I spent half my childhood in // and is still where my parents live, was built in the 1850s // And it’s just, like, really interesting to be like, I wonder if, like, the people who lived in my house went to that fair.

MUSIC

That’s the same house where Baby Evie waited in Michaela’s bed when they left for college…

MICHAELA:  So, a few years ago I was sort of learning new things about myself and exploring myself in deeper ways. I ended up going through most days feeling really lost. It made me nostalgic for my childhood

And I found myself really missing baby Evie. It was like this genderless doll called out to me from afar.

And so I went home, to my parents house, and I dug through all of those boxes in the closet, until I found Baby Evie — stashed at the bottom.

Now keep in mind, my parent’s house being so old… it’s pretty open to the elements. Drafty. And so we’ve had a moth problem for a long time. Clothing made of wool does not last long here.

 And so when I found Baby Evie at the bottom of the closet… Baby Evie who it turns out in Waldorf style is made of natural materials and therefore STUFFED WITH WOOL…. Baby Evie had been partially eaten by moths.

MUSIC

Her little hands… her little face… they were all ruined. There are all these little holes where the moths had chewed their way through her knit fabric covering to get to the wool stuffing inside… Her body was fine — that part is made of velvet — but her face and hands, which were knit, and her knit hat… covered in little craters and gross moth debris all over her and inside of her.

Finding her like that was was surprisingly painful and emotional.

I felt my past selves inside of my body and like every single reaction they had so like two year old Michaela was having a temper tantrum. 12 year old Michaela was angry and yelling 16 year old Michaela was sobbing. I wanted to just, like, in a very dramatic way, like, fall on my knees and scream,

It was just, like, agony. // It felt like I had done a disservice of taking care of something that was so precious to my past selves. // It sort of felt like a failure to myself, like I hadn’t taken care of my baby well enough. Like young Michaela would be like, Hey, you, you forgot about what we cared about, you know?

MUSIC

MICHAELA: so this is Baby Evie. now that the hat isn’t there, you can see, like, the original color. Of the fabric, and just how like, dirty it is now, and that had nothing to do with the moths. That was just time.

MICHAELA: Baby Evie is still a part of my life.

After refinding Baby Evie, I brought them back and she now lives in my bed again.
Last night when I couldn’t sleep because it was too hot, I was holding Baby Evie.

MICHAELA: If you look here you can see the holes in the hands that have been sort of nibbled and there’s the wool that they were trying to get to underneath.

MICHAELA:  I’ve been trying to repair some of the damage.

I have crocheted three hats for this doll now. And none of them are good enough.

 I thought at one point about getting some of that knit fabric, recovering the head, and redrawing that, but I was like, I will not be able to get the eyes and mouth to look exactly the same, and then it will not be the same doll anymore.

Like those three little brushstrokes are so much of, like, what makes this doll real or alive to me. And so we’re going with the holes.

I have crocheted three hats for this doll now. And none of them are good enough.

I will still, like, look at this doll and be like, Oh my god, I’m so upset. and so every time I catch myself doing that, I’m just like, this is a reminder of how, um, life is about change. And so, this doll changed, and, um, that’s okay.

 the little, I guess, mantra I will say to myself when I, like, look at Baby Evie and, and feeling, like, Oh boy, did I screw this up?, is “to be loved is to be changed.”

I don’t think the moths were super loving, but other than that I think that like all the wear and tear on Baby Evie is the way in which, just like, love changes. Every love changes things.