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rosyronkey · 6 months

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hi! i wrote an essay about rosy ronkey and her clothes, and i hypothesized what time period i think shes from/inspired by ^^ below if you wanna read more :))

ive been fixated (or had a special interest or whatever you want to call it) on rosy ronkey for a YEAR today. i've always been pretty interested in her outfit from an aesthetically pleasing point of view, but recently i wanted to see if i could find any trends and time periods in the inspirations of her clothes, which is what this essay is about! it’s going to be an explanation of most of her clothes, top to bottom, from what i can assume with the research i've done. i say research, but i probably don’t have the best sources? they’ll be linked below, but it was really more cross-referencing than anything else lol

i reached out to annie montgomerie for comment/criticism, but she’s obviously very busy and i enjoyed my research from a subjective point of view :)

basic specs on rosy (no one else but me cares): looking at rosy, the only zoomorphic, or animal looking, aspect of hers is her head. judging by proportions and cross-referencing, she looks to have the body of an american girl doll. this is just what i’ve noticed, but annie’s most recent stuff is way less anthropomorphized compared to rosy and the group she was made with. looking at annie’s most recent exhibit, hand me downs, every single piece is completely animal, with hand-sculpted claws, paws, wings and hooves. some of these dolls legs still look like american girl doll legs, but most everything else is animalistic. this isn’t important, but i just thought id mention it because artists’ growth over time is cool!

starting with her coat, it looks like a double-breasted red childrens’ coat with two rows of two buttons each. these kinds of coats are still available today, but i could find the closest matches by looking at 1920s childrens’ coats, specifically rothschild coats. the rothschild family has a long and complicated history, but all that’s important to know is that they are new york based (which doesn’t totally fit my assumptions about her; in general i assume all of annie montgomerie’s dolls are british because of her nationality) and they’ve been in business for over 100 years. by cross-referencing the growing style of double-breasted coats in the 1920s, and the style of rothschild childrens’ coats in ads from the time, i feel like it’s easy to assume rosy's character has this coat, or at least was very heavily inspired by it.

a theory i’ve seen before is that the ticket on her coat is a luggage label. these were used during WWII to evacuate british children during the blitz. the history press site says luggage labels listed “name, school and evacuation authority,” and is also where i got most of my information. i want to tentatively deny this theory. i'm pretty sure the ticket is an annie montgomerie staple opposed to a part of rosys' character. she's shown with the tag in the yorkshire sculpture park video, and on gerard way’s website, but she’s missing it in all the photos posted by annie montgomerie herself on facebook and instagram. almost every single annie montgomerie piece on display or for sale has a tag as well. i love this theory, and it’s probably what got me interested in researching her outfit in the first place, but i don’t think i could prove it if i tried.

other than the ticket, she has white roses on the left side of her coat and some smaller twigs? sticks? pinned to her collar. white roses symbolize purity, youthfulness, innocence, and in some contexts, respect for the departed. i couldn’t find any historical photos of children with roses in their outfits, but across the board that was the result i got for their meaning. i can’t discern what she has on her right collar for the life of me, if someone else can figure this out, PLEASE tell me

her dress is pink, with a cinched embroidered waist and a peter pan collar. peter pan collars became popular in the 1920s, and have been a staple of childrens’ dresses since (sources for this one were a few blogs and wikipedia, but also some ads, so i feel pretty confident with it.) some ads for girls’ dresses in the 1920s had the same soft pleats and embroidered waist as seen on rosys’ dress. i don’t think there’s a meaning behind the color, except that it compliments the red coat and her fur.

her stockings are standard, I couldn’t find much special meaning behind them, british children have been wearing stockings forever, and for girls especially, stockings became more popular in the 1920s as dresses got shorter. usually they were sheer and nude, and rosys’ look like the gray kind kids wear today, but i think it’s still period appropriate to an extent. her shoes look like red mary janes for american girl dolls, just more scuffed and dirtied. mary jane shoes themselves have been around for a while (called “bar shoes” originally,) but they got their name in 1904. in one of the first drafts for this, i read the fairy tale “the red shoes” to see if it offered any insight. i thought it’d be fun to relate, but it’s just a popular danish fairy tale, and it was hard for me to entertain the idea for long.

TLDR: i think rosy ronkeys outfit is inspired by british 1920s fashion!

that’s all I have! i apologize if this was underwhelming or overwhelming or whatever, i had no model to base this off of and the only tumblr essays i read are from my friends <3 i hope you enjoyed! i love rosy ronkey!

link to my dumbfuck google doc with all the links and braindump on it :)

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