Bleuette's History: 1905 to 1914

            Bleuette is a small articulated bisque doll made in Paris from 1905 until 1957.  She was the invention of the Paris publisher, Henri Gautier, and his staff at the girls’ magazine, La Semaine de Suzette, published every Thursday from 1905 until 1960, with six years off due to the German occupation of France during WWII.

            Bleuette springs from the fashion doll and the magazine mannequin traditions.  Her continued popularity is mainly due to her stylish wardrobe, which came from two sources: magazine sewing patterns and ready-made clothing.

When Bleuette came on the doll scene, French magazines had long been publishing doll clothing patterns, beginning with the magazine La Poupée Modéle in 1876.  This magazine helped its readers clothe their fashion dolls, bébés, and Mignonettes. It also offered dolls for sale that matched the patterns found in its pages.  These were sometimes called doll mannequins since their main purpose was to model the fashions.

            From the very first issue of La Semaine de Suzette, patterns for Bleuette were published for the creation of a wardrobe specially designed to fit her. Continuing the magazine pattern tradition, Gautier Publications created more than 1,000 patterns exclusively for Bleuette over their fifty five year run.

            The first pattern in 1905 was for a drop-waist dress with ruffled hem and sleeves and ribbon trim.  This same dress is shown being worn by Bleuette in the first advertisements in La Semaine de Suzette  that offered Bleuette for sale.  The pattern text suggested to the reader that she must first clothe her new doll before introducing her to friends.  The dress was called Robe de Maison or At-Home Dress.  The intent of the magazine was to teach its readers the niceties of housekeeping, including sewing and fashionable dressing with the least expense involved.  Young readers were encouraged to use their mothers’ dressmaking scraps to dress Bleuette, and not ask for new fabric.

            This did not appeal to every reader, though, and many wrote to the magazine to ask for shoes, socks, hats, and dresses that they could purchase for their Bleuettes.  Gautier Publications saw an opportunity, and slowly but surely entered the doll clothing business.  In Paris there had long been shops devoted entirely to fashions, furniture, and accessories for well-to-do dolls, especially the poupée de mode or fashion doll.  As early as 1906, Gautier Publications was supplying Bleuette with replacement wigs and button-up boots; some articles of lingerie came next.  Before Christmas in 1906 an ad for ready-made clothing including dresses and hats was published in La Semaine de Suzette.  An ink-colored school smock (below) and a lace-trimmed apron were two of the items, and they continued to be sold in up-dated versions for the next fifty years or more.

            By 1914 a long list of ready-mades was advertised in La Semaine de Suzette.  For the first time the ad showed a photograph of an actual Bleuette wearing the Red Cross nurse’s uniform that was included in the list of costumes and accessories.

            Beginning in 1916 and continuing through 1959, the Gautier firm (which became Gautier-Languereau, when Gautier’s son-in-law was made a partner in 1917) offered a selection of ready-made clothing and accessories for sale for their magazine’s doll, Bleuette.  The clothing was beautifully made for them by a cottage industry of seamstresses, and was sold exclusively from the publishers’ offices. It is rumored that these seamstresses may have been couture house needleworkers who wanted to earn extra money or work at home. Twice a year the subscribers of La Semaine de Suzette  would receive a small catalog in the mail for the Summer or Winter Season, offering the latest styles in dresses, shoes, lingerie, coats, hats and handbags for Bleuette.

            When Henri Gautier decided his brand new magazine for girls would have a special doll associated with it, he turned to the largest doll maker in France, the SFBJ.  In English it is the “Society of Makers of Dolls and Toys.”   Formed from a half-dozen or so individual companies in 1899, the SFBJ partners brought a large number of doll molds and manufacturing patents to the new group including the factory, inventory, porcelain kilns, and molds of the famous Jumeau company.

Bisque dolls are identified by their head-molds, and so it is with Bleuette.  Her first mold was a Jumeau bébé with pierced ears and a size 1 and/or 2 marked head on a size 2 articulated wood and composition body which had shorter thighs and size 1 legs and feet.  

Instead of the usual size 2 doll of 28cm (11”), Bleuette was 27cm (10 & 5/8”) with a head circumference of 18.5cm (7.25”)  The dolls had blue (and probably also brown) paperweight eyes, four teeth in an open mouth, and a mohair wig.  Gautier ordered an unknown number of these dolls to be made to promote the magazine’s start, and he gave away one free to each new subscriber for a limited time.  

She was advertised as “a beautiful little Jumeau doll of 27cm” in the ad for the new magazine that appeared in Gautier publications.  After the special promotion was over, Bleuette was continuously sold by the publishers from their offices until the SFBJ went out of business in 1957.

            No one knows the reason another head mold began to be made by the SFBJ for Bleuette; perhaps it was to make more dolls quickly to meet the demand for them, or to save on costs, or because of a technical issue with the manufacturing process.  After the initial Jumeau-mold dolls, Bleuette was marked 6/0 and had a different face/mold.  

Because the SFBJ director was German and owned a porcelain doll factory in Germany, experts now believe that the 2^nd mold for Bleuette was German, and further that the heads were made for the SFBJ in Germany, where production costs were lower.  Other SFBJ dolls at the time were known to have been made in Germany, and the mark 6/0 is a typically German size mark.

            The 1914 photograph of Bleuette mentioned earlier is a photo of the 6/0 mold Bleuette.  This has given rise to speculation that the 6/0 was actually the first Bleuette, but the ad for the first Bleuette (with engraved illustration of the doll) clearly states she is a “Jumeau doll.”  The 6/0 mold could never truthfully have been advertised as a Jumeau doll.  In spite of the change in head mold, Bleuette had the same French-made body and remained 27cm tall.  The earliest documented 6/0 Bleuette was found in her original Gautier-labeled box stamped with a postmark of 1907, but the mold may have been in use as early as 1905, when the publishers ran out of Jumeau mold dolls.

            Because Bleuette had fashions from two parallel sources, the magazine patterns and the catalog of ready-made clothing, it can be a little confusing when Bleuette fans discuss  her ensembles.  Both the magazine and the catalog fashions are now being actively reproduced by Bleuette aficionados.  The La Semaine de Suzette pattern fashions are identified by their year and the issue number, for example, LSDS 1911, #15, and they have simple descriptive titles like “Summer Dress,” or “Wool Hat.”  The catalog fashions are more fancifully named, for example, “Bouquet” for a floral-print dress, or “Tres Sage”  (Very Well-Behaved) for a dressy velvet and lace costume.  These are usually called the G-L fashions, and are identified by the year and season of the catalog they first appeared in, for example, G-L Winter 1928-29 for “Tres Sage.”  No patterns for the G-L fashions were available until recently, when Bleuette fans began drafting patterns based on the illustrations in the catalogs or on existing catalog clothing.

            The 6/0 mold Bleuette was made until 1914 when WWI forced the German director of the SFBJ to leave France for neutral Spain.  The SFBJ then elected a French director, and vowed to produce entirely French-made dolls from then on.

Photo Bleuette 6/0 courtesy of Peggy Spivey