The huge lot of Katie clothes I bought on eBay -- with enough shoes for the entire Katie Krew! -- was accompanied by a Katie that I couldn't fully ID from the listing photos. She's the one on the right, with my original Dancing Brook on the left. As you can see, she's not the rare (and possibly hypothetical) Black Katie that I'd hoped from seeing long, textured hair. She's a second Dancing Brook with much, much more hair!
A full-day soak in fabric softener and a boil wash improved her hair texture remarkably, so I'm probably going to keep her even though she's technically a duplicate. Vintage fashion dolls with brown complexions are hard enough to find, so I feel she can represent other ethnicities if I don't want to pick two Native American tribes for the girls.
The Pocahontas-driven boom in Native American 1:6 dolls in the 1990s is a great boon in providing brown dolls, if one doesn't want to keep them in their original (inaccurate, often pink-and-teal) costumes. While none of the Native American dolls of this era would pass current benchmarks for cultural sensitivity, the clone brands did a better job than Mattel at offering a range of dolls of different ages, in family groupings, wearing varied costumes.
One of the common (highly legit) complaints about Native American representation at doll size is that Native American culture is treated as "historic," with everyone depicted in some attempt at historical costume. This is why my Dancing Brook is dressed in modern clothes, just like her same-size friends. She'll eventually get a dance costume that's as accurate as my sewing and research skills can make it, and all the Katies will also have dance costumes representing their backgrounds. This means I need to decide what Isabelle's backstory is, as well as naming the new arrival. Brooke is [choose a tribe], Rosa Lee is Romany, and Ben is obviously Irish as Kelsey's younger brother.
Anyway, the Katie Klothing haul was sufficient to give the entire Krew fresh outfits and shoes. Ben was especially delighted to get sneakers!
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