The main event on the Saturday of Paris Fashion Doll Festival weekend is the banquet luncheon and the silent auction that precedes it. However the day was getting off to a rather shaky start what with all festivities of the previous night at ‘Disco 3000’ and we were running, or rather shuffling, somewhat late. We needn’t have worried, of course, as according to custom the Luncheon was running even later! After a quick reconnoitre of the auction dolls on display outside the main hall (which were lovely but luckily nothing I wanted to put a sum down for) it was time to find our table.

The table centrepiece dolls comprised of the formerly mentioned Astronaut Barbie repro and silver clad Tonner Friday Fosters. The other eight guests at our table were perfectly fine and the chatter was suitably doll related. The food, however, was far from fine, especially for us vegans, despite a promising salad starter. When our main courses eventually came it was simply a plate of vegetables and overcooked ones at that! The rest of our table seemed similarly displeased with the duck, which largely went half eaten. One of the table gifts was a Superfrock fan, which came in very handy as the room became increasingly tropical!

The events were entertaining enough with a slide show celebrating 10 years of Silkstone Barbie. During the slide show each table had to identify the original vintage Barbie inspiration doll or outfit behind the Silkstones in order to win prizes. Who knew that such a simple premise would lead to lead to dollgate! As so many tables had top scores there was a draw to choose

an overall winner and the prizes were suitably distributed. However it turned out that Kathy, the event organizer, had read out the winning score and not the table number, quelle horreur! The excruciating process of reclaiming the prizes and redrawing a new winning table then took place. Although one of the Barbie hatboxes prizes didn’t make it’s way back. Oops!

We were then treated to the fashion show, which was great fun, especially with the very cute children who took part. It was great to see all the effort people had put into making the matching outfits to their favourite dolls. Eventually it was time to distribute the other festival exclusoe dolls, Ellowyne Wilde and Antoinette, to those who had reserved them. The centerpiece dolls were eventually raffled off to lucky winners on each table and it was time to disperse and reconvene later that evening for the Superdoll museum opening.

The last day of the festival was the show and sale and delegates from the festival had early entry in order to bag those bargains. The sales room was huge and quite daunting at first glance. The infiltration of newborn dolls into a Fashion Doll event was somewhat surprising and one attendee was even heard to say, “let me look at a real doll instead of dead babies” whilst gazing upon a Sybarite! The Sybarite in question was the exquisite ToCK, the spiritual sister of TiCK the Superdoll event exclusive from Disco 3000. She was a limited edition of 100 and most were sold at the event with the remainder on sale at the Superfrock site for a very short time a few days later. Unfortunately I was unable to get my hands on her on both occasions!

Oh well there is always next year as I can see that this Paris lark will become an annual pilgrimage for this particular doll observer…