Long tails and ears with hats...
Josie and the Pussycats was one of my favorite cartoons when I was younger, so I knew I would have to do some posts dedicated to the ladies of this cartoon! I thought I would start with lovely Miss Valerie.
While doing some research on, I learned something interesting about when Hanna-Barbera was developing the cartoon version of the popular Josie comic. On Wikipedia, I read that when creating the cartoon, Hanna-Barbera decided to make a "real-life Josie and the Pussycats" to record the singing voices for the girls and also to create a record to sell. They had a huge talent search in order to find girls who would look similar to the Pussycats and also have the right sound. Danny Jansen and Bobby Young held the search, because they ran the production company (La La Productions) that would be producing the record. They settled on casting Patric Holloway for the singing voice of Valerie. Hanna-Barbera had some other plans, though. They decided they wanted it to be an all-white trio, even though Valerie had always been an African-Amercian character in the comics. Jansen refused to recast the part of Valerie and he almost even abandoned the project completely. After three weeks, Hanna-Barbera caved and let Jansen stick with Holloway as Valerie. I'm glad they decided to stick with the decision!
Now, onto taking a look at how they styled Valerie!
Valerie was the brains of the group and was always coming up with solutions and inventions that would help the group get out of whatever sticky situation they were in. But, they didn't make her look like the stereotypical nerd. They let her have some cool style. In the cartoon, she only really wore two outfits: her cat costume and her purple dress outfit. In the comics, she of course had some more variety in clothing, but this was a Hanna-Barbera cartoons so what do you expect!
The cat costume is classic and a great design! But, I'm going to just focus on her other outfit for this post.
So, her outfit consists of a purple dress over a light pink long-sleeved blouse. She also wore some purple Mary Jane's and a purple belt.
Bringing Valerie's Stye to Today
Now, I would like to show you how I though you could incorporate similar pieces and the same color scheme into a modern outfit! First, the outfit on the left was me trying to make a very close remake to Valerie's outfit in real life! A light pink collared blouse, bright purple dress, and the purple Mary Jane's plus the belt. The second outfit was a modern take on the look. I stuck with a light purple blouse although this one is not collared. It instead has some interesting gold detailing. Then, instead of a dress, I chose a suede skirt (keeping some of the 70s vibes) in a plum shade rather than the bright purple. It keeps the color scheme basically the same but tones down the purple by choosing a more natural looking shade. Then, I chose some snazzy plum heels to pair with the outfit (although you should of course wear whatever shoes you feel most comfortable wearing!)
Did you watch Josie and the Pussycats? Who was your favorite character? Did you ever read the comics? If you want me to do some posts dedicated to the comics, let me know!
Stay tuned for next week when I will travel through space and time and get timey-whimey!
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