00:00And here we have Kirsten Larson. She's set in 1854 and her family immigrates from Sweden to
00:05Minnesota and in order to bring her stories to life we worked closely with the Wisconsin and
00:10Minnesota Historical Societies. So for example I pulled this photograph here of a dress from the
00:18Wisconsin Historical Society and it's from around the 1850s and the dress's hem is flipped up so
00:24that you can see a gros stripe around the bottom so that the dress could be let down as the
00:29girl
00:29grew taller and so Kirsten's meat dress actually includes a gros stripe in it as a detail of
00:34historical accuracy. I've also pulled this sweater and this hat and mittens because these designs here
00:43are actually done by an American Girl staff member's mother. Originally Kirsten was imagined as Rebecca
00:51from Norway and she switched to Kirsten from Sweden through the research process of learning more about
00:57immigration patterns to the midwest. The team ultimately decided to make Rebecca from Norway
01:03Kirsten from Sweden in order to kind of reflect the historical record more accurately and most
01:09importantly not really but they wanted to include the cute sweater. For Kirsten in particular American
01:16Girl was founded in Madison Wisconsin which is home to the Wisconsin Historical Society and they
01:21particularly have a children's clothing collection and so the researchers really did a lot using their
01:26textiles and so from there we kind of identify a lot of different fabrics that could be possible
01:31and then we kind of create inspiration pieces and reproductions in order to get the look of the
01:37line just right. The historical research really informs down to every single detail of her outfit so for
01:43example you have a spoon bag here and this would have been common in Kirsten's time because families
01:49would have had just enough utensils for their own families so for any sort of gathering Kirsten would have brought
01:55her own spoon and then her amber heart necklace is particularly important for her books because
02:01in the books this necklace is a gift from her grandmother in Sweden.
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