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This is Nellie Bly's Coat for Posette (P4 Nude Woman), modeled by The Ness ( http://sfc.me.uk/ness/ ) and rigged by me (Jim Farris). Of course, this … more »

This is Nellie Bly's Coat for Posette (P4 Nude Woman), modeled by The Ness ( http://sfc.me.uk/ness/ ) and rigged by me (Jim Farris). Of course, this begs the question "Who was Nellie Bly?" Nellie Bly was a pioneering American woman journalist of the Victorian Era. It's not going too far to say that women today owe much of their freedoms to Nellie's accomplishments, and much of what we consider "modern investigative journalism" was actually invented by her. Amoung her more well-known feats was incarcerating herself in a mental asylum so as to write an "insider expose'" - and that story was so ground-breaking that within a few years, laws were passed to reform how mental institutions operated. She also went on a round-the-world trip alone, and beat Jules Verne's imaginary record of 80 days by about a week. That in itself may not sound like much to someone living in the 21st century and used to the idea of jet travel, but back in the 19th century, it's amazing she even survived. She was a woman, and a very small woman, really (she was about five foot four, quite slender and slightly built, and was often described as a waif during her lifetime), alone, unarmed, travelling around the world by horse, train and ship. It was the 19th century, and many of the places she traveled through were uncivilized, or only barely civilized. She could have been kidnapped, raped and murdered a hundred different times and no one would ever have known what happened. But, she made it - and so astounded the Victorian mind with her success that she literally changed how people thought about women, and what women were really capable of doing. It is fair to say that she was literally the second most socially and culturally influential woman of the Victorian Era, second only to Queen Victoria, herself. Her biography goes on, but I suppose you can read it for yourself at your local library, if you want. I'm sure all you're interested in is the coat, so here we are. This was Nellie's "Travelling Coat" - she was photographed in it prior to her "round-the-world" trip, and she wore it anytime she had to travel anywhere. It's actually a type of hunting and sport-shooting coat that was popular with American women of her day. Nellie wore it because it was in fashion at the time, and it was quite warm, being made of wool and having several layers. After the success of her round-the-world trip, millions of trading cards, prints and other collectibles were made of her, all illustrated by artists who had only seen her picture in the paper in her travelling coat. Interestingly, nearly all of these hand-drawn illustrations on the trading cards and other Bly-related paraphenalia show her wearing a deerstalker cap, despite the fact that she never wore a deerstalker in her life - the cap she preferred when travelling was a kind of cloth "fisherman's cap" that was popular in New York at the time. « Less