The Doll Podcast
All the latest news and views from the world of dolls.
The Doll Podcast
Barbie at 65, The Evolution of a Fashion Doll
From astronaut to presidential candidate, Barbie's 250-plus professions mirror the evolving landscape of women's roles in society.
Barbie doll has become a cultural icon over her 65 years, reflecting the evolution of women's roles and careers. Through her myriad professions, Barbie inspires children to dream big and showcases the importance of representation, creativity, and empowerment in society.
Join Barbie doll expert Bradley Justice Yarbrough and host Louisa Maxwell as they chart Barbie’s 65 years as a pop culture icon.
Welcome to the Doll Podcast. I'm your host, louisa Maxwell. Barbie has spent 65 years on the career ladder and although she has reached an age when most people contemplate retirement, barbie is showing no signs of slowing down. She has soared through over 250 professions on her career path from teen model to astronaut. To discuss Barbie's many pursuits, my guest is Bradley Justice Yarbrough, author and expert on all things Barbie doll. Bradley has amassed an impressive archive of firsthand interviews and accounts of the story behind the creation of this pop culture legend. Bradley, welcome once again to the Doll Podcast.
Speaker 2:Louisa, thanks for having me back.
Speaker 1:Bradley, it's so great to talk to you again. I've been really looking forward to this because these anniversaries come up and I can never believe it when I hear Barbie is 65 years old.
Speaker 2:She's forever young, but it's hard to believe that the brand has just endured for such a long period of time.
Speaker 1:Barbie's story starts in 1959 with Ruth Handler of Mattel and her inspiration to create a fashion doll for a new generation of girls. Her doll, Barbie, became one of the best-selling toys in the world. Perhaps one of the keys to Barbie's long career is her ability to mirror fashioned and social trends. Bradley, Barbie may be only a fashion doll, but her huge wardrobe contains the stuff dreams are made of. I mean, Barbie can be anything Ballerina, nurse, vet, doctor, flight attendant, Air Force pilot, race car driver, and even Barbie for president. Bradley, do you agree that Barbie has reflected the change in women's career options over the decades?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. I think if you could only choose one word to describe Barbie, it would be evolution. She's evolved over decades to reflect our culture, our society and women in general, so it's an amazing transformation from the humble beginnings to what we see today.
Speaker 1:Bradley, Barbie may be only a fashion doll, but her huge wardrobe contains the stuff dreams are made of. Barbie can be anything. Bradley, do you agree that Barbie has reflected the change in women's career options over the decades?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. If I could just use one word to describe the decades of change with Barbie, it would be evolution. She's evolved ever since her introduction to reflect exactly what options were available for women, from the very humble beginnings to now. It just has just evolved to totally mirror what we are experiencing in the real world.
Speaker 1:I played with Barbie as a child. You know kind of the 70s, and now I love collecting 70s kind of. I call it Mary Tyler Moore Barbie.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, I love that era.
Speaker 1:And Mary Tyler Moore was a symbol. You know Oprah Winfrey talks about this. Oh yeah, happen to that character, and so it's wonderful when a doll reflects women's almost struggle to want to be different things. Mary Tyler Moore starts out, she's high school prom queen cheerleader and then, as you chart her career over those, I think is it seven seasons. I think it's about seven seasons. Yeah, if I've got that wrong, I'm sorry, but I think it's about that.
Speaker 1:I think so you know it develops and she's able to take charge of her life more and more. And I wonder you know Barbie wasn't afraid to explore all the high school tropes, and then she went on to look at all the different career options.
Speaker 2:Those early days with Barbie, there was a constant reflection of what was what the job, jobs that were available for the women of the time. It was nurse, secretary, you know, teacher. It was just that was what women were, were, were given as job opportunities. As it has evolved, we really just kind of see the more opportunities women had were reflected in Barbie. And then also, I think Barbie just created this sort of aspirational moment, just like with the Mary Tyler Moore or anything that you saw a woman achieve. Suddenly Barbie could do it too, and so she was a nurse in 1961. In 1973, she was actually a surgeon. They actually did an outfit with the medical scrubs and the x-rays and stuff. So just in a little under 10 years you see the evolution of not only thinking of a woman as a nurse but also thinking of a woman as a doctor.
Speaker 1:And of course it's wonderful to be a nurse. It's a fantastic profession. But we see on TV in the 60s, you know all those TV shows that used to be on Marcus, welby, md, dr Kildare. The nurses used to come in in those very fitted costumes just like Barbie had, and they were an important part of the medical team. But the doctor was the man, was the leader, and of course there were women surgeons and women doctors at that time. But we've grown in awareness.
Speaker 2:Then through the right direction, right.
Speaker 1:It's taken quite a bit of time for us to acknowledge that as a society.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. It was unheard of in those days to think of some of these jobs or roles Air Force, pilot, anything that you know that a woman could do something like that. And in our society we've kind of moved beyond that and see that as it's not an unusual or abstract thing to see a woman in some of these roles. And so I think that Barbie may have been the tool for kids to kind of say one day I can grow up and do anything. And that was one of the monikers that they used in the 80s with their advertising was we girls can do anything right, barbie. And so I think you know, just kind of planting that seed of sort of positivity and ambition may have helped a lot of young women go over that hurdle and become whatever they wanted to be.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's so important in the formative years that you feel that you have toys that are supporting you to take a leading role. Because, after all, if we look at the history of the 20th century, amelia Earhart, all these great aviatrixes that were in the 20s and the 30s and throughout the 20th century and women flew bombers from place to place during the war. When they had to move planes around, they'd fly. So women actually have been doing these roles for a long time and it's important when we start to recognize them and give positive messages out to girls and say, by the way, this is out there, this is an option for you.
Speaker 1:And when we play with our dolls. So if I go back to the days of our Barbie Playhouse and Cindy Playhouse, we always played characters. Barbie usually had the starring role.
Speaker 2:It was you using your imagination to bring all of this to life. It was that sort of thing of something had inspired you. You had seen something that you referenced, and then you played that out with your dolls, using them as a tool to kind of communicate and pretend to talk to each other. It was an amazing play pattern of pretend that was helping you to form yourself to what you would be when you grew up.
Speaker 1:When we look at Barbie's first career-themed costumes way back in 1959 were Commuter Set, solo in the Spotlight, american Airlines Juror Desk, and we mentioned Registered Nurse. And although these do reflect, maybe, that women were a little bit limited, they are still careers to dream on, to soar into the sky and to be airline stewardess and to travel the world and to see different cultures and communities I mean that's an amazing thing and to take charge of the care and safety of all those passengers.
Speaker 2:It may seem like a you know well big deal flight attendant, but at the time that would have been such an amazing career of wearing the cute little uniform and flying on a Boeing airplane from destination to destination and really seeing the world. And it was the dream of travel. It was the dream of adventure. And what an adventurous life all of those stewardess, now called flight attendants, were having in the 60s when Barbie was a thing. I just think it was an opportunity for a person of the time to kind of get out of podunk nowhere and see the world.
Speaker 1:And then, of course, Barbie in 1965, she reaches now for the stars as an astronaut, although NASA did not recruit women until 1978. So Barbie got there first. Do you think Barbie was daring to go where no doll had gone before, to use a Star Trek reference?
Speaker 2:I do love that. Well, I think it was at the time in the 60s space travel and getting to the moon and orbiting the Earth, and all of that was just so in the news and on TV and all of the shows like Lost in Space. It was just such a part of our culture. So, of course, if someone was going to outer space, you know Barbie was going to be one to make that journey, and I think it was, at the moment, aspirational that one day there would be women astronauts, there would be women in space, and it may have taken, you know, 13 years to catch up, but I think they have far exceeded their expectations and so I think you know, let's just say Barbie was the first female astronaut. So I love that.
Speaker 1:Let's just say Barbie was the first female astronaut. So I love that. I think so because at the time I can remember programs like Star Trek, which treated women as part of the crew and dynamic parts of the crew with you know important roles to play. So when you can play out something with your doll where she also has a scientific role and will go into space and has skills and responsibilities, you know, the outer space, the astronaut, the Star Trek.
Speaker 2:It was fantasy, it was something that we may have never experienced, but it was deep-seated in the dream and the idea and the hope for the future, and I think that's once again using the imagination and living in someone else's imagination. It's brilliant.
Speaker 1:And that's what toys and play is really about just using our imagination, experimenting and pushing the envelope a little bit. Well, barbie, of course, did start to really push the envelope and by the 1980s she decided to get herself a power suit. Like every woman in the 80s, no matter what you did, you had to have those big Joan Crawford shoulder pads and a really great suit that fitted really well, because you were thinking about Dynasty and Dallas and all those kind of powerful women, alexis Carrington. So Barbie called her look day to night. And by day Barbie wore a pink power suit because she loves the color pink, and once her last meeting of the day was done, she whipped off her jacket to reveal a pink glitter strappy top which she paired with a pink chiffon skirt and heels. It had great play value. But, Bradley, do you think it gave children an unrealistic picture of the work-life balance? You know, work all day, party all night. I mean she must have been exhausted.
Speaker 2:Well, I remember in my younger sort of like early 20s, I might could have done that, but oh my gosh, it sounds so exhausting today.
Speaker 2:But that really kind of put Barbie in a position of the executive, the businesswoman. That particular doll Day Tonight Barbie was designed by Kitty Black Perkins, who, kitty was so famous for the transformative costume she did Pretty Changes, barbie Golden Dream, barbie Pink and Pretty Barbie, where there were all of these pieces and parts that you could change. But to take the doll from all the business-y kind of executive things we were seeing in all of those TV shows you described, but then being able to transform it into this beautiful, you know, sort of like cocktail outfit with the glitter and everything it was adding play value to the doll. But it was also reflective of what we were seeing on TV and how all of these people that were wearing these shoulder padded linebacker suits were then, you know, having cocktails with their friends, you know, at the hotel bar. So I mean it was very reflective of the 80s and unrealistic. I always say you know what it was fantasy and to me it was amazing. She also had this cute little spectator pumps which were just, you know, so adorable.
Speaker 1:I love them. The pink and white, oh, I love them. And then of course, the briefcase and this kind of big hat. But you know it had to work on Barbie, so I think they did a great job and you could tilt it to one side and she had great hair, beautiful smile.
Speaker 2:So chic, so chic.
Speaker 1:No, it had great play value. You mentioned Kitty Black Perkins there and she designed Black Barbie, which is such a beautiful doll and a great favourite of mine, and she was also introduced in the 1980s along with a Hispanic Barbie doll to represent the diversity of children who wanted to see themselves as Barbie. Did you see the Netflix documentary discussing the impact the doll had? I was so moved by the various women who spoke about wanting to be able to identify and see dolls that represented them.
Speaker 2:I did see that and it was a very, very moving documentary.
Speaker 2:I I so enjoyed it.
Speaker 2:It was interesting to see how people viewed it and how they shared their experiences of growing up and I just feel that Kitty Black Perkins came at the right time and at the right place at Mattel to be the perfect person to design the first Black Barbie, which was 1980.
Speaker 2:And it's hard to believe that at that point we had existed 21 years without a Black Barbie. We did have Barbie friends and we had Christy and Kara, but this was the first doll that was named Barbie, and hearing Kitty describe how she created this doll that she really wanted to represent the African American community was it was just absolutely touching. I will say my takeaway from the documentary and my favorite person on there because not to diminish Kitty, because I absolutely love her, she's one of the most wonderful people in the world was Beulah Mitchell that was hired at Mattel like in the late 50s and then had a whole career and just kind of saw as an adult saw how Barbie itself evolved and how she was so excited to see that finally a Barbie represented her and sort of became a collector de facto, just watching this all unfold in front of her. I just thought that was just really a great sort of insight as to how important the diversity was in the brand.
Speaker 1:So important and it represents our friendship groups. It represents what's real when we're children. We're surrounded by different cultures and we mustn't forget also Julia, one of my absolute favorite dolls in the Barbie family.
Speaker 2:Absolutely and one of my favorite on television as a successful career woman and not in some moment of servitude or something. It was amazing. Diane Carroll was absolutely gorgeous and I just love that show. What an absolute amazing moment and I'm so grateful that Mattel immortalized that moment with that doll. It's just so incredible.
Speaker 1:It's an amazing moment in our pop culture, history and the way Barbie is reflecting these memories, these important moments. Julia as this great character on TV, a great mom, this life she built, how responsible she was, how practical she was, how skilled she was. And the doll, and again it adds reality to your play pattern and adds this element of that. Your imagination is running this really great story and you know I'm a little bit it's hard for me to kind of express how much it meant to me at the time and what a great memory it is for me as a kid.
Speaker 2:Oh see, that's so amazing. I love that and I love hearing the stories of how people were watching that show and how it was inspiring them. I actually have a friend who literally decided to become a nurse because of that watching that show as a child. So it was like exposure to being a nurse and still being glamorous.
Speaker 1:So I totally, I totally agree. You were thinking about what would I do, what will I do with my life? And you want to see women represented on TV, and that's the important thing. I just thought of Julia as a woman represented on TV and a woman I admired. And then when the doll came out, oh I like her, I want this doll, and she was kind of don't tell Barbie. But for a while Julia was more important.
Speaker 2:But let's not, you know.
Speaker 1:Julia got to be the head nurse. Barbie was just student nurse Barbie. But you know, that's how kids play and that's how they work out all the different roles that they're interested in, and that's what's important about these dolls. Of course, in the middle of all these wonderful professions we're discussing and all these wonderful innovations, we can't forget Barbie's role as a fashion icon, because, no matter what she did, all these marvelous jobs in style but she hasn't just done that. She's inspired top designers. I mean Dior, vivienne Westwood, bob Mackie, valentino, oscar de la Renta, pucci, gautier I mean, if you just kept naming designers, probably they've done something for Barbie. What is it about this 11 and a half inch doll that has inspired so many haute couture creations?
Speaker 2:How could you not be inspired by Barbie? She's, you know, absolute perfection. And I just think you know, in 1984, when Oscar de la Renta teamed up with Mattel to create those series of fashions, it was just a moment. They actually created life-size fashions that were worn by Hollywood stars in a fashion show at Toy Fair. I mean, it was covered on all the news networks. It was like a moment that here is a designer designing for Barbie and it just sort of snowballed from there. And there have been so many designers that have directly or indirectly been involved. In 1986, a gentleman named Billy Boy published a book that was Barbie, her Life and Times, and at the time, he was living in One of my favorite books.
Speaker 2:Oh, me too. I absolutely adore that book. That can be my bedtime story anytime. It's just so soothing to look at all of this beautifulness in that book. But he was friends with all of these haute couture designers in Paris and he had so many of them design clothing for Barbie and they did a special exhibition in the 80s.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:And Yves Saint Laurent and Garo Everybody dressed Barbie in that but then many of them have gone on in today's world and created special edition Barbies. Givenchy, Oscar de la Renta came back and did another stint. There's been Vera Wang, I mean. All of these fabulous designers have done this and I think it's a great opportunity to create your own fabulous expression for the brand. However, that brand connection delivers a lot of press and a lot of attention to your brand. So I mean what a great connection. So I see it as win-win for both brands, but I love that my Barbie gets to have a fabulous designer wardrobe.
Speaker 1:It's wonderful and you can buy a designer piece at an affordable price. When can you buy Chanel, oh?
Speaker 2:exactly Recently. They partnered with the Yves Saint Laurent Museum and they did a series of dolls that represented his entire career, from the Mondrian dress to the safari. Look to the fabulous 80s glamour. And those dolls were just like tiny little perfect mannequins right off the runaway. The garments were so to scale and so amazing. All the accessories were just like what they were supposed to be. It was really, really incredible. So I love that there's that attention to detail and you get a miniature Mondrian dress by Yves Saint Laurent.
Speaker 1:So the designers are inspiring people to take Barbie that little bit further and enjoy her that bit more.
Speaker 2:And I need to also interject that not only have designers inspired Barbie, but it was just a few years back that Barbie inspired designers because Jeremy Scott from Moschino did a whole collection that was Barbie inspired. All of those 80s and 90s Barbie looks suddenly were walking down the runway in haute couture style, so it was really kind of fashion coming full circle for Barbie.
Speaker 1:And Barbie also made it to Fashion Week in New York just a few years ago and all the designers reimagined some of her famous costumes. It's such a salute to her status as a miniature fashion icon, but also as a piece of pop culture. Definitely Thinking of the Billy Boy book, one of the pictures I love in that book is Andy Warhol's representation of Barbie. So she is a pop culture icon.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:And these beautiful, fashionable garments just add to the enjoyment of the doll. It's just incredible and collecting the doll.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:What would be your favorite designer to collect? Who's done something for Barbie?
Speaker 2:I really did love the Yves Saint Laurent collection and I think I loved it because I've always been a fan of Saint Laurent and when I was in school and I wrote a paper about how art had influenced fashion and I focused on late 20th century with the Mondrian dress that Yves Saint Laurent had done and then how he evolved into using many of these sort of impressionistic paintings for sequined and beaded jackets. So I absolutely adore that collection. But the Lagerfeld Barbie is a close second, which was just so rare, so unusual, so everything about that doll was kind of amazing to me.
Speaker 1:My favorite one is the Westwood Barbie, Because I love that. She really gave Barbie her look. You know immediately it's Vivian Westwood.
Speaker 2:And I adore Vivian Westwood. I just love her.
Speaker 1:I love her, I love her work. It's just the best. I think that's what's great about Barbie she gets us into fashion in different ways and we can celebrate things we're interested in.
Speaker 2:There's such a visual of seeing Barbie as a child and seeing it as that tool of fantasy the fashion, the glamour, the bride, the prom dress, and then growing up and getting to have those same or similar experiences and then being able to remember that I pretended this when I was a child and now here I am experiencing this and, for me, the formative years of growing up and playing dolls and playing Barbie, and then, because we played with Barbie in the country camper, in the backyard and she was going to the Grand Canyon, you know it's so funny to imagine all of that as a kid, but then as an adult, to get to actually, you know, get in a camper and go to the Grand Canyon, like I said, it comes full circle. You get to kind of enjoy that fantasy that becomes reality.
Speaker 1:And you get to be the person who's choosing where you go or what to do or what career you're going to take up, and you know these are games you played as a kid.
Speaker 2:Exactly, and what you just said, louisa, is one of the things that Ruth Handler said that Barbie always represented the fact that a woman has a choice and you're pretending this what you want to do as a kid, and then you get to do it as an adult if you choose to do that. So travel and glamour and wedding, all of these things it was such an amazing. Barbie was such an amazing tool to have this play pattern that kind of taught you what you wanted to be when you grew up.
Speaker 1:You can play with Barbie at any age. You know, I'm still playing with Barbie. I find it very relaxing. It's cheaper than therapy.
Speaker 2:I'm still playing with Barbie.
Speaker 1:Mattel are commemorating Barbie's 65th anniversary with some amazing, beautifully dressed dolls, and they launched a diverse list of collectible dolls to celebrate Barbie's many professions, but also celebrating some beautiful fashion moments. So there's singer Kylie Minogue, actress Dame Helen Mirren, bestselling author and activist Viola Davis, singer-songwriter Shania Twain, and that's just a few of the dolls. There's several more, but every one of them is wearing amazing costume that the celebrity has worn. It's a wonderful link. I think they've actually done that whole career thing and given it a beautiful twist celebrity doll, fashion doll career.
Speaker 2:I think it's so amazing to see these celebrities sort of brought to life in these one-of-a-kind dolls that some of them, I hope, will become a collector-produced doll. But they do, these wonderful one-of-a-kind dolls as inspiring women and it's always great to see who gets made up in one sixth scale. I visited Mattel this summer and was at the Design Center and when you walk down a hallway they've got photographs of all of the celebrities that have been immortalized as a Barbie and it was just so amazing all the way from Twiggy all the way to the most recent ones that you've mentioned. It's really incredible and I really like seeing that as part of the brand.
Speaker 2:Here are these amazing women doing amazing things, yet they see the importance at being immortalized in such a way that a child or a collector or whatever can see that sort of moment you know being in time, that they were so important that they got a Barbie of themselves, and that they see that as sort of like a moment. It's like, well, I really have achieved something because they made a Barbie of me. I think it's just really, really cool to think that, as a celebrity, that you would be immortalized as a Barbie. I just think that's great. Barbie inspires, these ladies inspire.
Speaker 1:I just think it's a great moment I agree with you, and the dolls are beautifully sculpted. Which one are you going to collect? All of them, or is there one special one you'd like?
Speaker 2:oh, I would love to have the kylie minogue one.
Speaker 1:Thank you I would love to have the kylie. I think it's the outfit from Padam the video and it's beautiful with all that chiffon and the way it moved in the video. It's a very theatrical piece and she is such a great performer and also a survivor and she's just somebody who's a really good example, you know.
Speaker 2:Such an inspiration.
Speaker 1:She is an inspirational woman. And then, of course, you can't Viola Davis that is the most. That's the first one I'm running to get, because it's just such a beautiful doll. Helen Mirren. I mean, they're all beautiful. Shania is terrific.
Speaker 2:I adore Helen Mirren.
Speaker 1:Me too, and it's a great dress.
Speaker 2:Oh, the dress is gorgeous. It's so beautiful.
Speaker 1:So I think it's really fun that Mattel has kind of crossed also a boundary here with there'll be people who collect the Kylie doll, who mightn't have that big an interest in Barbie or dolls but they're Kylie fans and they'd be like I have to have this doll.
Speaker 2:And that's one of the things that Mattel has been able to do over the last 20 years that they spent the first part of their brand not is that with every big epic movie or every big moment in pop, they can create a barbie of that actress? I mean they did this with with twilight and and so many other major movies where they created this, and it was a collector's item intended for an adult collector, so it was a thing of like maybe you're not a Barbie collector, but you like what they've just produced, and so it's it's. It represents options, and I love options.
Speaker 1:Options are wonderful. And then if you are somebody collecting it for the movie, for Harry Potter, for whatever you're collecting it for, or my favorite dolls the Gone with the Wind dolls and the dolls really represented the costumes beautifully. So Barbie constantly charts these great moments in cinema, in music and now in literature, and it really does add an awful lot to collecting Barbie and, as we've said, brings other people into the whole collecting family, which is nice.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and it's reflective, and they've gone back in history. They did the Gone with the Wind, they did Breakfast at Tiffany's with Audrey Hepburn and replicated her Givenchy wardrobe. So they've done all of these moments that were just so incredible and they continue to do them. So it's like whenever there's going to be a big, fabulous movie coming out, I always hope they're going to do a line of Barbies to represent that as well.
Speaker 1:You know when I think about collectible Barbie. I think one of the biggest moments for me as a Barbie collector when I began to collect was way back when. Do you remember when the internet was just dial up? You know to go definitely you'd be there and it would take so long to hook up that I'd often be reading a magazine. I'd be reading Barbie Bazaar or Woman's Day.
Speaker 1:I'd be waiting for the thing to connect, and I remember the first thing in an internet cafe that I searched for, you know was I was interested in finding out did other people collect Barbie? I was in the UK at the time and there was some Barbie clubs down in London, but that was far away from me, and I found a whole community of interesting people on the internet and, of course, now, today, this podcast is on the internet. So I mean, definitely, barbie has become a phenomenon, an internet phenomenon across the globe and, of course, she became an influencer in 2014. Although I have to say I think Barbie's been an influencer since her launch in 1959.
Speaker 1:I will agree with that, definitely. Her Instagram has 2.8 million followers. I mean, that is serious. How do you think social media has shaped our view of Barbie doll?
Speaker 2:Well, it's really. Social media has really given an opportunity to be very intimate and personal with Barbie, and they've kind of developed the Barbie style Instagram as if she's a person and they present her day-to-day life and I was so excited when they did that and it was just incredible and continues to be incredible. They create these immaculate miniature sets and clothing. They do this a lot of custom clothing that I just wish they could just package it and sell it, and I understand that it's impossible, but they've done such amazing things and it's really been a great way for a collector or someone that's just stylish to see what Barbie's up to. And it's really been an amazing great way with social media the YouTubes, the Instagram, facebook. Mattel has really brought it right to us and it's just been another way to kind of keep me intrigued by the brand. It constantly inspires me, it constantly reminds me that Barbie is so amazing, so I just love that.
Speaker 1:I love it too, and I also love the way the dolls inspire people to create their own photographs and to create their own miniature sets. And now there's people creating fashions. There's on Instagram. There's various people giving advice on photography. It just inspires so much creativity and allows people to talk and share and grow communities in a positive way all just having some fun with a doll it's given.
Speaker 2:It's given so much opportunity for people to use their creativity and to play. I actually have a friend who took her favorite Barbie, created a whole story pattern, told the story in photographs. Everyone was intrigued in following it. Then she actually had a wedding. She did like the whole wedding album online and I mean people were just chomping at the bit, waiting for the next sort of thing she would do and it was imagination mixed with play and then but she was sharing it with everyone and it was so incredible and that's how I see, like the Barbie style Instagram. It's like we are getting to peek into this amazing pretend world and be inspired by it, and I will say it does inspire me. I would love to spend hours and hours and hours a day if I had the time to create amazing sets and garments and photographs. It's just so amazing. I just adore it. If you're not following it, you should be following it?
Speaker 1:Oh, you should, because it's fun and it's creative and it's innovative. And I often wonder is it the Barbie looks? Dolls are the ones that are just that bit more sophisticated and very poseable, and I think they're the dolls who translate very well into dressing and posing and doing various things, and they're more sophisticated than the pink box dolls. And so I see kind of influencing maybe, the way Mattel is viewing Barbie. They're making a more sophisticated, more model-type doll that fits into this universe. I love when people, for instance, they take a silk stone doll and they dress it up in a vintage outfit and you get this just whole other juxtaposition. Or if they're creating fashions. It's just so much fun to see what people can come up with.
Speaker 2:And the doll is the starting point, the doll is the inspiration doll is the inspiration it's, you know, she's the basis of it, she's the building block that everything gets layered upon, and it's just so incredible.
Speaker 2:In 2020, I was invited to Mattel and I toured the design center and at the time, the Instagram closet was in one of the cubicles in the design center and so they opened up like a couple of drawers so I could see what I was in there and the custom stuff and everything, and I literally was just like blown away and I was like, oh my God, I just wanted to stay in that cubicle all day long, opening every drawer and looking at everything. And it was vintage mixed with custom, which was mixed with regular line and all the different shoes. It was just absolutely dreamy and I was like, can we just pick this up and take this back to North Carolina with me? I just want all of this, and I think what was funny is pretty much a lot of what they had in there I probably already had in my collection, but the way they're presenting it, the way they're doing it, it's just, it's just amazing.
Speaker 1:You know you've inspired me because that would be a great idea. You get yourself a bookcase, you know, from certain Swedish manufacturers which are available worldwide.
Speaker 1:And you customize it because they're always doing that on Instagram and they're customizing, but you customize it for Barbie and it would be so much fun because you could actually make your collection more accessible. And I often get frustrated with that as a collector, because I have things in boxes, I have things in doll trunks, I have things and just to find something now I have sticky labels, you know post-it notes on everything so.
Speaker 1:I'll know where everything is when we want to do photographs for the podcast. One of my favorite, just to share. One of my favorite things that happened to me as a doll collector was in a beautiful shop in Paris and I had just visited Samio Dan's museum and I went to a wonderful shop run by a lady called Marie-Claude and she had drawers full of and she was like no, go look through them. And I bought my first French fashion doll and accessories and I still have everything and I still have the doll, a beautiful little jumeau, and it was extraordinary. So those clothes came from 1870, about that circa, and Barbie may be bang up to date, but it still has the same joy of all these little things, all these little pieces and how they all come together and that again, it's your imagination, brings them all together, absolutely.
Speaker 2:And what you described to me opening up the antique doll trunk or opening up the drawer that's filled with clothing and accessories it's like, just kind of like opening up your mind and giving your brain the opportunity to create what you wanted to do and to pair the accessory with the fashion and decide what hat. That was happening in the 1850s, 60s and 70s. And then the same thing is happening today. You're opening up that vinyl Barbie case or, by today's standards, maybe plastic and pulling out your doll and the outfits and the accessories and playing, and that's whether you're a seven-year-old girl or boy or, you know, in my thing, a 54-year-old man opening up that case. It's giving you permission to have fun, to play, to enjoy and to dream, and I love that. This just gives you the permission to be that dreamer.
Speaker 1:It's so true, we can talk about Barbie being inspirational or a career role model, but in the end she's really just a doll, and once she comes out of the box, that's when the person playing with her decides what she becomes.
Speaker 2:That person gets to decide and chooses the future of that doll, creates that play pattern, creates that fantasy, and that is so much what Ruth Handler imagined that through the doll they could always just pretend anything that the little girl could dream or little boy could dream through this doll of what their future held and they were making choices and making decisions that would later impact their world and they were playing with this doll and creating their future.
Speaker 1:It's true, and it lets you try on different ideas. I mean, I didn't turn out to be a dog groomer, even though that's the game I used to play with my Barbies but I was trying out different things and that is what these little play sets do for children but for adult play. For example, because of a conversation I had with you on a podcast, my husband bought me the vintage dress shop for Christmas last year and that has brought me more joy. We found it at the wonderful shop of Manfred Reichel in Vienna, austria, who has the most extraordinary doll shop Everybody should go there and really beautiful and he's a great expert. And I said, manfred, what's up on the shelf? And my husband bought it.
Speaker 1:And I think I've mentioned this before on the podcast. But the joy and sometimes now I have a little bit of fun because I was reading a biography about Mary Quant and so maybe I stock the shop a little bit like it's a shop in the late 50s but it's moving into the 60s and you know I'm planning to photograph all this, but it takes time to do all these things, but it's so inspiring to have some fun with something from the 50s and 60s and get to put your own spin on it.
Speaker 2:I love that whole play pattern and even with you as an adult setting up the shop, decorating it, dressing the mannequin in the window, it's just so much and it's transformative. It probably takes you back to your childhood of going to a little dress shop with your mom when she was looking for something for a party and probably at that moment dreaming that one day you'd grow up and get to pick out a beautiful dress to wear to a party. What an amazing opportunity. And for me, that sort of play pattern as a grown-up, getting to do the thing of imagining, and it's stress relief. It's, you know, it's taking my brain out of the real crazy world we're living in and taking me to this world where there's no stress and there's no drama and there's no, and it's just setting up the Barbie dream house the way that I want it, putting the clothes in the closet the way they should be, and then dressing the dolls how they need to be dressed and then taking photographs and sharing those photographs online or something.
Speaker 2:The one thing I always say about the play and collecting and researching and sharing. At the end of the day, I've become a doll collector and the dolls I seem to be collecting now are people, because I always say, oh, you're a doll, but you know what? The community around me continues to inspire me. The community around me continues to inspire me and the community that we built is full of amazing, kind, fabulous, sharing people. And it's such a great and welcoming community to be a part of the doll collecting community, the Barbie collecting community. It's just, it's powerful to know that there are so many like-minded people that are enjoying the same thing you're enjoying and that you can share it with them. And I think back to the days before the internet and, as you described, the crazy dial-up days of trying to connect with people. And now, with social media, it's such a great opportunity to connect and just be in the moment of 65 amazing years of Barbie.
Speaker 1:It is 65 wonderful years of play and fun for so many people. Bradley, nobody could say it better than you just said it. Happy birthday, Barbie. 65 fabulous years. I love it.
Speaker 2:Happy birthday.
Speaker 1:Bradley, thank you so much for joining us on the Doll Podcast and also I'd like to take the opportunity to thank you for all your articles, your museum presentations, the research you do to chart Barbie Doll and the way she reflects history, fashion and pop culture. Also the way you piece together research and you interview so many people for that research. You know Mattel employees and visit Mattel, and this is a very the Bradley archives are a very important resource for history, not just for doll collectors. So I'm really thrilled every time you share this with us and also we always have so much fun when we do this. It's really, really enjoyable. Thank you, bradley.
Speaker 2:Louisa, it is always a pleasure, absolutely a pleasure.
Speaker 1:So happy birthday, barbie, and thank you, bradley, for joining us on the Doll Podcast. The Doll Podcast is created by niche media productions. Our music is by celtic conspiracy. Copyright louisa maxwell, 2024. All rights reserved. To find out more about the doll podcast, go to our website on wwwdollpodcastcom. You can also find us on Facebook and Instagram as the Doll Podcast. We look forward to welcoming you next time. Thank you.