FASHION DOLLS

HISTORY OF FASHION DOLLS

                                             It’s a Barbie world.
 

Fashion dolls are designed to show case the fashion trends of their times. Fashion dolls are manufactured both as toys for children to play with and as collectibles for adult collectors. Dolls are general modeled after teen girls or adult women, though child, male, and even some non-human variants exist. Modern day fashion dolls are typically made of vinyl or another plastic.

The earliest fashion dolls were bisque dolls or porcelain doll from French companies. A bisque doll or porcelain doll is a doll made partially or wholly out of bisque porcelain. Bisque dolls are characterized by their realistic, skin-like matte finish. These dolls dominated the market between approximately 1860 and 1890. These dolls represent grown up women and intended for children from well to do families to play with and dress in of that periods fashions.

Barbie is the most famous fashion doll of all time since her launch by the American toy-company Mattel in 1959. Ruth Handler was the creator behind the Barbie doll. 

 

In 1956 Ruth was on a trip through Europe with her family and she came across a German toy doll called Bild Lilli. The adult-like figure was what Ruth was looking for as most children’s dolls were represented my infants. Ruth gave one to her daughter and the other two she took to Mattel.

 

With well over 50,000 looks Barbie is for sure a fashion doll icon. Mattel has done extremely well to keep Barbie always fashionable and representing the era since her beginnings in 1959. There have been many famous people of the time who have been made into Barbie: Pop singer Britney Spears right through to the recent wedding of Prince William and Princess Kate. Looking at Barbie’s own time line can give an indication of the times not only royal weddings but in the 1960s with astronaut Barbie and the Olympic games just to name a few.

In 2009 Barbie celebrated her 50^th birthday with her wardrobe strutting down the New York fashion show runway. The event showcased fashions contributed by fifty well-known haute couturiers including Diane von Furstenberg, Vera Wang, Calvin Klein, Bob Mackie, and Christian Louboutin.

With popularity comes controversy and Barbie has had her fair share. One of the most common criticisms of Barbie is that she promotes an unrealistic idea of body image for a young woman. In 1997, Barbie's body mold was redesigned and given a wider waist, with Mattel saying that this would make the doll better suited to contemporary fashion designs. Though the Barbie line in 2000 had gone back to the old was with a small body waist, defined abs, a collarbone, defined ankles and even cleavage.

My belief is take Barbie for what she is, a beautiful doll with a huge wardrobe who allows little girls to have an imagination and start dreaming of maybe one day going into space or becoming a veterinary. It is not up to a fashion dolls duty to tell the girls their beautiful its up to society. Barbie is there to help girls and boys start their imagination.

­­MY BARBIE STORY

My childhood best friend Amy and I were huge fans of playing Barbie. We use to play Barbie in the house, out the back shed where ever we could and we would play for hours at a time. Back then Ken was a rarity in a girls Barbie collection as he was more expensive. As many girls we wanted our Barbie to have their own prince charming so with no Ken we had to come up with anther idea. So one hot after-noon in my mates back shed we got one of our old Barbie’s each and cut of their hair. Barbie still had one more asset that had to go... her boobs. Now being plastic (and us not being plastic surgeons) this was not going to go well, well the boobs didn’t go at all. So we were left with two Barbie’s with a real bad hair cuts and a real bad mammaplasty.