Childish Fancies

This piece was originally written in May 2022 as part of a publication about fashion brand Blumarine.

GCDS x Bratz collaboration

Fashion’s toying with a new obsession, involving dolls and characters from our childhood.

The last year has brought us a host of fashion collaborations with familiar faces from our infancy. At the end of last year Blumarine x Hello Kitty gave us sparkly feline tops, belt buckles and bags. Around the same time GCDS teamed up with Bratz to kit out their dolls Sasha and Yasmin. And the beginning of 2022 brought a collaboration between Balmain and Barbie which produced both IRL clothes and NFTs. 

Blumarine x Hello Kitty collaboration

Less explicitly branded but in a similar vein, Italian designer Gio Forbice’s brand ForBitches makes colourful bags and shoes (from the same material commonly used for dolls) that are reminiscent of the Polly Pocket outfits that you would chew on as a child. Central Saint Martins graduate James Walsh, too, took inspiration from Polly Pocket and Goldscheider ceramic figures when creating his BA final collection over the pandemic. Painstakingly 3D printed (each look took between 150 to 370 hours to print), his garments are frozen in time like plastic dolls.

ForBitches advert

James Walsh's BA graduate collection

Going even further, over the past few years American designer Zoe Grinfeld created looks actually made from dolls and doll-adjacent objects. This includes a coat made of approximately 500 doll heads, a dress with a ruffle made of doll’s dresses and a cardigan embellished with doll shoes. Grinfeld explains, “I think like many designers, playing with fashion dolls growing up is a large part of the origin story of how I gravitated to art and design as a career path.” She told the story of a particular Barbie book that she loved at 6 years old which featured a head-to-toe beaded ensemble designed by Bob Mackie. “As soon as I saw that dress in person, I knew I wanted to be a designer.” 

Zoe Grinfeld's doll head coat

Fashion’s relationship with dolls and childhood toys is nothing new, from Mattel iconography to Simone Rocha and Cecilie Bahnsen’s babydoll dresses. Moschino’s Barbie-inspired S/S15 collection is one memorable example. Countless editorials have been inspired by the figures, such as a Vogue Paris 2014 fashion story that featured models in toy packaging, or Paper Magazine’s 2019 editorial with Pete Davidson and Julia Fox as Barbie and Ken. “I find doll culture refreshing as, unlike the many micro-trends that whir past, these toys have been a mainstay over decades and continue to thrill people of all ages,” said Alice May Stenson, fashion editor at Check-Out Magazine. Instagram fashion commentator Hanan Besovic (@ideservecouture) points out that, “I think why fashion really loves [Barbie] is because she is the definition of perfection in our culture. So I think that fashion will normally gravitate towards that because, at the end of the day, that’s what a lot of these designers crave, perfection and beauty, and Barbie is all of that.”

Vogue Paris 2014 editorial

Paper Magazine 2019 editorial

So why does it feel like fashion’s love for these idols of our childhood has intensified in recent years? There are a few possible answers. Firstly, a reaction to our bleak world. You’ve heard it all before, it’s the same reason behind kaleidoscopic dopamine dressing and many a number of nostalgic trends. But with war, a pandemic, a cost of living crisis, all whilst we’re in adolescence or early adulthood, it’s not surprising we crave “the sunny, carefree days of childhood,” Stenson explains. “There is comfort to be found in bubblegum pinks and cartoon-like clothing that evades reality. Looking to the future, whether that’s the responsibilities of adulthood or climate change, can feel disheartening. As a reaction we are drawn to mourn innocence.”

 

Secondly, “with the resurgence we’ve seen of Y2K fashion trends recently, I think it only makes sense that doll aesthetics would be so deeply entwined with that kind of nostalgia,” thinks designer Zoe Grinfeld. Those of us who grew up in this era were constantly being advertised to by these toy brands. From a marketing sense, it makes sense to capitalise on our nostalgia.  Appealing to that inner child is a sound business move, especially considering how susceptible children are to marketing. With many of us growing up with these dolls and experiencing fashion for the first time through dressing them up, it’s no wonder that it shaped some of us aesthetically. They were our style icons: Winx, Barbie, Bratz, Polly Pocket. We weren’t in a position to dress ourselves, but we could dress up our dolls. 

Blumarine Resort 2022

And finally, society’s changing opinions on all things plastic and fantastic. Dolls are strongly associated with femininity, and often perceived to be a shallow, vapid form of it. “There are conversations to be had around gender coding, where the colour pink, when applied to doll branding, conjures up archetypal ‘bimbo’ feminine tropes like applying cosmetics, partying and mall shopping,” says Stenson. Whereas once women might have distanced themselves from things seen as too girly or childish for the fear of seeming unserious, today there seems to be more of an understanding that being hyperfeminine doesn’t negate intelligence. As Laura Pitcher discussed in her article “The Reclamation of Bimbohood”, “self-confessed bimbos are discussing the flaws of late-stage capitalism while wearing fake eyelashes and winged eyeliner and posting captions that educate followers about gender and racial inequality with long acrylic nails.”

A Barbie-adjacent trend that has been on the runways recently is hot pink – or some variation of it like fuchsia or magenta. Being dubbed the colour of 2022 by magazines, it’s appeared on Versace (their internet-beloved platform pumps come in that colour), was the focus of Valentino’s A/W22 collection and recently popped up in Dior Men’s resort 2023. “The colour is more vibrant, strong and statement-making than its predecessor for example, millennial pink,” noted Instagram fashion commentator Nora B (@norabnora). It’s certainly gaudier and more bimbo-aligned than its paler cousin. Even so, “a lot of male A-listers have adopted the colour recently,” most recently Sebastian Stan in a fuchsia Valentino ensemble at the Met Gala. “We’re nearing an age where pink is just a colour.” Well, again, since, looking at paintings from the 18^th century, “we can see that both little boys and little girls wore both pink and blue freely and without specifications. The same was applied for adults.”

Valentino A/W22

Outside of high fashion, there’s the new Barbie film in the works starring Margot Robbie, and the 2021 Winx remake (although the Netflix show’s wardrobe was criticised on social media as a disappointing missed opportunity.) Polly Pocket and Powerpuff Girls are also apparently getting the reboot treatment. The dress-up platform Everskies went viral over the pandemic thanks to Tik Tok. “In many ways, virtual characters are comparable to plastic and paper dolls of history – they’re a tool for exploring identity, where dress-up becomes an experimentation free of IRL judgement,” Stenson weighs in on the platform’s popularity. The fact that many Everskies users are in the 18-24 age range shows that some on there probably used to play Stardoll in its heyday – a dress-up game popular from the 00s to the mid 2010s – as tweens too.

 

A problem that countless articles and generations of parents have had with characters like Barbie is that they’re a bad influence, glorifying unrealistic standards and affecting body image. And they’re not completely wrong. “It’s important to consider how damaging they can be to representation, considering the original Polly Pocket and Barbie with their white skin, slender figures, blue eyes and blonde hair,” says Stenson. However, this new iteration of doll obsession is more inclusive than before. Fashion imagery features more darker-skinned dolls – such as the GCDS x Bratz collaboration or a black Barbie editorial in Buffalo Zine’s pink issue. Everskies has different skin tones and body types available, as well as room for different gender expression with options for facial hair. The new film version of the iconic doll is rumoured to feature multiple Barbies and Kens, possibly hinting at diverse representation.

Moschino S/S15

In 2019, a sociologist claimed that playing with dolls lowered career aspirations in children. But why is an affinity for fashion, creativity or all things feminine-coded so terrible? Dolls not only influenced us at a young age, their cute and sugary aesthetics serve as a comfort today when facing adulthood gets too dark. Though nostalgia is a word so over-used in fashion that it sometimes elicits an eyeroll, it’s understandable that we would want to dress in a way that evokes an easier time. Dressing up in sweet shades, doll-like silhouettes and childish accessories is a way of performing a more colourful, cartoonish world. 

Balmain x Barbie collaboration