Everybody’s saying Claudia Schiffer is the real Barbie, so Mattel made one to prove it!

Ever since Claudia Schiffer was catapulted in the upper strata of the galaxy we know as Fashion, she was frequently compared to Barbie. People kept saying she looked like a living Barbie doll so much, that in 1994, Ellen Von Unwerth photogrhed her vir Vogue Italia as The Real Barbie. So, to celebrate 30 years of Claudia Schiffer’s career and the launch of her self titled book, published by Rizzoli, Mattel decided to recreate one of the looks in that editorial, featuring a Versace dress. Here are the four photos they posted on their @babriestyle Instagram account:

Barbie Claudia! 

The original photograph by Ellen Von Unwerth for Vogue Italia

She does look a lot like Claudia! 

Close up of the doll - can we have her on sale now? 

It’s amazing how well they recreated the face and style of Claudia. The doll looks perfect. It would be amazing if she became available commercially, I’m certain it would sell very well. How about it Mattel? As we wait for it, let’s have a look at the rest of the original editorial. Published in Vogue Italia , on the July 1994 issue, titled Claudia, The Real Barbie. The photographer is Ellen Von Unwerth, fashion editor is Alice Gentilucci, Ward is the hairstylist and Francois Nars did the makeup.

As you can see above, the original photograph in the editorial was mirrored for the Instagram post (probably for the book as well, where Von Unwerth wrote the foreword). We end this with a backstage photo, with Claudia holding a Barbie in hand.

​Update 18th of October: The OOAK Doll made an appearance in Saks NY windows dedicated to the debut of an eight piece capsule collection that Claudia did with Aquazzura. So if you are in New York, you can see the doll if you visit the Saks NY flagship store. Photo from the model’s instagram account:

All doll photos courtesy of Mattel. All Claudia Schiffer photos by Ellen Von Unwerth. 

Christian Siriano shrinks some of his most famous dresses to Barbie’s size

Christian Siriano, probably the only Project Runway alumnus who has made a name for himself, is the latest designer to collaborate with Mattel​: he translated some of his most famous dresses in Barbie size. Known for his inclusiveness, he did not shy away from using every available Barbie body type and different skin colours for the dolls wearing his one of a kind creations. The five ensembles are below.

Four of them were worn by famous stars on the red carpet or for a photo shoot, while the fifth one is from one of his latest collections. Let’s check them out one by one.

First Up,is the red number he did for Leslie Jones, when no one else would give her a gown to wear for the Ghostbusters premiere in July 2016. Siriano graciously accepted to dress her and wou can see the real outfit below the doll photo. Pity thatbthe Doll does not have the same jewellery or bag Ms. Jones was wearing. It is an OOAK doll people, pile it on! Jones photo from Elle UK.

Next is a gown worn by Sarah Jessica Parker for a photo shoot with Marie Claire. Boring does not even begin to describe it. She was photographed by Tesh for the US edition in September 2011 and it was also in many international editions of the magazine that Fall, making the cover in South Africa and Hungary. Parker photo from Siriano’s website.

The third dress is again a red carpet appearance. The actress Sarah Hyland wore it at the 2014 Emmy Awards. It reminds me a lot of Mizrahi outfits but without the chutzpah. Hyland photo by Peoples Choice.

The fourth outfit looks like a variation of the previous one, different skirt colour and material. This is the most recent one, from the designer’s 2018:resort collection. Fashion photo courtesy of Christian Siriano.

And last, but not least, anothervred caret outfit. This one was worn by Solange Knowles at a gala during Art Basel 2016. Easily the best of the bunch, both in Doll and human size.

Apart from the Solange outfit, the rest look like something any little girl can do with fabric scraps found at home. No design, no shape, no style. It does not help that the real fashions on which the doll clothes are based are devoid of any kind of style or inspiration themselves. Simplicity is hard to design and even harder to translate to doll size.

All doll photos courtesy of Mattel.

Joey Versaw's A Little Head can be ordered specially customized for a very limited run

I have written before about the talented Joey Versaw and his amazing colourful dolls. His more recent release was titled "A Little Head" and consisted of both boys and girls in eye-popping colour. Due to popular demand "A Little Head" has opened up custom commissions for an extremely limited run. There will only be 10 females and 10 males available for this special custom order offer. 

With this special offer you will have the choice of five hair colors: they are Blonde, Burgandy, Brunette, Blue, and Pink. You will also be able to choose make up colors, eye colors, and eye direction: you can request either a flirty side glance or a straightforward look. The girls will come in their original side part settings with beautiful long hair and the boys will come with the option of long hair or short.

Each doll will be hand-painted to the customer's specifications. Orders will take four weeks to complete once purchased. Each doll will come in an original fashion with accessories to complete the look. Nicely packaged in a clear plastic box that offers up a beautiful display case and easy in and out assessability with the logo on the front.

This offer will not be made again with these specific sculpts in vinyl so once this limited offer has sold out that is it. Joey is very excited to offer this up for those who have very specific tastes and likes. This will be a great way to have one of his creations exactly how you would like it to be. Links to order are below.

 order a custom "A Little Head" boy

order a custom "A Little Head" girl

All photos and information courtesy of Joey Versaw

One Of A Kind RuPaul dolls come out for Drag Con!

Twelve years ago, Integrity Toys released their RuPaul doll. And no one could predict back then what a household name RuPaul would become with his successful tv show RuPaul's Drag Race. Such an iconic person would of course be involved in the biggest drag queen convention in the world, Drag Con. Oh Mannequin, the team responsible for creating all of RuPaul's booths and merchandising at the convention, asked their friend, the multi-talented doll creator and designer Andrew Yang, who for the past year has transitioned into commercial doll making, collaborating with Phyn & Aero and other doll artists and sculptors, to customise 12 Ru Paul dolls into one of a kind Ru looks, in a very short amount of time.

As with any celebrity who makes product, the RuPaul team are guaranteed a certain amount of goods-- and there was one style of doll, the black haired version of The Glamazon doll, that Rupaul's merchandise team had a little extra stock. RuPaul rarely wears black hair, so this particular version didn't have the same magic as some of the others-- not to mention her slightly dated bell bottoms and black bustier.

Already used to working under tight deadlines, Andrew started working on the dolls right away: the dolls didn't need to be fitted for redressing and creating them as "art dolls" would shave some time off the construction end of things. He also was anxious to create a fun project that would be fast and shareable, and at the same time a fun exercise in putting out some new and exciting work-- to say nothing of the fact that RuPaul is one of his few idols. Talk about a dream project! One of the most exciting things about the project was that RuPaul selected each of the looks himself. Many of them were based on looks from the show designed by Zaldy, and other iconic moments from his long career, like a Bob Mackie and "Wonder Woman" number. 

So how did Andrew tackle the assignment? First of all, the hair had to go. After heating the dolls in his oven on the "warm" setting and shearing off all the locks, the material had softened enough to remove all of the heads safely without damaging the (relatively old) plastic. Then came the scraping and the tweezing of all the leftover hairs. After that was done, He painted all of the scalps-- all of these girls would definitely be blonde!

Andrew knew that he would be a candidate for an early onset of arthritis if he tried re-rooting the hair himself, despite getting tips from the always amazing Integrity doll community  re-routers like Salvador Arriaga. So he called up one of his Los Angeles dolly friends, Denisa Medrano. A hair designer at Mattel for six years in the late nineties and early 2000s, Denisa now works independently, acting as the go to girl for anyone developing a doll, rooting and designing hair for dolls for almost every major player in the toy industry. Going to her studio in Torrence is always an experience: its a magical wonderland filled with dolls and hair of every colour, texture, and curl. Andrew firmly believes that hair makes the doll, so it was important to work with the best.

Denisa's right hand man is the phenomenal stylist and doll photographer Randy LaCroix, so between the two of them, the dolls would be in good hands. The doll heads had to be kept pliable in the oven as the hair rooting machines always work best on soft plastic, so the process of rooting and rotating out and styling took almost three days.

The next step was fabrics and trims-- luckily Los Angeles has a phenomenal garment district, so between that and Mood, Andrew was able to source everything in a relatively short amount of time. He went to work sewing the clothes, and making the accessories. For his bigger fabric dolls, Andrew is used to working on many things at once, so everything is done in stages, pattern making, cutting, and sewing for each doll. And the un-articulated bodies made for great dress forms, even though sewing in such tiny scale was a fun exercise in and of itself.

Andrew used the same design philosophy when making the small Ru outfits as when re-interpreting a look from Chanel for a client like Barneys New York or someone custom in one of his larger fabric dolls. He did not set out to recreate the look in miniature (he said there are vastly more talented people at doing that job), but rather, treated the doll like a fashion illustration and tried to capture the feeling and mood of the original look. Sometimes that can be done with just the hair and makeup, and you can get away with taking more creative liberties on the clothes, other times, there are certain things you have to get right on the outfit.

Third step: painting the face. The makeup was more about being organized. At this point, all of the hair was roughly styled, so when he covered up the nylon locks to keep them from getting painted with matte acrylic spray, Andrew made sure to label all of their paper towel coverings with dress nicknames. His nightmare scenario was doing a faceup for one look on the wrong hair. For most of the looks, he only partially repainted, as the original screening was beautiful and he wanted to make sure the dolls maintained a level of consistency and looked in line with the original dolls and Ru's brand.

After the heads went in for a last round in the oven, and back on the dolls, each of them went through the styling comb again. Randy and Denisa's styling was beautiful, but they are used to delivering something commercial and prototype perfect, and Andrew wanted to find that perfect balance between messy and glamour for a lot of the hairstyles.

It was a big stroke of luck that right around the time Andrew was finishing the dolls he crossed paths with André Armenante, a West Hollywood based filmmaker, inventor, and theatrical designer. He migrated from a career in special effects/robotics to the toy industry with his cutting edge interactive hologram playset HolograFX, which launched with Toys R Us worldwide and was the most awarded toy of 2014. Recently, Armenante was a lead special effects designer for ‘Magic To Do’ - a new musical from Stephen Schwartz the Oscar, Grammy and Tony Award winning composer of Wicked, Godspell and Pippin and has worked with the likes of David Copperfield, Mattel, and Hasbro.

Usually, on these short turnaround projects, the artist doesn't get a lot of time to document the work in a great way, so when André wanted to collaborate, Andrew jumped at the chance, and in the days before the dolls were delivered to Ru's people, they shot and edited a fun showcase video-- which couldn't have been done if they weren't pushed to do it all in time by Andrew's partner Daniel Randell!

Andrew believes that if the doll world is to survive, and not become a hyper expensive collector hobby, it is important to market and create a buzz around dolls in a way that reaches beyond just the community, so in many ways this was a perfect project to create some excitement around dolls, and it worked! Hours after the ribbon was cut for Drag Con 2017, most of the dolls had been sold, and by the time the convention doors closed, it was a sell-out ! Congratulations Ru!

Andrew had a lot of fun working in this scale, and on such fabulous dresses, so you can expect to see his new doll, Kadira, in some more flashy fun evening wear-- and commercials for her too! Now back to making all of her samples!....

Marni Senofonte, Beyoncé's stylist, collaborates with Mattel for some amazing Barbie dolls!

The @Barbiestyle instagram account, one of the official Mattel accounts, posts photos and set ups featuring Barbie in a variety of roles and outfits, attracting a huge number of followers and exerting real social media influence. Many times, the dolls and outfits featured are one-of-a-kind creations, driving Barbie and fashion doll collectors crazy with envy, as they know they are never getting these dolls to own. The latest series of photos talked about online are from Mattel's collaboration with none other than Beyoncé's stylist extraordinaire, Marni Senofonte.

As mentioned in her webpage, Marni Senofonte is a stylist, costume designer, and brand consultant. Her distinct style, which has evolved over the last two decades, layers proportion and pattern, texture and technique, high-end designer and fast fashion, to create iconic, trend defining look. Her work spans editorial spreads to appearances, music and films to world tours. Intensely collaborative, she enjoys teaming with designers, craftsmen and artisans to not only realize her vision and the vision of those she works with, but also to create outfits, imagery and full-realized brands that are both distinct and defining. She has worked with a wide range of celebrities and personalities, from Beyoncé, Lauryn Hill, and Sean Combs to Ciara, Mary J. Blige, and Jay Z, as well as with brands such as Gucci, Kenzo, Roberto Cavalli and couturiers Ulyana Sergeenko and Francesco Scognamiglio. Originally from a small town in Pennsylvania, Marni started her career as Norma Kamali's assistant. She now lives between Los Angeles  and New York City.

Like most people interested in fashion, Marni was playing with Barbie dolls as a kid, cutting their her, redressing and styling them. Like many kids out there, the doll was her first foray into fashion, unleashing her creative potential. Coming full circle, her collaboration with @BarbieStyle features a range of one-of-kind looks showcasing a very diverse range of body, hair, and skin options. The stylist mentions that the Barbie Fashionistas line with their diverse body types (original, curvy, tall, and petite),skin tones and hairstyles, was her main inspiration.  The dolls are not available for purchase. Hopefully we might see some of their style filter through in future releases of Barbie. Below are photos of the dolls from the @Barbiestyle instagram account and sketches of the dolls by Mattel designer Carlyle Nuera. The details and close ups are screen captures from @Barbiestyle instagram stories. All photos courtesy of Mattel.

Victorian punk is what Barbiestyle calls Senofonte's look for the dolls