Barbie and Missguided team up to sell out!

Barbie has collaborated many times with fashion brands in order to sell clothes or cosmetics - hey, they even sell their own fashions! Their latest collaboration is with global brand Missguided. It launched with the Barbie x Missguided collection, featuring jeans, cameo and millennial pink.  As Missguided mentioned on their website: "Barbie is THE ultimate female icon and her message is that girls can be anything they want. Our #babesofmissguided’s possibilities are endless, this is for the badass babes who can do anything".

The collection sold out in the first 24 hours - all 43 pieces of it! The company announced they will be re-stocking soon, so if you are interested, go to their website and sign up,for their newsletter.  

Of course they could not pass by the opportunity to make some Barbie sized outfits as well! No mention anywhere if theaw dolls will be released for sale, but after the success of the real clothes, who knows? Let's see the dolls one by one, as each has a distinct look, character and role in the Missguided team. The dolls were created by the super talented Magia2000 duo, Mario Paglino and Gianni Grossi.

The Artworker Barbie is the art director of the bunch. Looks appropriately creative. 

The real life version of Artworker. 

Photographer Barbie, best of the bunch. Love the hair and sunglasses. She does have a camera, which makes her the only one of the team with appropriate tools for her trade. 

Real life version very close to the doll one. 

PR and Events Barbie looks a bit too teeny bopper for this kind of job.  

The real skirt looks much better than the miniature version. Plus jewellery! 

Social Media Barbie  does not have any kind of mobile device to justify her title. How is she going to post on Instagram with those headphones?

Her real life counterpart does not seem to care about posting on social media either. 

Creative Conceptualist Barbie gets so thirsty when thinking about campaigns and promotions that she has a water bottle with her. 

Would you like to see these dolls get a commercial release? 

All photos courtesy of Mattel and Missguided.  

Celebrating Barbie's 55th birthday: Hervé Léger Barbie

March 9th is the official Barbie birthday. This year it is her 55th anniversary. So what better way to take part into the celebrations than photographing one of the best Barbie dolls Mattel has released: the Hervé Léger Barbie. I had written all about the doll and the release in this post, so here I am just going to post a selection of photos I took of her and comment on the actual doll.

The quality of the doll dresses is incredible. Of course having them made by a fashion house instead of Mattel played a major part and it shows. Top notch craftsmanship, flawless outfits, amazing standards of quality of fabric and stitching. The brand said they used their original yarns and machines to make theme and I do believe them after having seen them with my own eyes.

  

The "leather" corset that is worn over the dress has a nice functioning mini zip at the back so that one can take it off without problem. It is an almost faithful reproduction of the ones the brand showed in their fashion show.

The boots are made of plastic but they have nice detail and are made very well. They slide of the feet without too much effort but one has to be careful to not tear them apart.

The clutch that comes with this outfit is a hard-edged, "metal and leather" design, edgy and modern. It is not functioning and has no way to be fastened to the doll's hands. The stiff Model Muse body without joints does not help either. 

Here is the dress without the corset. The doll is wearing the second pair of boots that comes in the gift-set, ribbed ankle boots.

 

Both dresses have the brand's label sewn in on the inside. Great detail and very realistic too.

The second dress is a black and white short one, with wide shoulder to chest bands that stop right under the breasts. It is as well made as the other one and looks amazing too.

The one big flaw of this gift set is of course the doll's body. Without joints, it quickly becomes really boring as it has a very limited ability for posing. It may show off the dress nicely in the box but there are many people, like me, who like to pose and display their dolls outside of the box. I am probably going to rebody this one.

 

The doll's face is perfection. She looks gorgeous and reminds me a lot of the supermodel Angela Lindvall. Her hair is intricately braided and has highlights woven in. It messes up easily but it also can be tamed without any problems. She definitely deserves a better, articulated body.

The bag for this outfit is a large, "crocodile leather" concoction, a bit cumbersome to hold, definitely not suited for un-articulated dolls. Wonder how a real human would carry such a bag. Below you can see all the accessories of the gift-set.

For me, this is the direction that the collectors-only Barbie dolls should take. Modern, edgy fashions and doll design, without the cutesy and frothy stuff that is associated with the brand. But I am sure I am a minority in voicing this. Happy 55th birthday Barbie!

Tokidoki Barbie upsets parents in the US!

Matell released a few days ago a Collector's Barbie named Tokidoki. She is designed by Simone Legno of Tokidoki, a "liefstyle" company from Italy (funded by the Hard Candy make up brand owners from USA), with obvious Japanese influences. She is wearing a pink miniskirt, logo leggings and black top with signature skull heart and bones, carries a large bag from the brand, and accessorized with bracelets, a belt, and sky-high sparkly silvery shoes. The doll features trendy tattoos on her body (non-removable save using acetone) and a pink bob. She is also accompanied by her cactus friend, Bastardino (mongrel in Italian). Considered very trendy (bleh), she was a favourite of Barbie collectors everywhere.

You must have noticed that I rarely write about Barbie doll releases, unless they are something special (like the Pantone Barbie in the previous post). So why this one, since I do not even like her styling? Because she managed, in just a week, to become the bane of many parents in the US, even though she is not a toy. Mattel clearly sells her as a collector's doll, she's a Gold Label doll with no more than 7.400 dolls produced.  She even has a price tag of US$50, which makes her unavailable to most children. Still, many news outlets, from doll blogs, fashion blogs, twitter and even major fashion publications like Allure and news outfits like L.A. Times and CNN keep on reporting about parent's supposedly irate reactions to the doll.

The give-me-a-scandal-any-day UK newspaper Daily Mail even gets it all wrong as they mention that the doll is marketed to children. Sorry guys, get your facts right. Barbie Collector Dolls are for adult collectors and are not to be sold to anyone under 14 (written on the back of all Barbie Collector boxes). But who reads the fine print when they want to create controversy? Of course the doll is not only sold out (more are to be released in mid November from what I read) but her price in the secondary market has quadrupled.