Karolina askes what happened to Barbie fashion

[DollyKim]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5ibyzRRk1Q

Fashion historian Karolina Żebrowska asks what happened to Barbie's sense of fashion and brings up realistic doll culture.

[Kattriella]

What happened is that the people designing her clothes have no sense of fashion anymore . . . Also, yay, another Karolina fan!

[Tam I am]

They decided barbie is for babies, and they decided that profit is the most important.

[kenaiqueen]

She's not wrong. Barbie clothes are terrible lately. Makes me want to cruise ebay for older fashions for my current girls.

[Kattriella]

She's not wrong. Barbie clothes are terrible lately. Makes me want to cruise ebay for older fashions for my current girls.

I highly recommend it. A huge chunk of my current collection is Fashion Fever era, which mostly fits modern Barbie. The quality is so much better, and definitely worth the price, especially when you can sometimes get whole outfits for only a couple dollars more than what modern fashion packs cost.

[Tam I am]

She's not wrong. Barbie clothes are terrible lately. Makes me want to cruise ebay for older fashions for my current girls.

I highly recommend it. A huge chunk of my current collection is Fashion Fever era, which mostly fits modern Barbie. The quality is so much better, and definitely worth the price, especially when you can sometimes get whole outfits for only a couple dollars more than what modern fashion packs cost.

Like sixteen bucks for two dresses that barely have anything to them and a pair of shoes that don't fit?

[DollyKim]

Aside from the clothes that either came with the dolls or I bought in the 20th century I can definitely say the bulk of my Barbie fashion purchases were in the mid to late 2000s. Remember when packs several coordinating pieces with a couple pairs of shoes and accessories were sold? There was the 100 poses/swapping styles dolls with a theme like 'cute' or 'sporty' and outfit packs for them. And they were a nice mix of regular clothes, when was the last time Barbie had a nice pair of jeans, and doll stuff like a cupcake dress.

Aside from the occasional thing like the recent cow print outfit or wanting a specific accessory the only ones I hunted down were licensed ones back in 2018 when I bought fashionista #91. And I'm the kind of person who would buy a doll just for an outfit she's wearing.

[Kattriella]

She's not wrong. Barbie clothes are terrible lately. Makes me want to cruise ebay for older fashions for my current girls.

I highly recommend it. A huge chunk of my current collection is Fashion Fever era, which mostly fits modern Barbie. The quality is so much better, and definitely worth the price, especially when you can sometimes get whole outfits for only a couple dollars more than what modern fashion packs cost.

Like sixteen bucks for two dresses that barely have anything to them and a pair of shoes that don't fit?

Sorry, did I say fashion packs? I meant vaguely clothing shaped fabric scraps.

[DollyKim]

I think some of it might be them wanting to make sure the average outfit fits all four body types the dolls come in. I don't think people would mind if they made say X amount of mix and match pieces with shoes and accessories made for a specific body type but one of the pieces will fit any of the dolls so they can share.

One of my purchases in the 90s was a Barbie-Skipper-Stacey doll pack where they could swap some outfit pieces, then I bought more outfits with the same prints, and even more because it was a big and little sister dress alike. Remember they used to make outfits for the sister dolls? Heck, I even have outfits that were sold for Skipper's short lived boyfriend. I bought four separate outfits instead of just the one I wanted because they all used the same print with different coordinating sold pieces.

[Kattriella]

When they first made the different body types, they actually made different fashion packs for them that were marked with different colored dots I believe to indicate which body they fit, then later they switched to having silhouettes of which body they fit, and then they switched to the colorful sack dresses they make now that don't actually fit ANY of the bodies. I wish they would make fashion packs for the different bodies again, because technically the "curvy" ones would be the same as the "one size fits all" clothes they have now. Poor petite Barbie is always absolutely swimming in the "one size fits all" clothes, and the curvy girl's curves get lost in the sack dresses. Everybody loses when you try to make everyone for the same mold . . . Or sack dress.