Creativity, Inspiration – Whatever

(jump to fashion show photos)

Do you still love to play? Are you willing to admit it? For me, it’s a great inspiration incubator. There’s nothing quite like fantasizing about alternate universes full of magical things to get me flowing with some ideas for new painting. Fairies, dragonflies, unicorns, rainbows, butterflies — I love them all! Sometimes I can talk other people into joining me in these crazy little worlds, and then it’s EVEN MORE FUN, but ever since becoming “an adult”, recruiting playmates can be a real challenge. (I put “adult” in quotes because my hubbie’s always telling people he’s married to a 6 year old)

As I mentioned recently, my mom surprised me with a big box full of all of the old, beaten up Barbie dolls that belonged to my sister and I. We played hard with those girls and we weren’t really even very Barbie obsessed compared to some of our friends. Still, they were in a sorry state: dirty, naked, apparently doing the 69 on each other, and thrown in with a filthy, wadded up mass of mismatched clothes. I wish I’d thought to get a photo of that mess when I first opened it up, but sigh, I didn’t think of it. What I was really thinking was, “boy, what a pile of crap.” I’m pretty sure my mom thought it was all trash, too, G.A.R.B.A.G.E, but she didn’t want to be the bad person who pitched it. She’d rather pay the shipping charges and make me be the terrible Barbie Terminator.

Ultimately, I proved her wrong, though, and instead became the fabled Barbie Rejuvenater, the bringer of life where none existed savior. I threw all of those pitiful looking clothes into the washing machine and was kind of gobsmacked when they came out looking pretty decent. Let me tell you, there were some hilarious vintage outfits in there, so I decided I needed to share this adventure of rediscovery with my family and with you, and so I’ve embarked upon the Greatest Vintage Barbie Fashion Show of All Time. I tried my best to manipulate my sister and sister-in-law into coming over to play with me and helping out in this big job — guilt, hilarious teaser photos, bribes of tomatoes from my garden, more guilt — but nothing worked. I guess my helpers are too adult and sensible for that. No matter, I can play with myself hahaha! My mom totally lived vicariously through the whole process. She might have even shed a few tears of joy, I don’t know. Sssh, I didn’t tell you that.

Now, without further ado, I’d like to present…

The Greatest Vintage Barbie Fashion Show of All Time

click an image to scroll through larger versions of the images

Some extra trivia…

• The Barbie with short blonde hair (in the bridal white party dress and also in a blue poncho) actually has a wig on over her hair because the original blonde hair had apparently been hacked with scissors and stood up straight in the air and I couldn’t get it to go down
• GI Joe only has one boot and Ken’s shoes won’t fit his big feet, so he’s always barefoot
• GI Joe can actually stand on his own without a stand
• The Barbies wearing the red cape (evening collection) and the white coat (white collection) don’t have anything on under their outer wear – naughty
• The fur purse is my favorite accessory
• The doll with darker skin and a bigger head isn’t a Barbie. I think she was a Hawaiian doll given to us after our Grandma went on a vacation. I think we hacked her beautiful long hair off with scissors.
• We originally had two GI Joes, er, I mean our brothers had two, but one went missing after my sister and cousin tried to shave his beard off
• The redhead is actually a bald Barbie that came with some wigs. I think she might have come from my mom’s Barbie set. At one point we were playing with hers as well as ours, but I suspect she took them away from us because we were pretty hard on them
• At the very end of the shoot when it was almost all finished, I opened up the duffel bag used in the sporting collection and found a trove of shoes – they were the missing shoes that matched the one-offs that I had so many of. I’d been struggling all along to come up with shoes to match the outfits. Who would do that – break up pairs of shoes – and then hide them in a duffel bag? Probably a brother who was still mad about the shaving incident.