Meet the woman behind Barbie’s most iconic looks
Carol: Well, I graduated from high school in 1950. And at that time, there were basically five jobs for women: nurse, teacher, secretary, clerk, wife, and mother. And then lo and behold, Mattel Incorporated started putting ads in the paper that they needed a designer for the Barbie doll, and I knew that that was where I wanted to be for my career. I'm Carol Spencer, and I became a Barbie designer in 1963 when I was only 18, no. Narrator: At 86 years young, Carol Spencer is now retired, but she still holds the record as Barbie's longest-running stylist to date. Over the years, she pulled inspiration from pop culture, music, and street fashion in order to stay relevant, constantly reinventing her own personal design style in order to align Barbie with the changing times.
- When I started, we did not have computers. We had no technology. It was hands-on. It was different than it is today. The design process started with the designer. Narrator: Today, Carol spends her time meeting other Barbie lovers at conventions around the world and adding to her already impressive personal collection.
- Well, here in my dining room, you're never alone because you always have Barbie. I would say, in the house, on display, I have someplace close to 500 dolls. That is a whole group of Malibu dolls from different years. This is the first Ken doll that I actually designed the basic costume for. And this is another Ken, and he's got wild pants because that was the time period that we had things like that. And, you know, it was a lot of fun.
Because we thought of her as a real person, we looked everywhere. We were aware of everything that was going on. If I wanted high fashion, I could just go a few blocks to Beverly Hills, walk down Rodeo Drive, and I had inspiration. If I wanted to see tourists, I could still go to Rodeo Drive because I can see what the people were wearing. That's one thing that I learned after I graduated from high school, that there's a whole world out there that you can find if you look for it. I could give you stories on most all of them. This goes into '70s. This is later '70s and into the '80s up here. We were wearing patchwork prints and long dresses, and that was influenced mostly by the music scene.
That's called Wild Bunch. She has boots with cutouts. And I bought some wonderful white boots that were all cut out and laced up, and I used to wear those, and so I sort of took from some of the things I would buy and like that were mod and put them on Barbie. Narrator: With a college degree in fine arts, Carol was also inspired by the early fashion houses of Europe, and her ability to drape high-end fabrics made her especially skilled at Barbie's haute couture looks.
- When I designed this doll, I wanted to have something that was over-the-top for Barbie, and, of course, I chose red hair because red hair is a favorite of mine. My grandmother had red hair. Red hair ran in my family. I did not have red hair. Although today sometimes my hair looks red, but that's the bottle job. That is Golden Jubilee Barbie. That was designed for her 35th anniversary. It's probably the most expensive doll made up to its time. So you'll see a beading design nobody else can create because that's how I did it with my fine-arts background. And that was the whole object was to give the child something to play with and to dream with. Where the child, through play, could project into whatever was on her mind because that's what kids do. At least they did with Barbie. Barbie has become really my best friend, confidante, and my appetite for adventure never stopped. I've been all over the world, and many parts of it with Barbie. I became an expatriate for two years with Barbie. I mean, I have had adventures you wouldn't believe with Barbie.