#dolldressing

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#WeLoveDolls: Hop

"Meet Hop, the squirrel girl protagonizing my first industrially produced line. I suppose my passion is expected to be artisanal work, but I find the sturdiness of high-quality toys produced by industry experts a lot more valuable. It means the figure can stay with you for a long while, and won't crumble.

A mix of worn out and polished captures the essence of the tidy but fun and adventurous girl. "Patched Up" brings together both worlds: the serifed pinks and whites of a clean, soap-smelling child's room; and the handwritten browns and oranges of the autumny outdoors."

-Lucía Pavlov, CABA, Argentina

.HopTheDoll on Instagram

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#WeLoveDolls: From Scraps

"My mother loved fashion. In the 1930s, she worked as an assistant dress buyer for Lord & Taylor and her passion for style is still evident in many photographs over time. After leaving her career to start a family, she found creative ways to stay connected to her love of clothing. One of them was home sewing.

Before Barbie debuted in 1959, there were “fashion dolls.” They were just 7.5 inches tall with a modest figure, fluttering blue eyes, and jet-black hair. I was captivated by my doll’s beauty and delighted for the chance to dress her. Sitting on the floor with doll in hand, I discovered that the scraps falling from my mother’s sewing machine could be repurposed into the latest fashions. I eagerly began creating.

In these photos, my doll is (still) wearing my very first design, created when I was just 5 years old. That moment—and that doll—ignited my own journey into fashion, eventually leading to a degree from FIT, and a successful career in the fashion industry that spanned more than fifty years."

-Lynn Blake, Boston, MA

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#WeLoveDolls: Pedigree Sindys

"I received my first Sindy doll, very early on the morning of Christmas day 1976 when I was 5 years old. I was up so early with excitement that my Mum let me open one present to play with, and it was Anne, the Sindy in the brown dress. My lifelong love of these dolls (who are Pedigree Sindys) started that day. These six are all my original dolls from childhood, dated from 1976 to 1981. I saved my pocket money to buy their clothes, lived my love of horses through them, and made their home in a built-in wardrobe in my bedroom.

Years later, since Covid, I still get great pleasure from them, appreciating the history of their fashions, creating mini worlds for them, repurposing everyday items, and sewing clothes from offcuts of fabrics. I have made a worldwide community of friends and we create dioramas, photograph our work, and join in different challenges together which change every month. It is a constant source of friendship (I meet up with local friends as well as having online friends), creativity, and for me, mindfulness. I was also chosen to exhibit my work in The Hobby Cave in London, 2024, which celebrated people's pastimes that they do just for the love of it!

My collection has grown significantly, from buying new dolls to restoring the vintage girls. My oldest Sindy is from 1966 (she launched in 1963). All those years ago I never would have thought Sindy would still be such a part of my adult life, but I still love her as much today as I did then."

-Liz Hill, Exeter, UK

.sindylovesstyle on Instagram

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#WeLoveDolls: "Cultural Dolls"

"My collages explore the idea of women as cultural dolls: figures shaped, assembled, ornamented, and continuously reimagined through systems of fashion, institutions, image culture, and visual play. Rather than depicting literal dolls, the works examine how femininity itself often operates as a constructed surface onto which identity, fantasy, beauty, desire, and social expectations are projected.

The notion of play is central to the series. Through layering, cutting, rearranging, and visual intervention, the collage process allows me to construct feminine figures that operate as cultural dolls — suspended between portrait, fashion image, icon, ornament, and social mask. The works reflect on the impulse to aesthetically shape, idealize, manipulate, and culturally “design” women through contemporary systems of representation.

The collages are created through direct interventions on museum flyers, exhibition materials, and printed cultural ephemera collected between New York and Barcelona: including materials from institutions such as the Whitney Museum and the CCCB. By transforming these institutional surfaces, the works reflect on how women are displayed, consumed, archived, and visually reconstructed within contemporary culture."

-Süsan Spark, New York

.bysusanspark on Instagram

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#WeLoveDolls: Lágrima

"Somehow or another, I became a Dollmaker. Art Dolls, that is. One sided, often badly behaved, and sometimes larger than life. Inspiration can come from a favourite fashion image, an out of context phrase. This doll here, Lágrima, was inspired by John Galliano’s Maison Margiela 2024 Artisanal Collection.

She demanded to be drawn, the fuller figures for fashion were just wonderful lines. I draw on calico and then stitch over my lines using my lovely old Bernina machine, and finish the details by hand. She is painted with watercolour and acrylic. Lagrima means teardrop. She has a port wine stain. Literally - I spilt port on her. It somehow suited her.

That Artisanal Collection was a total breath of fresh and extraordinary air. Fashion as art, as a story, and a whole magical evocative world within a world. Total escapism. There hasn’t been clothing art like that for years. Lagrima didn’t hang around – she was sold before the last stitches had been added."

-Annie Taylor, Whitstable, UK

.whitstabletail on Instagram

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#WeLoveDolls: Sindy's Wardrobe

"My first Sindy doll was a Christmas present in 1972. She wore a yellow top, a yellow and green mini skirt, and big yellow boots. Her extra outfit was a rainy day shiny black rain Mac with red accessories, and yes, big boots. A style I have always adhered to: big boots with everything!

I saved up my birthday money and bought a second Sindy. Then another. I kept them in a vanity case, and would drag the whole lot ‘round to my friend’s to play all summer. Eventually, they went into the wardrobe and stayed there, hibernating.

Now they live in my studio and often come out, and when I am looking for random displacement activity (deadline approaching) I will change their outfits. Some are original, some were made by my Nana. The ones I made didn't last, as they were not well made. My first Sindy was made in the Triang Works on the Factory estate near my home. The next in Canterbury, near where I now live. I have friends who worked on the production line. I love this connection. They often feature in my work; most recently in a series of tongue in cheek “Sindy Sherman” film stills."

-Annie Taylor, Whitstable, UK

.whitstabletail on Instagram

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#WeLoveDolls: The 60s-70s "Barbie Look"

"I have always loved Barbie. In the past 7 years, I've especially been interested in vintage Barbie and have been a collector since then. My favorite era is 1967-1980, all the dolls shown here are from that period. My mom grew up in the 1970s and she had a few Barbie dolls of her own, which is one of the reasons I started collecting. Her favorite Barbie from childhood, Superstar Christie (1977), has since become my favorite Barbie as well. I love all the clothes from the '60s and the '70s and they've been a huge inspiration for me. As a student attending FIT this coming year, I'm excited to incorporate "The Barbie Look" into my own designs! Vintage fashion dolls are snapshots of history, and I think that's why I like them so much."

-Hugh Sterling, Middleton, WI

._silverrx_ on Instagram

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#WeLoveDolls: Miniature Crochet-Lace

"A few years ago, when I began a passion project of creating a miniature crochet-lace textile museum, I was looking for dolls to use as mannequins for my handmade costume designs. I eventually found vintage miniature Barbie figurines, and I was thrilled at how perfect they were for my project. The image I have submitted is one of my favorites, the dress and accessories are made entirely from antique crochet-lace. These doll figurines have brought me much joy, as I love how perfectly they showcase my miniature designs, and resemble actual mannequins."

-Diana Latzanich, New York

.diana_dioramas on Instagram

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