October 13, 2013

Merch tip: short haired Barbie sells the least

Filed under: Music by Branko Collin @ 10:42 pm

The Dolly Dots were a Dutch girl band from the 1980s with a string of hits. At the height of their success the six singers had their own sitcom, feature film and even their own Barbie dolls which, according to the I’m Like: ‘Oh My God!!!’ blog, were not very life-like.

The Ria doll at least included her trademark short hair. “All the dolls were hits, except the Ria one […] because it had short hair. You cannot comb a Ken hairdo.”

In this video from Avro’s TopPop Ria still had long hair—she is the one with the purse:

Having found only one source I have no idea whether this story is actually true, but it sounded too good to have it stay at the Dutch language part of the web.

(Photo by TROS, some rights reserved)

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November 25, 2008

Viktor & Rolf’s million dollar doll house

Filed under: Fashion by Branko Collin @ 8:32 am

Today “The House of Viktor & Rolf” opens in Centraal Museum in Utrecht, a retrospective exhibition of Dutch fashion design duo Viktor & Rolf. Apart from presenting many of the pieces the prolific pair produced in the past, the exhibition also contains a huge doll house with dolls dressed in the deft duo’s drag. The dolls wear exact miniature replicas of the original looks “as presented back then at the shows in Paris.”

According to RTL Nieuws (video, Dutch), the doll house took two years to complete. The clothing for some of the dolls took more time to make than the original designs. The house + dolls cost 1.7 million euro, but after the exhibition has completed its tour of Utrecht and New York, the museum can have it for the bargain basement price of … 1 million euro.

Says the museum:

In 1998 Centraal Museum was the first museum to buy designs from Viktor & Rolf. Since then the museum has been keeping track of the duo by buying a representative piece from almost every collection. Currently, the museum owns 29 pieces by Viktor & Rolf, a large part of which will be shown at the exhibition.

The exhibition runs from today till February 8.

Photo by Centraal Museum / Peter Stigter, used with permission.

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