A London Museum Is Telling Barbie’s Story With Her Stuff
Barbie may only be 11.5” of plastic, but the childhood doll has a remarkable history reflecting—and sometimes questioning—the changing values of our society. An exhibition at London’s Design Museum, “Barbie: The Exhibition,” is now reminding us of just that fact. On the back of the Barbie-mania that defined 2023 thanks to the eponymous film, the show stresses the breadth of design, fashion and architectural innovation that this youthful companion has long exemplified.
“Design has been at the heart of Barbie’s story ever since her creation sixty-five years ago,” Tim Marlow, CEO of the Design Museum, tells Observer. “As we’ve seen recently, her impact has also evolved with each new generation.”
With 250 objects and 180 dolls, it’s the first time a major U.K. museum has mounted a comprehensive show dedicated to the figurine. Mattel Inc., the longstanding makers of Barbie, partnered with the Design Museum, giving them carte blanche access to their Californian archives. Rare original dolls, forgotten toy accessories and archival design plans are just some of the prized pieces sourced from Barbie-land.
“Barbie is arguably one of the most globally recognized examples of world-building through product and graphic design,” says show curator Danielle Thom. “In turn, she has inspired many designers and artists to respond to her history.”
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The namesake doll is only part of the history here, from its beginnings as a statuesque woman sporting a stripy bathing suit to her long and polarizing role perpetuating unrealistic beauty standards. But it’s the creation of an innocent fantasy world—the realm of Barbie’s houses, cars and even couture—that the show most closely examines. In particular, the unique design history and political gesture of taking objects from our changing adult lives, then reflecting them back to us in new plastic pieces paired with our favorite doll.
“The Barbie universe is expansive and exciting … thanks to the meticulous work of talented designers,” adds Thom. “The design story of Barbie is a rich topic for our museum to put under the spotlight.”
Barbie as a physical embodiment of modern womanhood sees her history map a story of bygone trends and changing tastes. The pieces featured reflect key junctures in the history of twentieth-century design sensibilities and society’s evolving politics. The most radical example may be Barbie’s original 1962 cardboard Dream House. At a time when most women could not own property without a male guarantor, the Dream House reads as a quiet feminist statement, with Barbie enjoying a collection of books and records (but no kitchen) in her apartment. The varsity pennants suggest that Barbie was college-educated, while the single bed confirms she was unmarried.
The Dream House soon came to engender, and occasionally challenge, the larger political consciousness America was developing in the 1970s, from feminism to environmentalism. Later iterations, like the 1979 exposed A-frame house inspired by the architect Frank Gehry’s early work, took in the wider environmental movement. A skylight roof, natural light colors and window boxes of flowers adorn the structure underscoring a naturalism unlike previous Dream Homes yet seen. Even the fact that its rooms aren’t demarcated as a kitchen or living room highlights the free-spirited, unstructured pleasures of the decade.
It was in the reactionary swing of the 1980s, as corporate conquests and conspicuous consumption arrived, that Barbie’s Dream House became the well-known pink mansion many know today. On display is the Magical Mansion (1990), a toy house that parades the architectural excess and material extravagance of the times, with its Doric columns, regal furnishings and gaudy colors. There are dedicated rooms, with a gaudy “Love Bed” for the bedroom and a capacious spa for the bathroom, suggesting Barbie firmly enjoying the aspirational middle-class fantasy of a house in the suburbs. Now with Ken.
The final Dream House on show is one from only a few years ago, with a stripped-back minimalist aesthetic of few furnishings and a hot pink coating. It’s metonymic of our TikTok content age, with a disco third floor (complete with a karaoke machine) and a phone holder suggesting the focus on creating playful content at home for friends online. The swirly slide that bookends the house only confirms this performed adult playfulness—for children.
The show also reminds us that Barbie has never been defined or limited by a house. Purpose can be found on the road, at the workplace and in other far-out locations, from ski cabins to even space stations. In 1961, Barbie got her first car, the salmon-pink Austin-Healey 3000. The sleek sports vehicle with aqua seats signaled Barbie’s independence while channeling its adult namesake, the “big Healey” convertible by Jensen Motors. There may have been no (practical or physical) top to the car, but its symbolic place alongside her solo Dream House heralded one unafraid and emancipated young woman.
Other vehicles featured in the show include the 1971 Country Camper, a sickly 70s yellow-and-orange motorhome emblazoned with a rainbow decal. The van offered kids the prospect of taking Barbie and “glamping” luxury off-road. It would eventually become one of the most popular accessories to pair with the doll, representing the era’s free-wheeling focus on earthy experiences for “me.”
The doll’s ongoing miniaturization of our adult material possessions, workplaces and even clothing for children is a great irony. Seeing a series of McMansions, slick sportscars and upmarket couture at Barbie: The Exhibition is a reminder of this.
The chance to “interpret the adult world,” as Barbie’s creator and Mattel cofounder Ruth Handler once said, is what the enduring appeal of the playful toy continues to offer kids, even generations later. Adult lives are usually mundane, obligatory and uninspired, so the chance to recreate boring or grown-up objects for childlike fun makes it even more ironic. Barbie asks kids to be adults for a moment … but also, kids, don’t grow up too early.
“Barbie: The Exhibition” gives us an immersive and enlightening education on this polarizing but political piece of plastic fantastic—one that truly extends beyond her original pink palettes and blonde locks. Take the Dream House. To see Barbie so confident and carefree at home from the 1960s to today is a powerful statement on Barbie’s self-reliance in her own private spaces. The exhibition shows how a seemingly simple doll house has long betrayed a far more nuanced relationship to our changing values, aesthetics and design practices set against the private spaces we live in.
From Barbie nostalgists, design aficionados and those perhaps seeking some brief childish fantasy play, “Barbie: The Exhibition” will, if briefly, color your world.
“Barbie: The Exhibition” is on view at The Design Museum, London until February 23, 2025. Advanced booking is recommended.