Among Barbie’s 1960s celebrity pals, Julia must have had the biggest star turn. Witness: the dolls are still plentiful 50+ years later, implying brisk sales; and of the three “personality” dolls, only Julia received both her own line of fashions and a re-release as a Talking doll (Twiggy also had a fashion line, while Truly Scrumptious also came in a Talking version); and only Julia had a further gift set with exclusive fashion.
With the various Julia-centric releases came some unique fashion sketches. Let’s check em out.
Star of stage and screen Diahann Carroll, who played Julia on TV, expressed dismay that Mattel had her sit for sketching and studying and then released a doll based on her character using the same face as Barbie’s friend Christie. It’s clear that the illustration above, which appeared on the original doll’s packaging, uses Carroll’s likeness. However, her face looks traced or drawn from a photograph–no live sketching needed. Other images on the package are photographs of Carroll in-character as Julia.
The doll wore a nurse’s uniform on initial release but wasn’t illustrated in it for the product packaging. The illustrated character instead wore Barbie’s Fancy Dancy ensemble. If Julia in her nurse’s uniform was ever illustrated, for example for a booklet, we haven’t seen it. At least once, the Julia doll who came wearing a nurse’s uniform (product #1127) was advertised in a booklet in photograph form, wearing no known Barbie or Julia fashion and certainly not her uniform:
The doll’s signature fashions were still to come.
The line of four Julia-inspired fashions were illustrated in black and white on the back of each fashion’s packaging. (These images also appear in a collage at the top of the post.) While the figures modeling these looks are most certainly Julia-based, they are a looser interpretation than the “Fancy Dancy” drawing.
Talking Julia had all-new packaging with all-new color illustrations of the fashions. The faces in these illustrations again appear to be adapted from photographs of Carroll.
The art style here is pretty basic, with minimal contouring and little sense of action, in line with other Barbie art of the period as photography became the primary medium to showcase the products.
Once again, the dressed doll’s fashion–this time, a metallic color block jumpsuit–was not illustrated on the packaging. However, the Simply Wow gift set box featured two fashion illustrations: Talking Julia in her jumpsuit (included in the gift set) and wearing the set’s extra fashion, a teal skirt-suit.
Unless and until the elusive illustration of Julia in her original nurse’s uniform comes to light, that’s that: eleven hand-drawn Julias wearing six of the seven Mattel fashion designs for Julia plus Fancy Dancy as a treat.
Silken Flame 
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