Category: deep dives

• Millennium Mod

  Barbie’s Swinging Fashions, 1980-2020 The mod era–the Swinging Sixties, the Youthquake, fashion’s Space Age–was a time of major style upheaval. Short skirts with high boots, vibrant patterns and colors, and rejection of tradition reigned. Street fashion led the new trends while couturiers rushed to keep up. For Barbie, the period spanned approximately 1967 to 1972…

  sheathsensation

  May 23, 2024

  deep dives, Musings

• A chronicle of Barbie shoes, 1959-1967

  Recently, while sourcing various, specific vintage shoes for a custom project, I began to realize there were basic facts about Barbie’s early shoes that were not known to me. What year was Barbie’s first pair of closed-toe shoes produced? (The answer surprised me, but maybe you already know.) What were the most common “gold” open-toed…

  sheathsensation

  September 30, 2022

  deep dives, Musings

  1959, 1960, 1961, 1962, 1963, 1964, 1965, 1966, 1967, booklets, red flare, shoes, vintage barbie

• When Barbie turned 21

  It’s a paradox: she was a teen-age fashion model in 1959, and she turned 21 in 1980. For Barbie, both are true. And in 1980 Barbie held her 21st birthday bash, where else? in a nightclub: “Hurrah” in Manhattan, a “new wave disco,” per the Charlotte Observer. Befittingly, the party was punctuated by a fashion…

  sheathsensation

  September 20, 2022

  deep dives, Musings

  1959, 1960, 1961, 1962, 1964, 1980, booklets, timothy dunleavy, unique vintage, vintage barbie, vintage reproduction barbie