She’s been a style icon for 65 years, and Barbie is still wowing fans with her fashion-forward looks, thanks to her personal stylist (yes, really!)
LIZZIE SMITH
We’ve got a nomination for best dressed star at the Oscars, and it’s not Margot Robbie, Emma Stone or Florence Pugh. Posing up a storm on the red carpet in a black column dress with extravagant pink bow, it was the perfectly accessorised Barbie herself who took our crown.
The plastic doll, who turns 65 this month, was photographed on location at the Academy Awards, to the delight of her 2.8m followers on her Instagram account, @BarbieStyle.
“Whoever posed this beautiful Barbie is totally on point,” raved one. “Hand on hip, one foot slightly in front of the other… picture perfect.”
The person behind this Instagram look, and hundreds of others, is Barbie’s official stylist, Rachel Ritter – yes, that really is a full-time job. Ahead of Barbie’s big moment on the red carpet, we jetted to Los Angeles to meet Rachel and go behind the scenes as she pulled together the perfect look.
After a short drive from the airport, the bright pink Barbie bus drops us off at the one-storey Mattel building surrounded by palm trees, where Rachel is waiting to greet us.
“I want to show you my favourite part,” the 28-year-old says, as she leads us through corridors with floor-to-ceiling displays of vintage Barbies. “All the tiny little clothes.”
Inside her styling wardrobe, Rachel opens drawer after drawer crammed with colour-sorted vintage pieces of Barbie clothing. We run our hands through thousands of shoes, sunglasses, hats, coats and outfits.
AHEAD OF THE CROWD
One large cupboard holds nothing but Barbie heads, with every skin tone and hair colour and texture you can imagine – all carefully presented on small spikes, rather like the nightmare-inducing scene from 1985’s Return To Oz. “This is the totally not creepy head cabinet,” joked Rachel, in a recent BarbieStyle post.
Like any celebrity stylist, Rachel takes inspiration from current trends and melds them with a touch of vintage. In her case, the vintage is a meticulous archive of tiny Barbie fashion, going all the way back to the very first doll.
“We are always mixing and matching custom, vintage and specialty pieces,” she says. “I’m pulling from all different kinds of inspiration and sourc
