Anita Dongre’s Barbie as a Diwali gift: How the famous fashion doll got a Indian makeover

“Representation truly matters,” says Dongre, 1 of India’s starring manner designers. She recalls receiving a heartfelt video from a instrumentality successful New York: “She talented the doll to her girl and said, ‘I tin springiness my girl a doll that looks similar me. You person nary thought what this means.’”

Mettel Inc, the genitor institution down Barbie, approached Dongre a twelvemonth and a fractional agone to collaborate connected the project. Dongre viewed it arsenic an accidental to showcase India’s creativity connected a planetary stage. “India has ever been seen arsenic a manufacturing hub, but it ne'er got its owed for creativity and design—we’re the creators of the champion textiles,” she says. This project, she adds, allowed her “to showcase the state and instrumentality Indian manner to each country of the world.”

This isn’t Mattel’s archetypal effort astatine an “Indian” Barbie. After the 1991 New Economic Policy, they launched the acquainted blonde-haired, blue-eyed Barbie successful India. A fewer years later, they introduced an Indian mentation with brownish tegument and achromatic hair, wearing either a agleam saree oregon a salwar kameez, but it failed to resonate with the Indian audience. This mightiness explicate wherefore they brought connected committee Dongre, a decorator known not lone for her couture but besides her accessible retail brands similar AND and Global Desi.

The Barbie Signature Diwali Doll

Discussing the plan process, Dongre explains that her extremity was to make a Barbie that was quintessentially Indian yet contemporary.

“Every clip India is represented globally oregon successful popular culture, it’s often clichéd,” Dongre observes. “I wanted this Barbie to bespeak what Indian girls are wearing today—cool, fashionable, but inactive rooted successful India. The plan is unmistakably Indian, but the silhouette is contemporary. For example, the overgarment is inspired by the Rajasthani koti, but it has a modern twist. Barbie is simply a manner icon, truthful the outfit had to beryllium genuinely stylish and relevant.”

Completing the doll’s look is simply a tiny reddish bindi, aureate chandbalis, and a fewer golden kadas. Sharing that the squad brainstormed extensively connected the jewellery choices, Dongre explains, “We went backmost and forth; immoderate pieces conscionable weren’t applicable for production. I’m gladsome we settled connected chandbalis and kadas—classics that each Indian girl should have. Paired with golden stilettos, they implicit immoderate look.”

Designing for a doll, Dongre admits, was antithetic from moving with celebrities oregon existent people. “The scale is smaller, truthful we had to larn however to render designs that inactive looked bully astatine that size. The accumulation took astir a year, and it was a amusive learning process,” says Dongre, whose clients see stars similar Deepika Padukone, Kareena Kapoor, and Priyanka Chopra. Asked astir her inspiration for the project, she says it wasn’t 1 person, but modern India itself. “The women who store astatine my stores, the chill young girls who bask wearing Indian clothes.”