Barbie's Western-Themed Outfit Posed An Unexpected Challenge
Greta Gerwig's new film "Barbie" is an Adam and Eve story. The Garden of Eden is a place called Barbieland where the youthful idealism sold by Mattel's Barbie products exists, uninterrupted, in perpetuity. Women have all the power and men are accessories. Everything is clean and made of plastic. The only conflicts exist between the many men named Ken. The Barbies are all best friends. It's not until Barbie has idle thoughts of death that a serpent is unleashed. At the advice of Weird Barbie (Kate McKinnon), Barbie (Margot Robbie) exits Barbieland and travels into the real world. Ken (Ryan Gosling) tags along, only to encounter the forbidden knowledge of the patriarchy. He returns to Barbieland with books about horses and Matchbox 20 songs, eager to share the good news with his fellow Kens.
In the real world, Barbie manages to manifest whatever clothing she might want, and she and Ken construct kicky country and Western outfits to blend in with the crowd. Ken's cowboy outfit has a lot of fringe. Barbie's is a two-piece number made of a lot of stretchy bright pink denim. They both wear white hats, natch.
As it so happens, constructing the Barbie cowgirl outfit was harder than one might think. Those articles of clothing — pink denim vest, lace-up pink denim pants — didn't exist in the real world. Academy Award-winning costume designer Jacqueline Durran had to invent Barbie's outfit from scratch, something that's hard to do when one must adhere to a very particular shade of pink. It seems that pink denim is hard to come by. Durran talked about her struggles in a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly.
The Malibu cowgirl
Durran points out that Barbie's cowgirl outfit is kind of a satire of American iconography. Barbie may seem incapable of wearing anything other than bright pink, so her cowgirl outfit is as close to cultural "camouflage" as she'll ever come. Durran said:
"When they arrived in America, what would they wear? How would a Barbie and a Ken — well, not so much a Ken, 'cause Ken follows — but how would Barbie choose what to wear when she wants to fit in and be liked in America? Does she become a Malibu girl?"
Denim made sense, and while one may be able to mail-order pink jeans with relative ease, finding bolts of the actual fabric was near impossible. It seems that Durran had to improvise. She also needed to stitch together several mock-ups to make sure the perfect outfit was found. Durran said:
"We had to buy pink stretch fabric and then print a denim texture onto it. [...] There were lots of different versions of it, with a waistband, without a waistband. It took a long time just to work, to get the exact details of it."
The texture is uncanny. Smooth, like all-rayon Barbie clothes, yet still evocative of actual denim. Durran did something right, as Spirit Halloween already produced a version of it for the coming October, and it's already sold out. It's sold out at Party City as well. Prepare to see any number of Barbie's outfits this Halloween.
At last measure, "Barbie" was the 20th highest-grossing film of all time.