Hollywood Dolls

Meeting talented people has been one of the many joys of collecting fashion dolls. Meeting people like Michael Williams is an honour. His talent in creating exquisite dioramas, that not only look realistic, but are bristling with taste and style, is unique. I will present here his amazing diorama inspired by the interior designer Jonathan Adler, letting Michael talk about it in his own words.


Michael: I was never your "normal," or perhaps I should say "ordinary," little boy who liked to play with action figures and toy cars in the sandbox. I got my first Barbie, Sweet 16, when I was 5 years old, and progressed to Malibu Barbie & Ken, Pretty Changes, and Superstar Barbie before selling them all off at a garage sale by the age of 10. As a child, I simply loved the escapist fantasy of these glamorous characters in their Dynasty gowns going on James Bond-like adventures in their bright yellow plastic mobile home, since we couldn't afford the A-frame Dreamhouse, back then. They were an outlet for my imagination, and I got to be the costume & set designer, hair stylist, screen writer and director, all in the confines of my small-town, Midwestern, middle-class, orange shag-rug-carpeted living room.



The first time a doll resurfaced in my adult life was right before moving to New York in 1994. I was on a yearlong fellowship studying studio photography in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, when my best friend there gave me a Dutch-talking Barbie, complete with little wooden shoes. He and his boyfriend would often buy cheap play line dolls to repaint and restyle as their favourite silver screen icons, like Joan Crawford or Bettie Davis. And so I had my first introduction to grown men who play with dolls, and not the inflatable kind.

When I returned to the US and moved to New York, I discovered the Barbie on Madison boutique at FAO Schwarz and fell in love with retro reproductions of the very first #1 ponytail Barbie dolls from 1959, and I got a couple as novelties for my bookshelf, because I love vintage 1950's and 60's film and fashions, personified by actresses like Audrey Hepburn and Doris Day. An older friend once recounted nostalgically how he remembers when there was a time that you could HEAR a woman enter a room just by the ruffling sound of her crinoline petticoats. I enjoy escaping back through time to that era, where women wore pearls and little white gloves and both men and women wore hats, and these dolls can personify our idealized vision of that bygone Camelot.


This presentation gets its name from my September 2007 HAUTE DOLL Magazine feature on diorama doll house furnishings, and it serves as a laudatory homage to Bravo TOP DESIGN guru Jonathan Adler (age 41),who first fell in love with ceramics at age 12 in summer camp, but took a brief detour in the movie business before launching his initial line of pottery at Barney's in 1994. The line was an instant success, and in 1998 he opened his first store in Manhattan's SoHo neighbourhood, which has since been followed by several boutiques across the country, as he expanded his line into a glamorous new furniture collection, along with bedding, towels, and pillows (some of which are licensed and carried by Bed, Bath and Beyond and department stores). He even redesigned the Le Parker Meridien Hotel in Palm Springs, now a hot resort vacation destination.


First, I thought I'd start off with the inspiration for my dioramas - from the catalogue of Jonathan Adler.


Many of the pieces in the feature come from either bargain vintage finds on ebay (the centrepiece red corduroy sofa set cost only $15)or IKEA's line of doll house furniture that closely match Adler's lacquer-finished end tables, along with items like the wall screen from Barbie's My Scene and Fashion Fever line, accessorized with many simple and easy handmade projects like the Adler-inspired pillows (printed onto ink-jet friendly fabric), star burst mirrors of painted toothpicks and foam core, a George Nelson clock made of pins and paper, vases and lamps from fluted metal beads that closely resemble the gourd-inspired signature pottery of Adler, and an Adler place mat that doubles as an area rug.





























All photos are by Michael Williams: check him out at: MAWPhoto and also at his Flickr album.

RESOURCE LIST:

Room With A View magnetic diorama from Cleabella

Carolyn Allen
Mod-O-Rama Fashion Doll Furniture
cda311@myway.com

Matt Trujillo
Custom OOAK reflocked Ken dolls
rubbermatt2000@yahoo.com

Joan Hudson
Reproduction Francie fashion
jhudson1101@hotmail.com

B&J Fabric (for black and white pattern on wallpaper)
525 Seventh Avenue, 2nd fl at 38th St
New York, NY
(212) 354-8150

TOHO Shoji Bead Store
990 Avenue Of The Americas/36-37th St
New York, NY
(212) 967-2088

It has been quite a while since I have properly posted in this blog, I promise it will soon change. Meanwhile, I got interviewed in a Greek magazine, SOUL, about my blog, by my friend Indiktos. Below are the scans of the two page spread I got in the magazine, with photos of my dolls (most of them published in this very blog), a portrait of mine with one of my dolls (Tonner's Ghost of Christmas Future). After the scans, you can find the whole interview translated in English. I hope you like it.






25.000 Greek blogs need luck or hours of surfing to go through and discover addresses that hide something more than views or confessions. The Fashion Doll Chronicles: this is the English language blog of Stratos Bacalis', a collective explosion that will send you directly to the valley of the dolls.


What are fashion dolls? I do not have or, better say.... had any idea:

Fashion dolls are dolls of limited edition, dressed in very good quality or, rarely, porcelain.

To tell you the truth, I only know about Barbies. (laughter)

I only knew Barbies too, but not the collectibles, the ones that are sold everywhere. In 2000 I discovered, through an advertisement in a foreign magazine, that the Franklin Mint company was selling a 16 inch doll lookalike of Olivia Newton-John στο Grease. As a big fan, I had to have her. Then I found out there were more…


What dolls are you collecting?

Quite a variety. I started out with movie stars: Olivia, Liz Taylor, Marilyn Monroe, Rita Hayworth, Greta Garbo, Vivien Leigh, Marlene Dietrich, Lucille Ball, Audrey Hepburn. I also like dolls from a particular period (especially 18ος -19ος αιώνας), as well as the Gene Marshall series which are mainly in the 40-50ς. From the smaller dolls, only the Fashion Royalty series by designer Jason Wu and certain Barbies, like the Versace one. I have a fondness for Asian ladies, they...fascinate me.