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All about the history of barbie and vintage barbie clothes
This story takes location in the 1930’s. It’s a story that starts out sounding like 1 we’ve all heard prior to.
A young girl meets a boy and they fall in love. The girl graduates from high school. She has visions of a great career success within the real globe and wants to go to university. Her parents are not overly enthusiastic about university since it’s much more traditional for a lady to obtain married and raise a family. The girl goes to college anyway and marries the boy too. This married lady and boy are Ruth and Elliot Handler. They raise two kids, Barbie and Ken (this is where the vintage barbie clothes comes from)
Within the mid 1940’s, the young ambitious duo Ruth and Elliot Handler, owned a organization that created wooden picture frames. Elliot and his partner Harold Mattson built the samples and Ruth was in charge of marketing and advertising them. Elliot began to use the scraps of wood from image frames to make doll furniture. This was the beginning of their toy company. It was in 1945 that Ruth and Elliot Handler joined with their close friend Harold Mattson to form a company that will be known for the most well-known and successful doll ever produced. This organization will be named Mattel, MATT for Mattson, and EL for Elliot. Mattel continued to grow from a very profitable company into a corporate giant.
Within the mid 1950’s, while visiting Switzerland, Ruth Handler purchased a German Lilli doll. Lilli was a shapely, quite fashion doll initial created in 1955. She was originally fashioned after a well-known cartoon character in the West German Newsletter, Bild. Lilli was created of hard plastic with molded on shoes and earrings. She was available in 11 ½” or 7″ in heights. Her hair was long and pulled back into a ponytail. There was a big wardrobe available for this doll. Lilli may be the doll that would inspire Ruth Handler to design the Barbie doll.
Ruth knew what she wanted Barbie to appear like. With the assist of her technicians and engineers at Mattel, Barbie was born. Ruth then hired Charlotte Johnson, a style designer, to create Barbies wardrobe.
It was in 1958 that the patent for Barbie was obtained. This would be a style doll unlike any of her time. She would be long limbed, shapely and beautiful, all of this and only 11 ½” tall.
Paper fashion dolls of the times would give method to a three dimensional beauty with a wardrobe of unsurpassed quality. Ruth and Elliot would name their new fashion doll after their own daughter, Barbie. Barbie dolls’ soon to be boyfriend Ken, would be named after their son Ken.
In March of 1959, Barbie doll would make her method to the New York Toy Show and receive a cool reception from the toy buyers. She would be viewed as risky to buyers since she was not the typical style selling baby doll from the times. Upon seeing Barbie on store shelves, the public decided differently. By 1960, the mood would change and also the orders began pouring in to Mattel. It took several many years for Mattel to catch up using the demand for Barbie. Within ten years, the public purchased $500 million worth of Barbie items (including vintage barbie clothes)
