Enter the Barbie world

Barbie Cafe



After the Barbie Cafe in Shanghai, China by architect Hayes Slade designs the first ever Barbie Flagship for Mattel. The 35,000 square foot store holds the world’s largest and most comprehensive collection of Barbie dolls and licensed Barbie products, as well as a range of services and activities for Barbie fans and their families.



Mattel wanted a store where “Barbie is hero”; expressing Barbie as a global lifestyle brand by building on the brand’s historical link to fashion. Barbie Shanghai is the first fully realized expression of this broader vision. Mattel worked with BIG, the branding and design division of Ogilvy & Mather, to develop creative concept, identify project location, explore featured activities and identify creative partners.





The central feature is a three-story spiral staircase enclosed by eight hundred Barbie dolls. The staircase and the dolls are the core of the store; everything literally revolves around Barbie.

The staircase links the three retail floors:

The women’s floor (women’s fashion, couture, cosmetics and accessories).

The doll floor (dolls, designer doll gallery, doll accessories, books). The Barbie Design Center, where girls design their own Barbie is on this floor. This activity was planned by Chute Gerdeman Retail and designed by Slade Architecture.

The girls floor (girls fashion, shoes and accessories). The Barbie Fashion Stage, planned and designed by Chute Gerdeman Retail, where girls take part in a real runway show, is also on this floor.

A Carrie Outfit for Barbie

After having designed a Tomb for my Barbie, I have designed a Carrie Outfit.

Barbie has a Ken, a Corvette, a castle, and all the outfits she ever wanted. However she has nothing for Halloween. I designed this outfit in Papier Mache to fit the Barbie we love.

The following picture shows that the outfit has taken the perfect shape of the Barbie doll.



A Carrie Outfit for Barbie in Papier maché (doll not included)

More pictures on Flickr ...

Core sample

Material: wax and plaster

I took the perspective of a child trying to understand the meaning of the term Core Sample, an intuitive translation from the French analogy. Core sample then means 'le corps samplé', i.e. dismembered body.
An immediate reference to the dismembered body is a serial killer, the one that would be prompt to body sampling. Starting with an obsession for the neck, to a more tool-istic approach to body members: arms, legs, feet. I made a rock that symbolizes le plan de travail.

I chose to dismember a Barbie doll that I created out of wax. The Barbie being for a while a representation of the woman for a child. I chose the white wax, the wax being a way a woman suffers regularly by trying to reach an ideal. The white is the symbole of purity thus the contrast between the canvas fabric & the plaster sculpted with chisel, and the angelic face of the doll made of white wax.

This sculpture is a tool-kit box for understanding serial killing for children. The tools are also made of wax and represent legs, arms, hands, feet. A tool is normally very hard, here it is very fragile as a mean to represent the complete chimère, i.e. pipe dream, the serial killer is immersed in.

More pictures on Flickr

I made this sculpture for the sculpture class taught by Helen Mirra at Harvard University, VES.

In doll and sculpture

A haptic psycho therapeutic Barbie for violent kids?

Recently, Florence Gallez --Moscow correspondent for the Bureau of National Affairs-- sent me two articles about the future of the Barbie dolls. Either to mention that it is time to kill her or that 'Barbie's new dad is searching for the doll's missing wow' ...
Well, I remember a WOW and this by only switching voices between Barbie and GI Joe dolls. Maybe Mattel could receive some advice from Mike Bonanno (the Yes men) ...

In any case, I think it is time for us to make a Psycho-therapeutic Barbie that squeezes violent kids with her tiny little hands ... Touchcasting is working on that new Barbie revival!

Barbie as Cat Woman

In psycho toys