July 13, 2023 By Jura Koncius The Washington Post
Barbie, a plastic doll with a trippy pink home, is the original design influencer.
As generations of children have played with more than 20 versions of her Dreamhouse, they’ve learned how to arrange furniture and accessorize a pink room, and to aspire to have their own cool place, like Barbie. Mattel’s first Dreamhouse in 1962 was a mid-century cardboard ranch with wood paneling. The 2023 version — which somewhat resembles the one in Greta Gerwig’s Barbie movie, opening July 21 — is glammed up with a kidney-shaped pool, three-story spiral pool slide, potted succulents and a mod swinging chair.
The movie’s production designer Sarah Greenwood says she and set decorator Katie Spencer aimed for a kind of “utopian Americana” when conceptualizing the world that Margot Robbie’s Barbie inhabits on screen. The details of her Dreamhouse include a flamingo mailbox that doubles as a charger for Barbie’s electric-pink Corvette and a Pepto-hued Smeg toaster. The set is ageless, because Barbie is ageless. “This is our own version of Barbieland. There is no period specificness,” says Greenwood. “We were cherry-picking elements and refining things.”
All the excitement around the movie got us thinking: How would today’s top interior designers remake the Dreamhouse if they had the chance? (Apparently, we weren’t the only ones with this question — on July 16, HGTV premieres “Barbie Dreamhouse Challenge,” wherein design teams will transform a real Southern California home.) As Kim Culmone, Mattel’s global head of design for Barbie and fashion dolls, puts it: “It’s a Barbie summer.”
We asked six designers to reimagine a space for a modern-day Barbie. Certainly, some drew from the Barbiecore craze that started last year. Others made more unexpected choices. See if you can spot the one item that showed up on two mood boards.
Interior designer Ken Fulk has long had a personal relationship with Barbie.
“As a Ken, I’ve always felt a fondness for Barbie and her idealized world,” says Fulk, who splits his time between San Francisco and a 19th-century cottage in Provincetown, Mass.
Fulk transported Barbie and her dogs to her own weathered historical house at the tip of Cape Cod, Mass., for the season and sets up her living room to blend high style with a cozy, lived-in look.
“We decided to leave the vintage 1890s wallpaper in place,” Fulk says in an email. “To punch things up and add a bit of drama, we took some of Barbie’s old gowns that she no longer wore and turned them into draperies.” Keeping with the upcycled vibe, Fulk filled the salon with vintage chairs and quirky tables he discovered while combing local shops and country antique shows. Old and new paintings by local artists, in gilded frames full of patina, provide a touch of glamour. A romantic bouquet of garden flowers adds the final touch.
Now Fulk is hoping that Barbie might show up at one of his summer parties. “Barbie and Ken forever,” he says.