Centuries Ago, Royals Dressed Up Their Dolls to Share the Latest Fashions. See How Barbies, Baby Dolls and Other Tiny Trendsetters Have Inspired Designers Ever Since

Since Barbie’s debut in 1959, the iconic doll has donned more than one billion outfits, including a hot pink blazer-and-skirt set that transforms into a cocktail dress, a black-and-white swimsuit, and a red-and-gold Elizabethan gown. As the museum notes in a statement, “Dolls aren’t just toys—they’re muses, canvases and even prototypes for designers … not only reflecting fashion but actively shaping it.” The show focuses on “fashion dolls,” curator Colleen Hill writes in an exhibition brochure. The figurines “provided a tactile manual for dressmakers to convert the clothes into full-size ensembles,” according to the exhibition wall text.

In the show, a 1770s fashion doll on loan from the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation wears a blue silk gown whose skirt can be gathered at the sides in the robe à la polonaise style inspired by Polish fashion. By the 18th century, paper dolls with swappable outfits had emerged as an accessible alternative. Fashion dolls still proliferated, but they were largely seen as luxury children’s toys.

Nineteenth-century French dollmakers such as Jumeau and Gaultier created porcelain figurines that taught wealthy girls the importance of fashion and encouraged them to practice their embroidery skills. The babies’ youthful appearance didn’t stop them from sporting designer clothing: The exhibition spotlights a 1939 baby doll that came with its own Louis Vuitton-branded leather trunk and matching wardrobe. Fashion dolls aimed at adults experienced a resurgence during the Roaring Twenties, when celebrities started carrying around figurines dubbed boudoir dolls.

For the most part, they’re not functional. There are a few bags—I have one in the show that’s shaped like a doll, and its skirt conceals a little purse—but usually, you just carried a doll.” Clad in ensembles typical of the decade, including knee-length dresses and Mary Jane shoes, boudoir dolls reflected the rebellious mood of the Roaring Twenties. Women started “relegating the qualities of doll-like docility to the toys themselves,” the exhibition notes.

As Vogue reported in 1929, “It was a very foolish point of view to imagine, with everything else changing, booming and zipping, that women were going to remain dolls whom dressmakers could dress and undress at will.” Decades later, some woman did the opposite, deliberately dressing up like dolls. In 1960s Great Britain, dolly birds channeled youthful doll aesthetics by donning simple, colorful and playful dresses. The show also highlights supposedly “creepy” dolls, including Living Dead Dolls modeled on horror characters and Alexander McQueen’s 1997 spring collection, which was inspired by the unsettling figurines created by Surrealist artist Hans Bellmer in the mid-1930s.

Overall, Hill tells Elle, “I’ve found that the idea of doll dressing is really positive. I think it fosters playfulness and self-acceptance and imagination. And it also offers a bit of a reprieve from all of the pressures of adulthood.” “Doll Dressing”