Fashion Doll

Fashion Doll

Fashion dolls are dolls primarily designed to be dressed to reflect fashion trends. They are manufactured both as toys for children to play with and as collectibles for adult collectors. The dolls are usually modeled after teen girls or adult women, though child, male, and even some non-human variants exist. Contemporary fashion dolls are typically made of vinyl or another plastic.

The earliest fashion dolls were French bisque dolls from the mid-19th century. Barbie was released by the American toy-company Mattel in 1959, and was followed by many similar vinyl fashion dolls intended as children's toys. The size of the Barbie, 11.5 inches (290 mm) set the standard often used by other manufacturers. But fashion dolls have been made in many different sizes varying from 10.5 inches (270 mm) to 36 inches (900 mm).

Costumers and seamstresses use fashion dolls as a canvas for their work. Customizers repaint faces, reroot hair, or do other alterations to the dolls themselves. Many of these works are one-of-a-kind. These artists are usually not connected to the original manufacturers and sell their work to collectors.