How Barbie's Magnificently Realistic Doll-Sized Costumes Come to Life

Back in 2014, executives at Barbie HQ were tasked with figuring out how the brand would find its footing on new app called Instagram. The main @Barbie account catered largely to parents and kids, speaking to them as toy consumers. But the team knew there was more to Barbie, that she had the potential to be perceived as an It Girl style icon, too. "We needed a space that we could bring fashion partners into. A space that truly felt fashion forward," says Zlatan Kusnoor, creative director of Barbie. And so @BarbieStyle was born.

Rather than sharing promotional content from the point of view of a brand, the @BarbieStyle account now imagines what Barbie's own Instagram would look like, sharing snippets of her life from her point of view. You'll find her posing in front of the Chicago bean in a Ganni-inspired bow top and low-rise jeans, or at an WNBA game, sporting box braids and a B necklace. On the feed, she's even spotted through London's Borough market in a Hill House nap dress. The clothes (and activities) that populate the @BarbieStyle feed feel so current and on-trend, the sets so realistic, that it would be easy to mistake it for a human influencer account.

As Kusnoor tells InStyle in the latest video installment of "Behind the Seams" above, to create such realistic content, the @BarbieStyle team designs custom clothes, dolls, and sets. And since the clothes are made to order, there's more room to play. While regular Barbie clothes need to be easily reproduced on a large scale, the @BarbieStyle team can invest in details, like fashioning a functional (Barbie-sized) zipper on her pink leather jacket, or recreating a custom Balmain bow dress.

Last month, @BarbieStyle turned 10 years old. To celebrate, InStyle visited their office, touring the Barbie closet and speaking with set designers, stylists, and creative directors about how the magic is made. They told us how they translate human designs down to Barbie size, create custom hair and makeup looks, and collaborate with big name designers. See it all unfold above, and read on for more details.

Playing With Scale

One of the biggest challenges of creating realistic, on-trend Barbie clothes is scaling everything down to Barbie size. The doll's clothes are 1/6th that of human-size, and while patterns can be shrunk, fabrics that work for people's clothes don't necessarily translate. Put a regular sequin on one of Barbie's jackets and it will look like the size of a Barbie-verse dinner plate.

“If you were to go source pinstripe fabric for a human, it would be quite large scale for Barbie," Ritter says, showing how a regular pinstripe fabric cut into Barbie scale would only display one or two of the stripes that fit so closely together on a human-sized blazer. "Denim is a particular problem in Barbie scale because it’s often quite thick. [The team has] done a great job of sourcing denim that’s quite thin so it bends with the doll, it feels natural in the scale.” Even buttons need to be shrunk down, with special needles brought in to fit through their micro button holes.

How Custom Looks Come to Life

What sets @BarbieStyle dolls apart from those you buy in the store is the level of detail. Their faces are painted with extra features, their hair is worked into more complicated styles, and the outfit options are limitless. In the @BarbieStyle closet, Ritter pulls from clothes currently in the market, plus vintage pieces from the archive, and those that are custom-made for shoots.

The @BarbieStyle team also tackles brand collaborations. A Pat McGrath collection featured dolls with bold, custom hair and colorful makeup. For a Moschino collaboration, @BarbieStyle went to Milan to shoot content of the dolls on a red carpet, and attended a runway show where the doll's clothes matched to corresponding runway models. For the Balmain collection, the French fashion brand shipped a real dress to the @BarbieStyle team to recreate. “Just seeing the construction, feeling it and bringing it to life, it was really really special,” says Linda Kyaw, a senior manager in product design.

To learn more about how @barbiestyle creates such iconic content, watch our full "Behind the Seams" video above.