Barbie has been around for six decades, but that's not stopping her from pursuing a career as a fashion director.

COURTESY OF MATTEL; PHOTO BY CHARLES DENIS

Two years ago cultural icon Barbie gained some independence when she rejected a misogynistic Ken in the 2023 Barbie movie and embarked on a journey of self discovery. Now she’s back with an important new job as a creative director and a brand new collection sold at Edikted.com.

The new brand, which launches today, is the fruit of a collaboration between Mattel and Edikted. Barbie by Edikted is a result of Barbie stepping into a creative director role for the first time, although Barbie played a designer in another film, Barbie’s Fashion Fairy Tale in 2010, so she has some experience. Barbie partnered with Edikted to design a collection that celebrates her legacy through a distinctly Gen Z lens.

Dedy Shwartzberg, chief executive officer and founder of Edikted, had the idea for a collection and he told Mattel chairman and CEO Ynon Kreiz, “I remember when I was young, Barbie was a fashion model. I have an idea to make Barbie a designer or fashion director.” Shwartzberg told Kreiz that he wanted to produce a Barbie collection and said won’t be just about the logo.

“What was really important to Mattel was to get someone who understood how Gen Z lives and shops. Editkted obviously understands that incredibly well. They not only get them aesthetically, they understand them operationally,” said Natalia Premovic, chief consumer products and experiences officer at Mattel. “Only a handful of companies are able to move at the speed of culture. Edikted and the team stays few steps ahead of it.

“Barbie brings this global cultural legacy,” Premovic added. "Ediktd brings a very raw, real time connection to their audience. Together we thought it was the right balance of heritage and authenticity and immediacy. We’re both very much about the same thing, expressing yourself through style and having fun doing it.”

Barbie by Edikted consists of 71 pieces across ready-to-wear and accessories, including sunglasses, handbags and jewelry. “Barbie has been a canvas for personal style for more than six decades, evolving with and shaping culture,” Premovic said. “Gen Z is rewriting the rules of fashion today and making it their own.”

Consumers are excited about Barbie stepping into her own creative era. “It’s something new for us as a company and something new for Barbie,” said Premovic. "She’s not just a canvas anymore. She has her own way of looking at things. We’re tapping into her own fashion era. She’s pulling from the Barbie Fashion Fever era, which was popular from 2004 and 2008 and the Y2K period.

“Those looks are coming back and she’s reinterpreting them from a more modern lens,” said Premovic. “You’re going to see hints of the butterfly motif and soft BoHo. It will also be the best parts of Y2K, but a little more refined. You’ll see pieces Barbie wore in different colorways. You can pull these pieces together as Barbie wore them which feels really fun and nostalgic or you can look at the entirety of the collection. It feels very Gen Z and nostalgic for today.”

“Barbie obviously had a big moment a couple years ago with the movie release,” said Juan Pellerino-Rendón, chief marketing officer of Swap. "I’m sure they’re trying to capitalize on that momentum from a few summers ago and cater to a new audience with Gen Z. The way that the movie was positioned originally was as a way to bring back Millennials and make sure that they were purchasing Barbies for their kids and continuing that legacy.

“I think the fashion collection would be a good way to target that new consumer in terms of Gen Z and see if there’s a way to bring Barbie to them in a way that they haven’t interacted with before," said Pellerino-Rendón. “I think it will be super interesting to watch.”

Mattel and Edikted don’t see the collection as simply living on a rack or an ecommerce page. That’s why they’re launching on May 8 an activation at The Grove in Los Angeles lasting three days. “This generation really wants to experience everything,” Shwartzberg said. “They want to shop it, touch it and feel it. They want to have an experience and share it. So it was really critical for us to bring this dream to life.”

Fans were able to reserve a spot to step into Barbie’s Design Studio, see and shop the collection, and see a fashion retrospective of the dolls through the years. “It wraps up all those elements with one beautiful pink bow," said Shwartzberg.

Mattel and Edikted are making the experience available to students at Arizona State University’s FIDM program, which prepares the next generation for careers in fashion. “We’re funding summer fashion scholarships at ASU, holding a Barbie by Edited panel and inviting the students to visit the Barbie Design Studio," said Premovic. "It’s about opening the door a little wider for our future designers and creatives, and giving them that space to succeed themselves.”

Shwartzberg declined to divulge sales volume estimates for the collection other than to say, "It’s supposed to be something big. For us it was important to combine the transformation from Barbie the character to a real human being. I think we succeeded in doing that. The campaign video will be on all the social networks and our web site.

“This campaign video is really powerful because it bridges this idea of imaginative play,” Shwartzberg continued. "There’s Barbie in a doll world, You see her driving her pink car through L.A. and pulling up to her dream house.

Barbie goes upstairs to the best closet ever and the Edikted pieces and nostalgic Barbie pieces are there. “You go from this imaginative girl’s dream world to the real world," said Premovic. "That bridge, we hope, for fans, is that they go from loving Barbie and getting her help with expressing themselves as girls to expressing themselves creatively as women.”

Barbie in this creative director era, styles, directs and oversees a fashion show, saying yes to this and no that then sending the models down the runway, and people go wild. “It’s just a nice story we’re telling to the fans and we’re bridging that gap from childhood fantasy and hopefully your real world success and joy in life,” Permovic said.