Akila x Keith Haring

What was the starting point for Doll Dressing?

At the suggestion of a friend, I listened to a New Yorker Critics at Large podcast at the end of 2023 about how that year had become “the year of the doll.” That was the year the Barbie film was released, along with Poor Things, and they talked about Emma Cline’s The Guest, which I had read. I had always been interested in dolls, but that podcast got me thinking about how I could represent the idea of the living doll through fashion.

I started exploring all sorts of cultural references to dolls— runways and editorials, of course, but also music videos and films—and seeing how I could whittle this vast universe of doll-related ideas into themes related to fashion. Some of it was as simple as looking up the word “doll” in the Vogue archive and discovering all these references from the 1920s. Ultimately, I realized the relationship works in both directions: not just how fashion has inspired fashion dolls and how dolls have been used to disseminate fashion, but how dolls themselves have inspired high fashion.

Fashion dolls existed long before Barbie. How has their purpose— and what they teach us about femininity— changed over time?

There’s a really fascinating shift. In the 18th century, before fashion plates, photography, or even magazines, fashion dolls were essentially how women disseminated information about the latest fashions. A woman of means could look at one and say, “That’s what’s in fashion. That’s what I want to wear,” and have her dressmaker make a copy.

By the 19th century, dolls had become children’s toys, and they were really meant to teach girls what to expect in adulthood: decorum, doing your hair, having the right clothes and undergarments— learning femininity. Then you see baby dolls emerge, particularly in Germany, which encouraged maternal play. So dolls have never just been cute objects. They have historically communicated ideas about what girls and women were supposed to look like and how they were supposed to behave.

Those traditional ideas of femininity can be quite restrictive. How did you want to expand the idea of who or what a doll can represent through the exhibit?

One of my early concerns was that so many of our ideas about what a fashion doll is are rooted either in 19th-century North American and European fashion dolls or in the idea of stereotypical Barbie. But I wanted to be certain that anyone who comes through the exhibition can connect to one doll or another. Part of doll play and creative play is feeling that you see yourself reflected in it.

That includes gender-inclusive dolls like Creatable World and Black Dolls Matter, which was founded by Mark Ruffin because he felt there was a need to get more black and brown dolls into the world. I also love the photos of Pat McGrath’s glass-skin technique for Maison Margiela because it upends this idea that “porcelain skin” means white skin, when it is actually a smooth, flawless material. 

The exhibition also complicates the idea of hyperfemininity through doll dressing. How do you play with the idea of doll dressing as a form of agency?

The “dolly bird” section is a great example. The term was primarily used in Britain to derogatorily describe young women who weren’t considered serious. But many of these women saw dressing fashionably as a statement of freedom— working, living with girlfriends rather than immediately marrying, and buying their own clothes. I wanted to unravel that representation. Lolita has a similar story: Though the look is girly and youthful, it counters a culture of uniformity. The women are dressing for themselves, not for men, and embracing the freedom to look exactly as they like.

What drew you to the darker, more haunted side of doll imagery?

I have a section called “Broken Dolls,” and there are some really great references to horror, from the local maker Ren Britton of Pure Vile to Rodarte, whose leather-strap dress was influenced by Living Dead Dolls— these baby dolls that take on the personas of horror characters. One of them is a little bit of a jump scare for visitors, but I think it’s so beautifully made.

There’s also Dilara Fındıkoğlu’s “dissolved doll” dress, which went down the runway with a wig that looked like a hacked-up doll’s wig, smeared lipstick, and this illusion of organs evolving beneath flesh. I find her way of pushing past the very conservative ideals of her childhood really compelling. It’s rebelling against typical beauty while still being very beautiful. And then there’s Hans Bellmer, who created these reconfigured, often very disturbing dolls and photographed them. 

There’s an entire section devoted to the dollhouse. How does the idea of a miniature home connect back to fashion?

That section came about quite naturally. I started with Lirika Matoshi’s apartment coat and then began thinking about all these other miniatures, from the GCDS Polly Pocket collaboration to a dollhouse-sized Barbie in a box. There are really interesting overlaps between fashion and housing because clothing, at its core, is meant to shelter. But when you get into fashion and dollhouses, that functionality is upended. Fashion becomes as interested in aesthetics as functionality, and dollhouses are, of course, too miniature to actually live in.

The exhibition also looks at paper dolls and two-dimensional fashion. What interested you about that relationship?

Paper dolls were one of the first themes that came up because there are so many references to them in fashion. I love the idea of making something that has to be three-dimensional to look two-dimensional— it’s sort of the reverse of what you might expect. Claire McCardell published a paper-doll book in the 1950s, while Comme des Garçons later created a “2D” collection that became known as the paper-doll collection. Jeremy Scott similarly referenced paper dolls for Moschino, adding the little tabs you would traditionally use to attach clothing to a paper doll. There’s something really interesting about designers moving back and forth between two and three dimensions, and translating that sense of play into actual garments.

With such a vast history to pull from, where did you source the dolls and objects in the exhibition? 

The dolls are either pieces that we purchased for the collection— which are quite few— or things we borrowed directly from designers, institutions, or private owners. For example, we have loans from the Museum of the City of New York and the Brooklyn Museum. I probably went through hundreds of possibilities while researching the exhibition.

One of the pieces I was particularly excited to secure was a pair of Merci, or Gratitude Train, Dolls from the Brooklyn Museum. They were created in 1949 as part of a gift from France to the United States for being allies during World War II. They wear historicized fashions, including a Madame Grès interpretation of 1808 and a Jean Lanvin design representing 1878. They’re stunning, incredibly detailed, and not seen all that often, so we were really lucky to get them for the exhibition.

What are some of your favorite pieces or sections in the exhibition?

I love the Monster High and Off-White collaboration. It was one of Virgil Abloh’s last projects, and what’s great about Monster High— and so many pieces in this exhibition— is that these are goth dolls. Maybe children aren’t always looking for the polished perfection of the dolls from my childhood. They actually seem to be interested in more self-expression and something that, for lack of a better term, is a little weirder. I think that’s really cool.

What surprised you most about the role dolls have played in designers’ creative lives?

One of the things I found so exciting was how many designers talk about getting their creative start by designing for dolls. It’s very accessible. It’s a little figure that you can experiment on; you only need scraps of fabric, and it can be a very solitary endeavor. Margiela talks about being around 13, having the house to himself, and deciding to experiment by making a jacket for a Barbie. That was his first foray into fashion. 

Jason Wu has one of the greatest doll-designing stories. When he was a teenager and still at boarding school, he started designing dolls for Integrity Toys. He made money doing that and was able to launch his own label, and he continues designing for Integrity Toys to this day. Anna Sui has also made doll-sized versions of her runway looks (and she is also the first designer represented as a Barbie), while Bode presented its entire Fall 2025 collection in miniature on handmade cloth dolls. 

What do you hope people take away from the exhibition and perhaps reconsider about dolls?

One of the things I hope people take away is that, yes, dolls are very cute, and we can have this nostalgic cultural connection to them, but there is a really vast social history behind them that I think is very important.

I also want everyone to feel welcome in the exhibition and feel that they can relate. Dolls can be a form of creative expression, and part of that is being able to see yourself reflected in them. The idea of the doll isn’t fixed: It can be changed, subverted, and made much more contemporary.