Barbie Summer is finally here. Or did last year’s never end?
By Whitney Pastorek
“Hot Barbie Summer” trendsploded in 2022 after production stills hit the internet from Greta Gerwig’s upcoming Barbie movie, featuring Margot Robbie in the title role and a bleached Ryan Gosling as her long-suffering boyfriend, Ken. Since then, searches for “Barbiecore” fashion have soared, celebrities are serving their boldest hot-pink lewks on Instagram and red carpets, and seemingly everything from a shot of courtroom Gwyneth Paltrow to a random baked good has been memed onto the film’s poster, which created a viral phenomenon of its own earlier this spring.
We’ve been living inside this pink-drenched dream for so long that it’s easy to forget the actual movie hasn’t even come out yet, and won’t until July 21. Thanks to the trailer, we know the film itself may be a bit more meta than anyone expected (Will Ferrell plays the CEO of Mattel?), but that doesn’t seem to be slowing the pinkification of our nation. Barbie’s had more than 150 careers in her six-plus decades (including astronaut and presidential candidate), but given the film’s reported $100 million budget, her newest gig may be “Cash Cow.”
The intellectual-property pump is gushing, thanks to retailers eager to capitalize on pan-generational nostalgia: The Gap is partnering with Mattel to launch a co-branded clothing line; Kendra Scott is pushing a capsule jewelry collection; Forever 21 is helping first-gen Barbie owners (aka weary Gen X moms) learn what “phygital” means via an in-store and online collab with Roblox. Starting June 1, you can buy the same eye-blasting yellow Rollerblades that make a key cameo in the trailer, and even Rocket Mortgage tried to seize on Barb-mentum with its (unintentionally) disturbing Super Bowl commercial.
Dozens of style guides now exist to show you how to shop Etsy, thrift shops, and other bargain options to make over your closet with the best Barbiecore chic; and for those in a higher tax bracket, no less than Chanel paid tribute to Skipper’s older sister with a Hollywood runway show in May. Robbie herself was stationed in the front row to experience what Vogue called “buoyant drama,” although one imagines how dismayed the brand’s late creative director, Karl “Think pink, but don’t wear it” Lagerfeld, would have been by the amount of fuschia tweed on display. (Meanwhile, Valentino’s Spring 2022 collection is not receiving enough credit for predicting this pinkdemic a full year ago.)
Why stop at looking the part when you can live in it, too? Those who missed Jonathan Adler’s Malibu Barbie Dream House—created in 2009 for the doll’s 50th anniversary—can tune in this summer to watch HGTV’s Barbie Dreamhouse Challenge, in which eight teams from the network’s vast stable of flippers will compete to help cross-promote the movie by remodeling a Southern California mansion into a life-size version of Barbie’s pink palace. Viewers are already being encouraged to bring the aesthetic home via tchotchkes and throw pillows, though we hope they keep Adler’s cautionary words in mind: “Translating the fantasy into reality should be done thoughtfully,” he told the Washington Post last year.
Once you’ve been pink-boozled, you may begin seeing Barbie references everywhere you turn —even in the most unlikely of places. Ted Lasso recently beefed up the storyline of PR consultant Keeley Jones (the wackily gamine Juno Temple), who, thanks to her absurdly tight high ponies and ditz-boss moxie, was already our closest Barbie avatar. The current season finds Jones launching her own PR firm, and her VC-funded office space, complete with hot-pink pens and her signature pink cheetah statue, wouldn’t feel at all out of place in an Entrepreneur Barbie play set.
You will, perhaps, find ways to be cynical about all this, as the insistence that everything pink is now considered Barbiecore can feel, at times, like My Little Pony erasure. And while we’re heartened to see the focus staying on the playful hue’s fashions rather than Barbie’s famously implausible physical dimensions, we’d still like to see a little more self-awareness involved when putting so much energy behind a deeply gender-normative “girl color.” (Don’t worry, you can always turn to Enyacore instead.)
Up to this point, we’ve known very little about the movie’s actual plot, but thankfully, a new trailer shows that there are nuanced shades to come: Our heroine gets kicked out of Doll World for being less than perfect and decides to take her chances on our humble human plane, where Birkenstocks and an Indigo Girls sing-along open the door to her new consciousness. It teases the possibility that, despite all the flirty fun that comes from being a Barbie girl in a Barbie world, there’s more to life than shopping, tanning, and convertibles. Because we girls can do anything, right Barbie? Except make our own healthcare decisions. . . .
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