Get ready for the rise of Kencore

But what about poor old Ken?

Ever since Ken debuted as Barbie’s boyfriend in 1961—wearing nothing but red swimming trunks and matching slides—he, too, has been a fashion icon. From Ken’s earliest days, toy-maker Mattel hired designers to create his wardrobe, which is every bit as stylish as Barbie’s. Despite that, Barbie historians say that Ken hasn’t had much influence on men’s fashion. Few men have cared about, or even noticed, Ken and his fabulous sartorial choices, which is understandable given the way Barbie has been historically marketed to only young girls.

That might be about to change. For one thing, the Greta Gerwig film, which has been teased for a year and is meant for adults, appears to already be having an impact on men’s fashion. Ryan Gosling, who plays Ken, along with his male co-stars, have been showing up at film premieres and junkets in pastel colored outfits. Brad Pitt and Seth Rogan have respectively showed up for red carpet events in green and pink suits. Designers are also putting out brighter, bolder looks. Consider Pharrell’s first menswear collection for Louis Vuitton, which is drenched in yellow, bedazzled in sequins, and adorned with light-up jackets.

And there’s a chance that Ken may have a longer-term effect. When Barbie and Ken launched, they were targeted at little girls. But since 2015, the brand has started featuring boys in commercials and ads, kicking off a broader discussion of how valuable it is for children to play with a wide range of toys, rather than gender-specific products. As the cultural tides shift, it’s possible that more Gen Z and Alpha boys will play with Ken, and develop a life-long appreciation for his sensational style, just like little girls have done with Barbie for decades.

The origins of Ken

When Ruth Handler invented Barbie in 1959, the toy was considered radical. At the time, baby dolls ruled the market, but Handler was interested in creating a doll that would allow girls to imagine their lives as adults. She found a German doll that was highly sexualized and meant to be a kind of gag gift for adults, and transformed her into Barbie, a wholesome all-American girl from Wisconsin. The dolls were an instant hit.

The idea for Ken came from little girls, says Robin Gerber, author of Barbie and Ruth: The Story of the World’s Most Famous Doll and the Woman Who Created Her. They began writing to the toy-maker, urging them to create a boyfriend for Barbie. “Back then, you couldn’t do many things—like go to the prom—without a boy by your side,” says Bradley Justice Yarborough, a Barbie collector and expert.

Yarborough says that both Barbie and Ken dolls have been closely tied to fashion trends of the time. Mattel hired fashion designers to design collections for both male and female dolls. Ken dolls were always very colorfully dressed and well accessorized, largely because it was more entertaining for the girls playing with them. “They created a wardrobe that would appeal to little girls,” he says. “The Ken dolls had to have all the little details—the accessories and shoes—that girls would enjoy playing with. It was flamboyant and different from what their dads were wearing at the time; it was also a fairly accurate reflection of what was happening in men’s fashion design.”

In the ’60s, Ken’s was dressed like a movie star: He wore tuxes for Black tie events, red cardigans for trips to the ice cream parlor, and sports jackets for European vacations (accessorized with adorable American Airlines suitcases). In the ’70s, the color palette turn toward browns and greens, with plenty of prints. In 1978, Ken had a disco moment, with a shiny blue jacket paired with tight-fitting pants and orange sunglasses. Then when group workouts were all the rage in the ’80s, Mattel launched shirtless Ken dolls with teeny exercise shorts. (When you bent his arm to lift a weight, his bicep popped!)

Accidental gay icon

For most of the 20th century, gender norms surrounding toys were very rigid. And since Ken dolls were carefully tailored to meet the needs of little girls, they didn’t influence the fashion sensibilities of most boys and men. Still, a generation of young boys took notice. Jef Beck told Esquire that he was immediately drawn to his sister’s Ken doll in 1970, intrigued by the doll’s outfits. But when his parents found out, they steered him toward male figurines like Six Million Dollar Man and Big Jim. It was only as an adult that he was able to start collecting Ken dolls.

There was a brief moment the ’90s, however, when Ken accidentally became a gay icon. Sales of Ken had been declining, so Mattel conducted a focus group with five-year-olds to better understand what they wanted in the doll. The children, who were influenced by MTV music videos, wanted Ken to look like their favorite pop stars like George Michael and Prince.

The resulting product, which was marketed as Earring Magic Ken ended up wearing a pink mesh shirt, a blue leather vest, and, of course, an earring. But it was another accessory that caused the most controversy: The toy designers gave Ken a necklace that looked like a sex toy called a cock ring that was popular among the gay community at the time. In response to the ensuing maelstrom, Mattel issued a statement saying, “we’re not in the business of putting cock rings into the hands of little girls.”

According to Dazed, Earring Magic Ken became the “best-selling Ken doll of all time” because adult gay men rushed to the stores to buy the toy ironically. But at the time, when the AIDS crisis was sweeping the country and homophobia dominated, Mattel quickly recalled the toy. So, Ken’s fifteen minutes of fame as a fashion influencer ended just as quickly as it started. In the following seasons, the brand made an effort to dress him in blander, more unambiguously heterosexual outfits.