The Great Success of Fashion Model Barbie Dolls

The Fashion Model™ Barbie® dolls are a huge hit with collectors. Not since the days of the elegant vintage Barbie dolls have fashion doll collectors been so enthralled with a Barbie® doll series. Collectors cannot seemto get enough of these dolls--they are flying off the shelves, and many of the dolls are bringing prices well above retail at internet auction sites shortly after they are released.The dolls are known officially as Fashion Model™ Barbie® Dolls, but you may have also heard of them as "Silkstone" dolls or "Lingerie Barbies." They have been produced for only two years--2000 and 2001--and so far eight dolls and four outfits have been released, plus one Gift Set including a doll, mix-and match otufits and accessories.

Why all the excitement about this line of dolls? To understand why collectors are so enthusiastic, lets look at a brief history of Barbie Doll Collecting and then at the Barbie Fashion Model Collection.

Brief History Of Barbie Doll Collecting

Fashion doll collectors have collected and loved the vintage Barbie dolls starting in the early 1970s, very soon after the classic "vintage" look dolls with their detailed high-quality fashions were no longer being produced. The classic "vintage" dolls were only produced by Mattel from 1959 to approximately 1966, when mod dolls and fashions took over. New Barbies produced in the 1970s and 1980s were very play-oriented dolls, and often not of high quality. The prevalent look in the 1980s was a "disco" look--big hair, big smile (the "Superstar" face mold) and shiny, glittery costumes.

Doll collectors still loved Barbie, and many of them continued to collect the "pink box" play dolls during that era. Then, in the late 1980s, Mattel created their first dolls aimed at adult collectors. The first doll was a porcelain version of Barbie--the Porcelain Rhapsody in Blue Barbie in 1986. Then, in 1988, Mattel released the 1998 Happy Holiday Barbie doll--the doll that really put Barbie dolls aimed at adult collectors on the map. This doll was not produced in great numbers, but it became an immediate (and hard to get) hit. Today, this doll sells for over $500.

So, Mattel began to produce Happy Holiday dolls for collectors each year, as well as other collector Barbie dolls. In 1994, Mattel produced a watershed doll--the 35th Anniversary Barbie doll, a reproduction of the original 1959 doll. Collectors clamored for this doll...and they hoarded them. Then, collectors started to hoard ALL the collector Barbie dolls. People couldn't find ANY collector Barbie dolls, except on the secondary market. SO....Mattel increased production levels. Eventually, the dolls became TOO easy to find, hoarders bailed out, and prices on the secondary market dropped to where we see them today--often, below retail. At the end of the 1990s, it looked like the modern Barbie collecting craze was well over.

Where Does The Fashion Model Barbie Fit In?

Where Does The Fashion Model Barbie Fit In? Well, during the 1990s, adult collectors begged Mattel for a doll that was like the vintage doll of the early 1960s--a doll that came simply dressed (the 1960s dolls came in their bathing suits) with luxurious, detailed fashions available separately. Barbie not as an astronaut, Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, Morgan Le Fay, or Morticia Adams, but Barbie as Barbie--as a fashion model!

Mattel made a few half-hearted attempts at this in the 1990s. For instance, the reproduction dolls had some beautifully detailed outfits, but they were only reproductions, and the outfits were never available separately (the dolls were only available as "dressed dolls"). There was also the Barbie Millicent Roberts collection. In this collection, Barbie was a modern working woman, and additional outfits WERE available separately. Some of the outfits were very nice, with accessories and detailing. But, they were not "high fashion." And, the dolls had very modern faces--very close to the faces used on the play line dolls. Further, the dolls weren't limited or exclusive in any manner, and they hit the shelves just when collectible Barbies were overproduced and everywhere.

SO...Mattel tried again to create a doll to satisfy collectors yearnings for a sophisticated, dressable fashion doll, one that would go back to Barbie's roots. And THIS time....they got it right!

Japan Fashion Week spring 2010

Japan Fashion Week spring Summer 2010 took place last week in Tokyo. The 9th Japan Fashion Week in Tokyo started October 19 en ended October 24 2009. This year a total of 21,794 people attended the events according to the organizers and 51 brands participated.

As you can see in the photos the fashion is very commercial ready for the shops. I was not very impressed, but I am not an expert. However Japan has a lot of talent and the Japanese consumer is very discerning and fashion oriented.

These are some of the brands that participated: Motonari Ono, Garçonshinois, Takumi Hatakeyama, JUNYA TASHIRO, Mintdesigns, Hidenobu Yasui, DRESS33, fur fur, SOMARTA, The Dress & Co, Yukiko Hanai, DANSKMODE, Christian Westphal, PHIBERY, TROVE, DUNE, Jazzkatze?and others.

You can also see that most models are not Japanese.

Fashion: An Eastern legend and a magic word: Asha's minimal Indian clothes have long had stylish, cerebral devotees.

Robert Rauschenberg, the American Pop artist, doesn't do photo shoots, until one says the magic word 'Asha'. Say 'Asha' to the Pop artist and monumental sculptor Frank Stella and he answers 'Sure' to a request to pose in vegetable-dyed cottons and sneakers. Frances Partridge, the last of the Bloomsbury set, chatters happily about fabrics rare and beautiful while she is snapped with Rebecca Wilson, editor of Partridge's memoirs and another Asha fan. The Paris-based painters Valerio and Camilla Adami also agree to photos. Other Asha devotees are sadly not available. Lord Snowdon is out of town, and Gita Mehta and Zubin Mehta, the writer and the conductor, just aren't in London, Paris, Milan or New York at any time when our photographers can call.

Asha clothes have been available for 20 years and have hardly changed. They are worn by the men and women - of all ages and all around the world - who number those discreet internationalists linked by a style of quiet understatement and as far removed from jet-setting shopaholics as can be.

So who is Asha? Full name: Asha Sarabhai. Her achievement? Adapting the traditional dress of her native India to modern tastes while losing none of its craftsmanship, and resisting the over-ethnic. The appeal of her clothes? That they are easy, timeless, never overpowering, and supremely politically correct. The indigo dyes are natural, traditional skills are maintained and the small workshop in the city of Ahmadabad, in north-west India, is an oasis of cleanliness and calm.

Asha's clothes will be available from next month in a new shop, strangely called Egg. It will be run by Maureen Doherty, who previously worked at the right hand of Issey Miyake. Asha's simple pieces in sumptuously soft yet workaday fabrics will make up most of the shop's offerings (alongside sweaters from the English manufacturer John Smedley, and a few designer clothes picked simply because Doherty - one of London's most respected arbiters of taste - and Asha like them).

What Egg will not do is stock clothes that are in one season, out the next. Asha's clothes date no more quickly than a favourite piece of furniture. Valerio Adami puts this down to the antithesis of Western fashion's all-change dynamic. As he says 'the beauty is intrinsic because the Indian approach is different. We need the East to show us a different way.'

Asha's clothes are simple but the thoughts behind them are complex. These are trousers, shifts and shirts imbued with aesthetic and humanitarian convictions. For two decades, Asha has been overseeing the rebirth of quality textiles and using them as a conduit for political and social messages. This is in the Indian tradition. When Mahatma Gandhi began his peaceful resistance to British imperialism, he won the support of the textile unions and urged them to stop wearing imported cottons and start weaving their own homespun - khadi - as a symbol of political and economic freedom. The Sarabhais, the wealthy textile clan into which Asha married after reading social and political science at Cambridge University, was one that supported the independence movement.

That was then. When Asha arrived in Ahmadabad in 1975, she found a workforce once again demoralised, having to mass-manufacture cheap cloth for export to the virtual extinction of time-honoured skills. The market had been distorted by overseas demand for cheap rather than quality materials.

Asha started her project in one room, with a sewing-machine and the help of a skilled craftsman, an old family associate. The partnership concentrated on hand-pleating and quilting fine cottons and silks in an attempt to create a contemporary style. The result was clothes that were, and are, sophisticated and minimalist - they are rarely embellished.

As a rich woman, Asha has never had to compromise. Because of this, the clothes and the convictions have survived intact in a decade that is crying out for more than all- change fashion, a decade in search of integrity. Asha never had to comply with the imperious buying attitudes of foreign stores; she sold if she wanted to and if people wanted what she offered. The fashion doyenne Diana Vreeland was an early fan, then came Terence Conran, who with his sister Priscilla Carluccio, fell for Asha's quilted cottons and silks.

In 1984, enter Issey Miyake, who was so impressed by these clothes for 'people tired of industrial products, looking for some natural, luxurious peace of mind,' that he offered Asha her own label under the Miyake Design Studio imprimatur and a space within the Seibu store in Tokyo.

Asha explains her own unique appeal thus: 'That the human body does not change and that certain styles are comfortable and beautiful. You can slightly change the style, or the colour and details, but to change the form is not crucial.' Like Miyake's, Asha's work is a bridge between Eastern and Western attitudes. In Valerio Adami's opinion: 'In the West the idea of beauty has died. We've replaced the concept of beauty with rapidly changing fashion. What's new is beautiful - that is our motto. It should not be.'

Egg will open 16 February at 36 Kinnerton Street, London SW1. Most of the stock will be Asha's, ranging from pounds 60 for a calico shirt or pair of pyjamas to pounds 2,000 for an embroidered quilt or silk appliqued coat. Asha's work can also be found at the Conran Shop, 81 Fulham Road, SW3, Livingstone Studios, 36 New End Square, NW3, and the General Trading Company, 144 Sloane Street, SW1, in London...

Xerium Technologies Extends Waivers

Xerium Technologies, Inc. (NYSE: XRM), a leading global manufacturer of industrial textiles and rolls used primarily in the paper production process, yesterday announced that it has secured from certain of its lenders an extension of its existing temporary loan covenant waivers until March 1, 2010. The lenders have extended the existing loan covenant waivers in order to facilitate continued negotiations for a comprehensive recapitalization of the Company.
Pursuant to the extension, certain lenders have agreed to extend the previous waivers of any defaults resulting from the Company’s failure to comply with certain financial covenants under its credit agreement for the quarters ended September 30, 2009 and December 31, 2009, and to waive any defaults under agreements creating the Company’s existing hedging obligations and to extend the forbearance thereof.
“We appreciate the support and commitment of our lenders as we work within the prescribed framework to finalize an agreement,” commented Stephen R. Light, Xerium’s Chairman, CEO and President. “We are eager to put this debt restructuring behind us as we continue to move forward as a more competitive and operationally efficient organization.”
“We continue to caution you that there can be no assurance that we will complete these negotiations in the time frame specified and no assurance that the required one hundred percent of lenders will vote in favor of any transaction substantially consistent with the framework in order to implement the recapitalization without court assistance.”
About Xerium Technologies
Xerium Technologies, Inc. (NYSE: XRM) is a leading global manufacturer and supplier of two types of consumable products used primarily in the production of paper: clothing and roll covers. The Company, which operates around the world under a variety of brand names, utilizes a broad portfolio of patented and proprietary technologies to provide customers with tailored solutions and products integral to production, all designed to optimize performance and reduce operational costs. With 32 manufacturing facilities in 13 countries around the world, Xerium has approximately 3,300 employees.