PEOPLE Barbie

EXCLUSIVE! INSIDE THE NEW MOVIE + All About the Iconic Doll BARBIE! THE LEGEND COMES TO LIFE Cast Interviews: Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling on Being BARBIE & KEN • Director GRETA GERWIG’s Vision: ‘It’s Out of Love’ PLUS How Mattel Creates Celebrity Dolls…

A good way to start getting to know someone is to ask about her Barbies. Decades may have passed since she outgrew the dolls. But the sense memories run deep: the sheen of Barbie’s synthetic hair, the faint vinyl smell of her cheeks, the tactile satisfaction of peeling and sticking decals on her camper, the frustration brought on by one always-lost shoe. Any of these can take a person back to her beginnings. Barbie, by living her aspirational lifestyle right there in kids’ rooms around the world, is the ultimate influencer. When she was a child in rural Dalby, Australia, Margot Robbie obsessed over the pink Dreamhouse of the 1990s. She remembers how Barbie would float in her hand, from one floor to another, no stairs required. On the other…

XOXO‘AFTER FALLING ON THE ICE AS MANY TIMES AS I DID DURING I, TONYA, I WAS LIKE, “ROLLER BLADES? THAT’S EASY”’—MARGOT ROBBIE XOXO‘WE HAD SO MUCH FUN. IT’S LIKE EVERYONE’S BEEN WAITING THEIR WHOLE LIVES FOR A CHANCE TO EXPLODE INTO THE WORLD OF BARBIE AND WEAR PINK’—MARGOT ROBBIE…

Because this is a Barbie story, it begins at a pink palace. A real one, in fact—the blushing Beverly Hills Hotel, where a few years ago Margot Robbie met with Mattel’s CEO to pitch a Barbie movie. Robbie has an eye for stories that ask audiences to reconsider women who provoke strong opinions: She played Tonya Harding in I, Tonya and a Fox News anchor in Bombshell and produced the dark, comic revenge fantasy Promising Young Woman. She was ready to take on Barbie and her tiny, pink, very abundant baggage. The rights secured, she needed a like-minded collaborator. “Even in that initial meeting, I said, ‘It needs to be someone like a Greta Gerwig,’” Robbie recalls. Gerwig, whose first two films as writer-director, Lady Bird and Little Women, were…

XOXO‘BARBIES CAN BE EVERYTHING, AND THEY ARE EVERYTHING. AND SO BARBIE LAND REFLECTS THAT’—ISSA RAE…

“There’s something a little high-maintenance about Barbie,” says Margot Robbie. “It’s not just a top and a skirt. It’s a top, a skirt, a jacket with a bow. It’s a hat with a bow. It’s a pair of cute shoes that match. She’d take forever to pack for a trip!” Multiply that across at least 11 Barbies and five Kens, and you begin to see the monumental task for costume designer Jacqueline Durran. “Every time the scene changes, everybody changes,” says Durran, who adds that director Greta Gerwig tends toward more scenes, not fewer. “She nearly killed me on Little Women,” says Durran, who won an Oscar for that effort. “That’s part of the greatness of her movies—so much energy.” It isn’t only filmmakers she had to satisfy but also…