A 3,500 sq m House of Barbie opens in Shanghai in March, where visitors will be able to visit the spa for hair and nails; a shop of make-up accessories and couture fashions, including a $15,000 Barbie wedding dress by Vera Wang. And by night, one of the restaurants becomes a hip bar, complete with karaoke, a DJ and pink martinis. And you can have your baby at the new Hello Kitty hospital in Taiwan. Cartoon stories being reinterpreted for adult consumers.
Makes me think of where we retreat to in times of complexity. In China, people are being bombarded with Western culture at a startling rate and are greedy for the opportunities and exposure this brings. By becoming Barbie and embodying her story, they can assume her easy materialism and confident persona to navigate the new world: “Barbies want to talk to Kens. You have to have a place for that.” And by Hello Kitty's side, even childbirth seems less daunting. It is a comforting regression to the stories of childhood.
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A footnote: even Dora the Explorer is helping her young fans approach their adolescence with a new pre-teen versin of the doll.
ReplyDelete"Girls really identify with Dora and we knew that girls would love to have their friend Dora grow up with them, and experience the new things that they were going through themselves. The brand captures girls' existing love of Dora and marries it with the fashion doll play and online experiences older girls enjoy."
--Gina Sirard, Mattel's vice president of marketing
http://www.trendhunter.com/trends/aging-child-cartoon-icons-dora-the-explorer-grows-up-and-outrages-some-pare