Mod about you

A couple of weeks ago I read designer Carol Spencer’s memoir about creating the clothes that made the Barbie doll a fashion icon. She wrote about the circumstances that led her to working at Mattel: a broken engagement, going to fashion and art school instead of opting for the literal handful of career tracks women had at the time, interning at Mademoiselle magazine, and designing children’s clothes, before finally landing the job as a Barbie designer in 1963.

I liked learning about how hands-on they were in those early decades, and how they had the freedom to create gorgeous tiny mod patterns for the clothes. It was also fascinating to see how Spencer adapted to changing trends and limitations as the years wore on until her retirement in 1998.

The book led me down a rabbit hole on Etsy, eBay, and Shopee, trying to find cool vintage in-the-box dolls who may or may not be wearing Spencer’s designs. (A fun little activity I’ve sporadically engaged in before ever picking up her book.) Sometimes I found myself looking for dolls that I actually owned as a child, and as with many things I do lately, it ended up being an exercise in grief and nostalgia — another way to be as close to my mom as I can get because she’s not here anymore.

My Barbie collection, or the collection she had amassed for me, was an early thing we bonded over as mother and daughter. One might say that it was just another side of parenting to her, getting her kid a toy, but thinking back on it now I can tell she put a lot of thought into which ones she would buy for me, and it has reaffirmed that she had impeccable taste, something I always knew and loved about her. A doll I only recently remembered owning was fashion designer-themed, with a whole little clothing line to mix and match outfits out of, and I just know she chose it because I had a phase where I wanted to be one when I was eight.

One of my Etsy exploits turned up a doll from the 2000s that I had never heard of. She had the original 1959 face, but her hair was red. She was easily the most edgy Barbie I’d ever seen. She was striking in her anachronism and therefore timeless, but also such a product of her time, and I instantly wanted to know more, to see if there were others like her. The box said 1 Modern Circle in all lowercase (so chic), so I did a quick search.

That “quick search” led me down another rabbit hole, and I came out with a new micro-obsession on the other side.

1 Modern Circle is unlike anything Mattel has ever done with their flagship product, and I’m almost heartbroken in my certainty that there never will be anything like it again. The short-lived series was launched in 2003, when the company was cooking up every innovation and gimmick possible to beat out Bratz. It was a collector line, though, meant for adults who could appreciate its premium fashion and reinvention of Barbie history. The idea was giving new life to classic, well-loved face sculpts by applying them to new characters with updated looks and tons of personality. Hence the same: on the box, the “mod” in Modern is in bold, to highlight the fact that they were paying homage to Barbie’s mod era.

Everything about 1 Modern Circle was just the coolest, and so new-millennium that it hurt. No detail was spared. The triangular box, the unique hair colors on the vintage faces, the trendy metropolitan outfits, the extensive articulation that made them super poseable, the concept art on the back, even the contents of the characters’ production paraphernalia. The, again, all-lowercase typeset in that very Y2K boxy cyber-surfer sans serif. There was a promotional website powered by Yahoo!, and it had everything a 2000s tie-in site could ever need, including ecards, wallpaper downloads, flash games, and a quiz. (This is coming from someone who decided to become a magazine editor after taking the quiz on the 13 Going on 30 website and made it happen, minus the “magazine” part because RIP magazines.)

But the best thing about 1 Modern Circle was that it came with a fully-formed backstory for its four characters, which included Barbie and Ken, told through brief fictional paragraphs printed on the backs of their boxes. The two characters created specifically for the line were Simone and Melody, and while other Barbie media has had characters with the same names, their specific likenesses and personalities have not appeared in any other concepts since. In-universe, the name 1 Modern Circle referred to the independent production company based in LA headed by Barbie herself. That’s right, Barbara Millicent has also been an indie filmmaker on top of all the stellar careers she’s had over the last 63 years. The company’s latest project was a romance film called Love in the City of Angels; Wave 1 had the team in their casual on-the-job outfits, and Wave 2, which was also the last, had them attending the movie’s premiere all dolled up for the red carpet.

Simone has the sweet, pursed-lip features of the Steffie face sculpt. She’s the stylist and makeup artist, and also the self-proclaimed resident therapist and spiritual guru. She wears a long denim skirt and has green streaks and a hot pink hair band, which match her boho-chic print top. I can’t get over her jelly sandals and her mole, which is above the left side of her upper lip, just like mine. She’s been through life and back, including being in the circus. Her raised eyebrows indicate that she knows all — and she pretty much does, having learnt that she’s clairvoyant after predicting a snowstorm in Florida. She used that gift in the flash game “Simone Says” on the Yahoo! site, where Simone told visitors their fortune.

Art director and “sensitive artist” type Ken may have frosted Backstreet Boy tips, but his face is the same wholesome one that he debuted with in 1961, with added freckles this time around. He wears a faux-knitted green turtleneck under a leather jacket and carries around a leather folio that holds sketches for props and set designs. Little is known about him — because I couldn’t find a picture of the back of his box, so I couldn’t take note of his profile and any fun facts made up for him.

Barbie’s aforementioned red hair frames her classic Bild Lilli-inspired face with full, sharp, sleek bangs. Her outfit screams trailblazer, with an olive green long coat and matching pants that give off a holographic sheen under certain lights. She finishes off the look with a turquoise top, a choker, a beadwork belt, and black pumps. She carries a laptop open to Yahoo.com, and a flip phone because as the producer she’s always on the go. On her days off she volunteers as a docent at a museum and spends Sunday mornings reading the paper with her cat in her lap. She’s clearly a quintessential rom-com lead in this universe: married to the job, idealistic but guarded, and not-so-secretly looking for love.

There was also a rare variation where her coat and pants were black, her top was magenta, and her hair was bright yellow.

I adored Melody the instant I saw her. Something about the blue hair and purple eyes, the freckles, and the knowing grin with a gaze turned skyward, making her look a little bit more charmingly cartoonish and retro-futuristic than the rest. She’s the production assistant and good friends with Ken, helping him land the art director job. Despite her “sunshine” demeanor, she’s in all black, and her outfit represents the grungy and new age-y trends of the early 2000s: sleeveless top, straight-cut pants with metallic threading, no-nonsense boots, and a jacket tied around her waist. She has a necklace made of real metal and the cutest gem bracelet. In her pleather bag (Remember when Barbie bags were made of actual fabric instead of bendable plastic?) she carries a newspaper and the production bible for Love in the City of Angels, and she also comes with a cup of coffee to get her through the long hours. Adopted by her family, she considers herself a “child of the world” who dreams of spending her life traveling.

Oh, and Ken may be a little bit in love with her, but he also finds Barbie interesting because she’s open and passionate at work but shy and distant otherwise.

I didn’t notice it at first, but it made sense why Melody was an immediate favorite for me — she has the iconic 1960s Twist ‘n Turn (TNT) face sculpt, which is the one I like best. Her features are just so different from the usual paint job given to the TNT head, and I found them fitting and refreshing.

Anyway, in conclusion, I’m getting myself a NRFB Melody doll off eBay for my birthday.

So that was me going back to my roots of yelling about niche obsessions and doing my part in making sure this project lives on somehow. The little snippets of the story we’re given through the boxes paint just enough of a picture for us to fill in the blanks and plot it out ourselves, and in spite of the cliches or because of them, 1 Modern Circle sounds like it could be the perfect limited sitcom or You’re the Worst/Single Drunk Female-type dramedy about a group of attractive young people who just want to follow their dreams. It already even comes with a built-in love triangle. (I’m Team Give Melody a Vacation on the Trans Siberian Railway, and I’m Coming with Her.) It would do super well in the hands of Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa or, obviously, Greta Gerwig. And please put Patti Harrison and Julio Torres in there somewhere because I demand it.