MINNEAPOLIS — Long before Barbie got her own live-action Hollywood movie, she joined forces with a real-life Minnesota fashion designer who blazed her own trail out West.
"This is Color Magic Barbie," said Carol Spencer, holding up one of the thousands of Barbies she helped style during her 35-year career with Mattel. "She was the first doll that was accepted, that I designed for the line."
Spencer was one of the chief Barbie fashion designers from 1963 until her retirement in 1998.
In 2019, Spencer shared some of her most iconic designs in her book "Dressing Barbie," and as the buzz around the new Barbie Movie has picked up this year, interview requests have come pouring in.
Carol Spencer: "You know, it's lots of fun because Barbie is a great doll, she's a wonderful toy and that movie is fantastic. I saw it the other night."
Kent Erdahl: "So can you give us a sneak peak?"
Spencer: "It takes you from BarbieLand to the real world back again... there's a storyline, which I'm not going to say because you have to go to the movie to see it."
Besides, Carol's own Barbie story is the thing movies are made of and begins right here.
"When I graduated from Washburn High School in 1950, there were basically five occupations for a woman. Wife and mother of course was the big one, secretary, teacher, nurse, and clerk. And I was trained to be a secretary but I couldn't stand taking shorthand."
"What she did was follow her passion, which was fashion design," said Annie Gillette Cleveland with the Minneapolis College of Art and Design.
Cleveland said Carol didn't have to go far to do exactly that earning her degree in fashion design right here at home.
"Just next door, she learned how to illustrate fashion, drape, use different types of fabrics, and little did she know, she'd be using those, as she said, every single day in her job at Mattel, for Barbie." Added Cleveland.
"That education provided me the basis for everything I've done throughout life," said Spencer
"This was my high-fashion Barbie Doll. The first doll that bore the name of the designer on the package."
Carol helped lead the charge for Barbie designers to receive that recognition. and she eventually become the one and only designer to have her signature featured on a doll.
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