Forever Barbie by M. G. Lord Read Free Book Online

that had been "injection-molded"—squeezed into its mold like toothpaste from
     a tube. Mattel, however, wanted to make Barbie out of soft vinyl, and vinyl, when injection-molded, didn't always ooze into
     the tiny crevices of a mold. To ensure that Barbie had fingers and toes, her arms and legs would have to be "rotation-molded"—turned
     slowly in their molds while the vinyl hardened.
    Yamasaki had never rotation-molded anything in his life. So in November, Mattel sent Seymour Adler, a Brooklyn-born engineer
     with a background in tool design, to teach him how. Adler arrived with the latest plastic-industry journals detailing the
     new process. Only one obstacle remained: Adler himself had never rotation-molded before either.
    Back in California, Ryan was doing his best to make the doll look less like "a German streetwalker." He had befriended Bud
     Westmore, the makeup czar at Universal Pictures, who gave Lilli a makeover. The first thing Westmore eliminated was what he
     called her "bee-stung lips," the Maria Braunesque pout into which her tough little mouth had been formed. Next were her heavy
     eyelashes and what Ryan termed the "weird widow's peak" on her forehead. A sculptor was brought in to refashion Lilli's face,
     but, Adler told me, nobody at Mattel liked the results, so the head was cast, with slight modifications, from Lilli's.
    Ryan also modified the joints that attached the arms and legs to the torso. Then he sent cast alloy masters of the freshly
     sculpted body parts for the Japanese to electroplate and make into molds. Before a mold could be used to produce the doll,
     Ryan had to approve six sample castings from it. Sometimes the castings had startling embellishments. "Each time I would get
     a half dozen back, they would have nipples on the breasts," Ryan explained. "So I took my little fine Swiss file, which the
     Swiss use for working on watches, and very daintily filed the nipples off and returned them."
    After several rounds of emery-boarding, KBK got the message. "The Japanese are very obedient," Ryan said. "They'll always
     do what you tell them."

    KBK NOT ONLY MADE BARBIE, IT ALSO MADE HER CLOTHES. It didn't, however, design them. For Barbie's first wardrobe, the Handlers
     turned to Charlotte Johnson, a fortyish veteran of Seventh Avenue who had been working in the garment industry since she was
     seventeen. They found her at Los Angeles' Chouinard Institute, where she was teaching an evening course in fashion design.
     Many say Charlotte created Barbie in her own image. "The shocker was that the doll looked like her," Ken Handler said of his
     first meeting with the designer in the early sixties. "It had the same-shaped head and was wearing the same hair."
    As often as the adjective "short" has been used to describe Jack Ryan, who stood about five feet seven, the terms "tall,"
     "statuesque," and "imposing" have been applied by colleagues to Charlotte, who stands about five feet ten in heels. Her reputation
     for tenacity evolved during the year she spent in Tokyo, in Frank Lloyd Wright's aptly named Imperial Hotel, making Barbie's
     wardrobe. Six days a week, Charlotte met with a Japanese designer and two seamstresses, developing designs that minimized
     the sewing process. "She was very, very fussy about the fit of the costume," Nakamura said.
    She was also fussy about the fabric, which translated into a headache for him. He had to convince textile merchants to make
     small batches of cloth to her specifications, and small batches were rarely profitable. After much haggling, he obtained the
     black-and-white striped fabric for Barbie's first bathing suit. With still more haggling, he got minuscule snaps, buttons
     less than an eighth of an inch in diameter, and yards of miniature zippers from zipper manufacturer Yoshida Kojko (YKK).
    Charlotte was similarly fussy about foundation garments, which sent Nakamura scrambling for pastel-colored tricot. A doll
     like Barbie couldn't wear couture