Did you grow up with fashion dolls and did it fuel your interest in BJDs?

I grew up mostly with Bratz dolls and some Barbies as well! I know that they must have fueled my interest in BJDs!

 

When (and where) I was a child, Barbies appeared only after 1991. Before that, the dolls we used to have were depictions of children aged several months to 5 years, and the dolls themselves were of varying sizes, from 10cm to almost my height at the time. I liked the little ones, if they were cute, but I didn't care about these dolls in general. Instead, I played with my stuffed animals, little rubber toys (again, animals), and I also loved my brother's German railroad set and little die-cast cars. I also really liked paper dolls - we used to make them ourselves; it would be an adult woman and we would then draw clothes for her (paper dolls were rarely sold in stores, and when they were - they usually were, again, kids, which were not of interest to us). If somebody would manage to draw a really cool doll - that one would be copied by other kids (we drew them on regular paper so that if a doll comes out well we could make more copies of her - we would then use tracing paper to transfer the design to card stock).

However, once Barbies became available, I was all over them. First of all, they were much more posable than the dolls we were used to - the head could swivel pretty much freely, they had additional joint at the waist, their hands and legs were bendable, and they could sit properly (with their legs staying parallel to each other in the sitting position). Plus she was an adult vs a child. At the time, it was just awesome. We were sewing clothes for them - that's what we did with our Barbies. We would get together, with our dolls, show any new clothes we made during the week, exchange clothes, try them on - I once brought a hat my aunt had made for my doll, it was a huge hit (Hats were difficult to make.) And then we would take out our projects and be sewing together, our Barbies sitting in front of us. Of course, there was nothing available for the dolls to buy - we made everything ourselves.

Generally, I like small things that are little copies of big things. That's why I loved the German railroad set, the die-cast cars, and the Barbie - and now I love BJDs, especially the Iplehouse/SartoriaJ type ones (especially the FID size). I also happen to be into manga, so I like that esthetic in BJDs as well. And yeah, making clothes and coming up with an outfit is still what I like doing with the dolls.

There's also an imaginative side to that, because I personally cannot come up with an outfit if I don't construct a character to wear it first. I like that you can switch eyes and wigs of the dolls - with Barbie, you were pretty much stuck with what you have. I got lucky as a child - my dog ate my Barbie (literally), leaving only the head intact. So my mom had to get me a replacement, but they were out of blondes at the time, and she got me a brunette. I could switch heads, and it was pretty cool

 

Growing up I was mostly raised by my sister and always her tagalong. She was all about Barbie. So I ended up playing with them as well. I didn’t have any other real exposure to dolls until I was almost done with high school. One of my grandmothers passed and left us a large collection of Madame Alexander dolls. I was the only one in the family that had any interest in the dolls so I was put in charge of selling the collection off.

 

i grew up excitedly watching barbie become more jointed, articulated, and realistic. so the barbie to bjd pipeline was very much real for me haha! i’ve always liked toys that are scaled down versions of real life, especially dolls made to dress up and pose.
and then into my teens, joining online communities dedicated to dolls, ie on instagram, led from fashion and american girl dolls to discovering bjd’s

 

So for me, no and no! I had one barbie that I remember. As I kid I hated humanoid dolls, probably because I didn't like people my barbie was not very fashionable, she had important practical garments for her lifestyle, like,a safety orange raincoat and rollerblades.
I was interested in bjd from the perspective of loving art (making and admiring) and a curiosity for things that feel like they bring some faraway world to me.
I do think back on my raincoat wearing barbie sometimes and how my bjds are, like her, still very personal and character oriented, even if I do also like fashion.

 

Wow, it was same with me with A Little Princes, Secret Garden and Ballerina Barbie in pink glittering tutu! Although I wouldn't say my BJD interest comes from any of my previous experiences with dolls. I grew up in 90s and had a few Barbies, none of which I actually cherished apart from their play value. I remember them as a shiny, cheap mess of half-naked bodies, dismembered limbs and matted blonde hair. While I appreciated their roleplay abilities, and even sew some very basic clothes, overall aesthetic was sort of eye-sore for me.

I was much more emotional with my first vinyl/hard plastic doll, bought for me by my great-grandfather. Maia actually had some presence and personality to her, she was also strung with elastic and I loved to make her suffer, however bad it sounds now! I guess it was an equivalent of pleasure fic writers take from making their fave character go through emotional turmoil? Kids are weird, heh.

BACK TO TOPIC. I separate my childhood doll activities and current interest in BJD, although they probably both come from "play-pretend" need, aside from collecting + aesthetic reasons. I was made aware of BJD dolls via anime/manga convention and ever since they were part of Japanese alternative culture for me. I don't perceive fashion/vinyl/Barbie dolls in the same categories as BJD - I treat them more as an art/artsy collection item rather than a toy. On the other hand, they are still just what every doll/figure is: an antropomorphic object.