How has your style of dolls changed from when you started collecting?

What about styling your dolls? Has it changed?

 

It's difficult for me to tell because, well, I didn't have a lot of money when I started, so I wound up buying the dolls and only buying accessories occasionally. As a result, most of my dolls weren't dressed like I wanted them to be or were straight up just not wearing clothes or in various stages of completion. Now that I have a job that pays and am out of school, I'm able to afford accessories. I'm buying socks and jewelry?? There's a lot of details that I'm able to pay attention to now that I rarely could before.

I'm also focusing on dolls that spark joy rather than forcing dolls because they look like characters, so my personal preferences are now more obvious. I've started branching out into anime-style dolls. I also didn't used to buy darker skinned dolls both because of the price of dark resin and because I didn't have a lot of diversity in my characters, but that's changing, too. To someone else it might appear like a collection with lot of different influences, but for me it feels much narrower, more me.

 

I began my bjd journey back in 2006, and a lot has certainly changed in the hobby since then. But I think I had a built-in failsafe for myself because I began with an eye towards diversity from the very beginning. I’d always been utterly fascinated by fashion…all sorts of fashion from historic to vintage to fantasy to Harajuku street fashion. From the very beginning, I had the idea to create fascinating characters to wear these fashions as a part of their day-to-day lives. That’s how it all began, and what a fascinating journey it’s been throughout the years!

So I still adore all my crew, both young and old sculpts. Any refining I did along the way was rooted in character rather than sculpt style. Occasionally a character worked better in a different size, or I tried something that didn’t work for that character, or two characters wound up combined into a single doll. But I was very patient with myself so I didn’t make many mistakes along the way. (I spent an entire decade looking for the perfect sculpt for one doll…and 8 years finding another.) And as new things became available as the hobby wore on, my creative mind leapt at the chance to create new characters (flower dolls, mechanical dolls, anime tinies.) So it all still works here in my own harmonious little fantasy world of diverse beings.

 

I started out with Souldoll, Dust of Dolls, Kana doll, DIM - A mix of established company and artist dolls in various sizes from a tiny 1/8 to a Volks SD.

I left the hobby, selling everything but my Souldoll. I was away for 7 years, and now I am collecting almost exclusively 1:6 size: Jacoosun, Eatzongzi, Baby Kumako, DoDollsDream teacup, and other Chinese small artist dolls.

Back then I wasn’t very familiar with small artist dolls from China, but now they seem to be a style I really like. I still love small artist French dolls, so that hasn’t changed.

I think the two biggest things that have changed are size and resin color. I won’t even consider anything larger than MSD, and choosing an MSD is hard. When I started, a warm tan was my absolute favorite resin color, and fantasy colors were amazing because I was very adventurous with an airbrush and willing to use it for faceups and take advantage of the depth the resin color adds. Today I really prefer being able to use thin acrylic colors, not building pastel too much. Paper white resin is my preferred color. I chose a fantasy pink for Lottie but I’m a little nervous about doing a nice faceup for it.

My focus in the hobby is a big change too. Modding and faceups aren’t as appealing to me. Being able to sew and create dioramas seems to be a much more valuable use of my time.

 

I adore pictures of realistically-sculpted dolls, and I definitely prefer realistic face ups, so that's mostly what I bought at the beginning.

Turns out I actually prefer soft, androgynous faces styled clearly towards male or female. So most of my realistic sculpts have been sold or are waiting for me to decide if I've bonded well enough to keep them, and my collection is full of multiples of sculpts (but especially FL Alans) styled towards opposite ends of the gender presentation spectrum.

 

Honestly, I don't feel like my style has changed all that much in the long time I've been collecting. I've experimented with a lot of different sizes, and SD is still my favorite size. However my life circumstances changed and after some health issues which caused me to loose a lot of upper body strength, I can't really play with my resin 1/3 dolls anymore so I switched to collecting Dollfie Dreams. The challenge there is I love androgynous boy dolls in a semi-realistic style, and finding dollfie dreams (and other 1/3 vinyl dolls, but off topic for this forum) in that style has been a challenge. Now I view my Dollfie Dreams and future vinyl dolls as being genderless haha.

 

I'd argue it wasn't me that changed, but the hobby finally offering what I wanted the whole time. Everything before always felt like settling for the best possible option
That's why a lot of my dolls got reshelled over the years, or I kept upgrading their wardrobe. A new company popped up or a head was finally released that fit my vision. My taste was pretty much always the same from the start (big, older guys), but the available dolls just didn't fit that.

 

When I started I went for a decora/goth style but now my crew looks more casual/street. I kind of want to go back to decora at least with one of my guys but then they wouldnn't look harmonious at all... Ahh, choices...

 

My taste in aesthetics hasn't changed – I still prefer the more anime-ish old school look to very realistic – but I have branched out in terms of size and dollmakers.
I've gone from just 1/3 to owning 1/4, 1/6 and 70cm+. Most of my collection is still Dollmore and Volks, but I also have an RS Doll, a Dollshe (secondhand), and orders with Bimong and Loongsoul.
Not being afraid to take my dolls apart, clean them, repair them and understand how they work has given me a better appreciation for how they're made and I enjoy spending time with them like this.

 

A bit of background... I joined the hobby in 2009 and actively played with dolls for a few years, and then put my dolls away and left the hobby completely for 10 years. I came back in late 2022 so I've been back for about a year now.

My early doll collection was completely different from my current one, because I was figuring out my own tastes and what I wanted in BJDs. In my first 2 years in the hobby, I bought 5 dolls, sold 4 of them, and rebooted my collection completely with the lone survivor of the "purge" and the 6th doll I bought afterwards. Through those 4 sold dolls, I discovered what didn't suit my tastes. But I didn't get far with rebuilding my collection, because I went on my 10-year hiatus.

I ended up being in the same boat as @Ara, in that doll trends are finally catering to my tastes now. When I joined the hobby, the doll aesthetic seemed to be either stylized/anime-like or quite realistic, with little in between. I didn't like either extremes, but preferred stylized over realistic, so I started off collecting more stylized dolls like Dream of Doll, Volks and Crobidoll. But I was never really happy with that, hence selling 4 dolls and rebooting. Now that I'm back from hiatus, I'm very delighted at the sheer variety in sculpting, and a lot of dolls have the semi-realistic appearance that I was searching for but couldn't quite find in my newbie days. So I'm buying them now and I'm much happier with how my BJD collection looks.

Size wise... I started the hobby mainly with 1/3 dolls. I also had a few smaller dolls, a couple of MSDs (43cm) and a YoSD (30cm), but they were too childlike for me, I didn't warm to them, and sold them all.

Now I still love the 1/3 size range, especially 58-65cm, and that's not going to change, although I've pushed my max height to 68cm. And again have a few smaller dolls to enhance my 1/3 crew -- this time, a tall 1/4 (51cm) and a very tiny tiny (18cm - maybe 1/9 scale?). Again, there's much more variety of doll sizes nowadays, and I'm a lot happier with mature-bodied small ones.

So I don't think my tastes have changed, more that dollmakers are finally making what I want. I still own a few dolls from before-hiatus and I love them dearly. If you look at my BJD collection it's very obvious which ones they are. But nowadays I can actually find dolls that suit my tastes, instead of thinking "bit too stylized" or "bit too realistic".

 

I think I definitely started to think more about quality, but not so much styling overall. I have learned that I love tinies in little hoodies with bald noggins... Ah, so cute!!

I will say that I'm much more open to unnatural colored wigs now. I can't imagine my Rikki without her signature pink/black hairdo!

 

I started the hobby in 2007? I think?

The big thing was I started this hobby as a place to shove my insecurities into. I had all these stories I wanted to draw and write, but I didn't feel confident in my own ability to tell them. Instead of trying anyways and see what I can learn, I spent countless hours scouring the internet for the perfect face-up artist or the perfect shoes to fit the character in my head. I was in high school/early years college at the time, I was living at home, had a scholarship and no expenses, and I had a job, so I had money to spend - and spend I did. My characters at the time were all also male due to a combination of factors (I grew up doing masculine things like yacht-racing, mountain climbing, and pretty much outside of dolls had very male-dominated hobbies... buuuuut I was also definitely hitting that internalized misogyny pipe), so my first dolls were MSD to SD males, decked out in the fanciest, typically modern-day clothes. I was also drawing more realistic/realistic-anime characters because I guess a) who wouldn't take the opportunity to draw hot dudes? and b) I thought that was the only proper way to be an artist, and the dolls reflected that.

Over time I became a better artist and writer and became confident enough to actually tell the stories I wanted to tell, so finding an outlet for that expression became less important (and less frustrating... because back then finding character-appropriate clothes was a REALLY tall ask, unless your character was a scene kid or a boy in a dress. Which... I did have one of each. But you could barely even find a pair of dress pants for a boy doll, let alone a suit). Oh and I also realized I really, REALLY liked cute stuff. And girls. I realized I liked girls very much, because I barely had any girls to look up to as a child, so I wanted to make the kind of girls I would have aspired to be. So now I have girls (MSD and smaller), and want to get more girls. They're mostly wearing stuff that reads more historical than contemporary, because I love frills but hate taking care of frills in my own clothes. I will be getting a couple male dolls, but all MSD and smaller again. It helped that I got a bad neck/shoulder injury and got adult bills at the same time, so the prospect of a heavy $1000 SD is doubly unappealing.

So, yeah. It went from realistic (as much as that was possible in 2010-ish) and MSD/SD boys in contemporary clothes -> MSD and smaller girls in frilly, girly clothes.

 

@v1rus oh it's always a hard choice between harmonious look of the whole collection and a character that stands out!

 

I don't think my taste has changed, so much as when I first started out in the hobby I didn't really have a good sense for how dolls that aren't in scale with each other look odd when photographed together. Once I started learning that, my first doll just doesn't look right with the others, but I don't think that's changing taste, so much as just increased knowledge about what works and what doesn't.

 

I started with SD sized dolls and had no intention of ever going smaller.

But then... tinies happened...

and kept happening...

and then some MSDs...

and then a few YOs...

and now my SDs are the fewest in number in my crew.

 

The sizes I collect didn’t change—my first doll was 72 cm, and would fit right in height wise in my current collection. The aesthetic of my collection became more stylized over the years as the Twigling Takeover proceeded, and my collection became more and more dedicated to one artist. I took in a lot of more stylized dolls that went well with twiglings (rumpledolls, MDR, black cherry, etc). I also started using much smaller eyes in my dolls—everyone now has between a 5mm to a 6mm Iris, where before most of my dolls wore 14/7. I just find they look more realistic with their smaller eyes, but that’s probably a big change compared to what I was doing before.

 

I started with the usual companies, Cerberus Project Luts dolls and Volks. But then branched out. I always liked the exaggerated features and found out that realistic sculpts were not for me. In fact that trend AWAY from realism has continued and now I am purchasing almost nothing but resin anime dolls. I have a lot of fantasy dolls, but I also sold a number of my tiny fantasy dolls as I found that only a few of them had sticking power for me.

 

I've definitely changed my taste quite a bit. For starters, when I began collecting, I prioritized realism above all and wanted to stay on MSD size. I had an idea of my family being one of all 'normal human' dolls but that idea felt boring really soon. Now, only one of my dolls is a 'normal human' and it's a Yo-SD that is in need of a revamp of her character so she may be about to stop being.
I still like some degree of realism on the human-looking dolls, but I enjoy tiny anthro dolls a lot for example and I've got 3 now.

 

Hmm, it sort of has, sort of hasn't. I've always been interested in fantasy dolls, girls with fantasy traits, dragons and faeries, and stunning dresses. But I've grown less interested in mini dolls and more into large dolls. And of the volks dolls, I'm more interested in the dollfie dreams than the SDs, although I still love SDs.

Although Minifees still always have my heart, and yet, I haven't been that interested in their direction lately. Even though they are very fantasy heavy, they feel a little 'overdone' for my personal tastes of owning one.

I also did go through that phase of colourful candy hair colours and clothing and am more into contemporary, yet ladylike, styles.