Think pink, think Barbie? How the doll changed the way we think about colour
Thanks to the Barbie movie, everyone's wearing pink — a colour with a complicated history
Does it come in pink? These days, the answer is always yes.
Pink is everywhere you look right now. Not just pink, but Barbie pink — the shade of more than 100 official brand partnerships, deals announced by Mattel leading up to this summer's Barbie movie. The film, directed by Greta Gerwig and starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling, arrives in theatres Friday, and you can already splurge on pink pool floats and electric toothbrushes, luggage and even an XBox — official licensed merchandise released in promotion of the flick.
Licensed Barbie apparel now dominates the mall, with pink togs being sold at Zara, Gap, Aldo, etc. There are, of course, dolls that are based on the Barbie movie, but if you're shopping for something cuddlier than hard molded plastic, there's a Barbie teddy from Build-a-Bear Workshop, a toy that is somehow representative of the Barbie Cinematic Universe by virtue of its all-pink dye job.
It's a similar story for a lot of these product tie-ins. While most involve a prominent Barbie logo in their design, the sight of pink is often enough to clue in consumers. Heck, type "Barbie" into Google and your browser will get an all-pink Barbie makeover, beginning with a burst of fuchsia fireworks.
We're also living through the second summer of #Barbiecore, the top microtrend of 2022, and pink remains ubiquitous on retailers' clothing racks. Is the hype because of Barbie itself? Or put another way: why do we think of the world's most famous fashion doll when we see a flash of pink?
We didn't always think pink
It wasn't always that way. Just picture the original Barbie of 1959, still a familiar pop-culture icon after more than 60 years: the high ponytail, the heavy-lidded eyes, the striped black-and-white swimsuit.
Mattel still references that particular image of Barbie in its contemporary merchandise (she's splashed on this T-shirt from Zara), and Margot Robbie wears the same costume in the Barbie movie's first teaser trailer. In that preview — which spoofs Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey — Robbie's Barbie No. 1 is seen rising like a super-glam monolith, worshipped by prehistoric girlkind.
But is that Barbie wearing pink? Not a stitch. And if you look at early Barbie packaging, pink is just one colour in the doll's extensive palette. The OG Barbie doll's box featured a multicoloured design on a white background, a pattern comprised of chic fashion illustrations — rows of wasp-waisted Barbie dolls modelling looks for every occasion. They wore gold, green, red, blue, black — but little pink.
Even Barbie's licensed products from the early 1960s — things like doll cases, book bags, stationary and clothing — came in a range of different colours. True, some of the best-loved looks from the era were decidedly rosy. (The satin Vivienne Westwood number that Robbie wore to Barbie's London premiere was a nod to one of those classic outfits: 1960's Enchanted Evening Barbie.) But as some would argue, pink wasn't always Barbie's favourite colour.
Pink is for girls? Since when!
Aidan Moir is an assistant professor in the department of communication, media and film at the University of Windsor, and her research looks at the influence of how major brand properties, such as Barbie, circulate in popular culture. It wasn't until the '70s that Mattel began associating Barbie with an unabashedly pink colourway, says Moir. "It's a really good example of how brands are always changing and adapting, and a brand like Barbie — which is an iconic brand, right? — is one that captures our attention and tells us something about ourselves and society."
In the '70s, as pink became more prevalent in Barbie's branding, American society was experiencing enormous social change. "You've got Vietnam, you've got the Cold War," says Moir. "It can be seen as a bit of an anxious time in terms of U.S. cultural politics. And when you go to pink, it's such a happy colour," she says. "It's very soothing, particularly to younger audiences" — and young girls, of course, were exactly Barbie's market.
The idea of selling pink toys — pink anything — to little girls is a relatively new phenomenon, Moir explains, and Barbie and Mattel would have been right at the forefront of this cultural shift. "Pink is a very complicated colour," says Moir. "Before the 1900s, it really wasn't associated with femininity or happiness or girlhood — all of these associations that we attach to pink now, in part due to the power of Barbie." If anything, she says, it was more of a masculine colour, conjuring a military association — a reference to the blood of war.
Henry Navarro Delgado is an associate professor of fashion at Toronto Metropolitan University. Like Moir, he explains that the feminine connotations we bring to pink really took off around the post-war period. Advertisers began coding pink and blue as colours for girls and boys, looking to target those specific demographics."There was a process of training society around this idea of pink — this idea of stereotypical genders," says Delgado. "But it takes society awhile to finally get to a point where, generationally, people are primed to see pink as feminine, blue as masculine."
The power of trademarked pink
For Barbie, that time was the '70s, and since then, the brand's association with pink has become as important to its identity as anything. "When we think of brands, it's always the visuals that first come to our mind," says Moir. "So for Barbie, we think of pink."
"The colours of these brands play a really powerful role for communication," says Moir. "They make us feel certain things and they have certain effective emotions that are attached to the colours. … That is a really, really powerful form of marketing for a brand like Barbie."
Pink, in fact, is so important to the Barbie brand that it has its own signature Pantone shade: PMS 219C. Commonly referred to as "Barbie Pink," it's a vibrant magenta — bright like radioactive fruit punch. According to a rep for Mattel, the colour has been "a trademark of the brand for decades, and they've registered trademarks that incorporate pink at least as early as 1998."
Mattel's Barbie Pink is often cited as an example of a trademarked colour, a specific shade that Barbie alone has the rights to use on specific products. It's not a unique phenomenon, but rare nonetheless. Other brands have trademarked their calling-card colours: Tiffany & Co. is known for its robin egg blue, while Owens Corning has the corner on pink — albeit for insulation, not dolls.
The concept might sound absurd and oddly exclusionary, and earlier this week, U.K. artist Stuart Semple sounded off about Mattel's claims to colour. In protest of Barbie's trademarked Pantone, he's created a fluorescent pink paint, and per Semple's website, his signature pink is meant to be shared "with artists all over the world as long as they are not associated with Mattel." Called Pinkie - The Barbiest Pink, it's available for pre-order, priced at $53 for a 150 mL bottle.
"Nobody should own a colour. Nature has already made all the colours, and corporations claiming them is just completely and utterly ridiculous," Semple told Artnet News upon Pinkie's announcement. And the paint is one of several colour dupes that Semple has produced in response to corporate colour marks, a democratizing mission that began with The Pinkest Pink, a pigment available to any artist in the world … as long as they're not Anish Kapoor. (Kapoor, the 1991 winner of the Turner Prize, is the only artist allowed to work with Vantablack, the darkest pigment ever made.)
If we're going to get fussy about semantics, however, Mattel doesn't exactly "own" its pink, and a trademark doesn't lock a colour away, never to be used again.
"Take the concept of ownership and flip it just a little," says R. Scott MacKendrick, partner at Bereskin & Parr in Toronto, and an expert in trademark law. "[A trademark] is a little less about how do we give rights to people so they can own something and more about how do we protect the public from being confused about that thing they got and where they think it comes from."
A colour trademark functions more like a signal, he explains, and even if a colour mark is successfully registered, a brand's work is never done.
"You have to think of this in an offence/defence kind of way," says MacKendrick. The defence portion typically involves writing the occasional cease and desist letter, but the offensive strategy is in motion 24/7. "You're going to be looking at how you can keep reinforcing that connection, that association with the public, between your colour or your trademark and your products or services." And if you're Barbie in 2023, that means partnering with dozens of other companies until you've painted every item on the planet a riotous shade of pink.
What's it like to partner with Barbie?
For Canadian fashion designer Hilary MacMillan, working with Barbie was a dream gig. In August of 2022, MacMillan debuted the HM x Barbie collection, 15 pieces inspired by Barbie's signature colours and iconography, in keeping with her brand's proven feminine silhouettes.
A graduate of the Blanche MacDonald Centre in Vancouver, MacMillan launched her eponymous line in 2013, and she earned a boost of notoriety circa 2017 when stars like Spice Girl Victoria Beckham were spotted wearing her varsity jackets splashed with feminist slogans. Her more recent seasonal collections have favoured many of the same pinks that appear in her Barbie collab: hot pink teddy coats and puffers, for example.
Why is MacMillan drawn to pink? "I like the vibrancy of it," she says. "I think it's also a very diverse colour." Baby pink, dark pink, hot pink: each shade has a different mood. "I like using it in a way that's not traditional," she says, pointing to her trench coats, like this one worn by Alessia Cara, as an example. "And consumers love the colour," she adds. "It's bright and fun and it just makes people happy."
For her Barbie collab, which includes clothing for women and kids, MacMillan opened a pop-up store in Toronto's Yorkville neighbourhood last summer, and select items are still available through her website, including pink varsity jackets that have been embellished with designs from Mattel's Barbie asset library, a resource of prints, colour palettes and assorted marketing materials that MacMillan gained access to while developing the project.
Pink is definitely the through line of the collection, though Barbie's trademarked Pantone is only used for the clothing tags. "We were allowed to take creative liberties," says MacMillan, who'd previously collaborated with Mattel as part of a Barbie 60th Anniversary collection produced through Hudson's Bay.
A child of the '80s and '90s, she feels plenty of fond nostalgia for Barbie, but it's Barbie's current brand identity that really attracted her to the opportunity. "We have similar messages. We're all about female empowerment and this whole notion of a girl can be whatever she wants to be," says MacMillan. Size inclusion is also important to her brand, with items ranging from XS to a size 4X.
"It seemed like a symbiotic relationship," she says, and there was a creative appeal as well — a chance to explore an idea she'd been thinking of before Barbie officially signed on. "We wanted to do a very Barbiecore collection, and we were really excited to be able to do that."
Putting the Barbie in Barbiecore
When Lyst declared Barbiecore a top trend of 2022 in its annual Year in Fashion report, they credited the Barbie movie for much of the hype. The first sneak peeks from the set began appearing in June of that year, and when those photos arrived, Lyst searches for "all things pink" shot up by 416 per cent.
What really counts as Barbiecore, though? Is it just wearing a whole lot of pink?
In the broadest sense, yes. MacMillan defines it that way, though to her, the style is at its best when it's embraced from head to toe — from your pink glitter hair claw to your knock-off Gucci jelly slides.
Moir reads the trend as a reaction to hard times, similar to Mattel's pivot to all-pink branding in the '70s. To her, Barbiecore is pure, post-pandemic escapism. "It makes us feel happy, cheerful — gives us a break from thinking about all of these serious things that we're living through."
Delgado agrees. "We wanted something to take our minds off of all that trauma," he says, talking about COVID-19. To him, Barbiecore is "an overall ethos, a sort of a campy understanding of ultra-femininity. … It's femininity through an artificial perspective. You know, this idea of plastic."
In pop culture, you could argue that examples of Barbiecore predate Barbie herself. Think of Marilyn Monroe in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1956), cooing "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend" in bubblegum satin — a bombshell archetype that Madonna would later reference in the "Material Girl" video (1985). Paris Hilton's Y2K collection of Juicy Couture tracksuits? That's Barbiecore. Nicki Minaj's pink-wigged alter ego, Harajuku Barbie? That's definitely Barbiecore — and Minaj even features on the Barbie movie's soundtrack, remixing Aqua's "Barbie Girl" with Ice Spice.
All-pink styling is nothing new, but the way we think about Barbie, and her signature colour, has evolved in recent years. Delgado credits Nicki Minaj, specifically, for some of that shift. "Barbie used to represent a very repressed form of femininity. It was very skinny, white, unrealistic, idealized. Once Black and Brown people co-opted that and created a space for us in there, then it changed its meaning and significance," he says.
Barbie, as a brand, has always been aspirational, says Moir. The doll can be whatever you want her to be — but she's traditionally packaged as a careerist. She's been an astronaut, a president, a surgeon, a Baywatch lifeguard.
In recent years, Barbie's story has adapted to fit changing cultural attitudes. In 2016, Mattel introduced three new Barbie shapes — petite, tall and curvy — and they've also moved away from creating "friends" like Christie, Whitney or Kira for Barbie to play with — characters who aren't necessarily blonde and 11.5 inches tall.
"All the different Barbies that are out — different races, body shapes — are all just Barbie," says Moir, and based on the Barbie movie's early trailers and marketing, the shared-name thing carries through in the script. It makes for a clever bit, one that's especially fertile for stunt casting. But as Moir points out, it's a branding move that radically shifts our picture of what Barbie represents.
"Everyone is a Barbie. It's a way of making the Barbie brand much more inclusive than it was previously," says Moir. "Barbie can be anyone or anything, right? It doesn't have to be a white, blonde woman."
And if Barbie is everyone, then pink is for everyone too. Through the 2010s, Barbiecore's hyper-feminine esthetic often had an edge, sometimes hyper-sexualized (Victoria's Secret, Juicy Couture) — or sometimes plain exclusionary (e.g. the Mean Girls mantra, "on Wednesdays we wear pink.") But there's a cheerful innocence behind wearing pink today, a move from plaything to playtime. "Barbiecore is just being joyful in your dressing," says MacMillan. "It's dressing for smiles, really."
"It's about your attitude and being fun and playful. I think all these things kind of go together, but you know, at the core of it, it is about dressing pink — and that coincides with Barbie."
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