photos © Steve Kyte
I love dolls, especially fashion dolls. I love their tiny perfection, their ability to freeze a moment or encapsulate an experience, the way their images resonate off childhood memories or create them anew.
To me, they are the perfect union of innocence and experience. Their static smiles acknowledge that time can never stand still and that Eden is forever beyond our reach, yet they enable us to project onto those unchanging faces the dream of a perfect world where everything, even the rain, is within our control.
And they’re so much fun.
You can dress them up and put them into dioramas. You can amass huge wardrobes of readymades or create your own mini-fashion empire. You can give them dream romances or nightmare marriages. You can explore gender, sexuality, identity, creativity or conformity. You can re-enact or remake history. You can build and furnish one-sixth or one-twelfth scale houses far beyond your one to minus scale budget. You can act out, act up, act anyway you want to. Dolls see all, know all and forgive all: a doll is the ultimate best friend who understands, accepts, and never, ever steals your favourite clothes even though she would almost always look better in them than you do.
The tagline for Takara JeNny says it all: “Jenny, another yourself.”
The slideshow above has pictures of some of my dolls – some au naturel, some Photoshopped, all captured to perfection by Steve Kyte. Click here for a couple of pictures of my stunning Volks Century Model Kyon Cecile with some of her friends.
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