Barbiecore rules, but can it be sustained?

You would have to be completely detached from any kind of reality if you didn’t know that a Barbie movie is releasing soon. That’s right. The now 64-year-old, Mattel-owned fashion doll is getting her own Margot Robbie-starring, Greta Gerwig-directed big-screen adaptation, which opens in South African cinemas on July 21. If all the memes, social media chatter, and box office prediction are anything to go by, Barbie is already one of the year’s biggest blockbusters, with a projected $80m box office opening weekend.

Per the Bloomberg-reported words of Mattel CEO Ynon Kreiz: “It’ll be very hard to be on Planet Earth and not know this movie’s coming out.”

Kreiz is the man responsible for getting Barbie on the big screen having bucked a trend of Mattel executives who thought a cinematic turn would hurt the brand. This logic seems incredibly out of step with reality, considering the oceans of evidence that selling well-known intellectual property (IP) to Hollywood studios works wonders (see Marvel and Transformers).

The trend’s emergence

As we witness Barbie’s dominance of popular culture, everywhere, from fashion to interior design, there are signs that Barbiecore, the hot pink trend that derives its name from Barbie’s affinity for it, will remain a staple for the time being. I say “remain” because the trend precedes any mainstream chatter about the movie, with some observers tracing its current emergence back to Valentino’s Autumn 2022 ready-to-wear collection. The 81-looks collection was predominantly pink, and soon enough, social media trends, specifically on TikTok and Pinterest, pointed towards the popularity of this bright hue.

On Hollywood red carpets, magazine covers and Instagram feeds, everyone from Gabriele Union, Emma Chamberlain and Kim and Kourtney Kardashian, to Anne Hathaway and Lizzo turned up in hot pink. Margot Robbie — Barbie herself — has been spotted in the hue many times more than anyone else in the past year, probably as some form of subliminal marketing strategy. The movie’s release therefore only serves to further intensify the Barbiecore trend’s mainstream appeal.

This resurgent obsession with Barbie (and pink) — followed by years of plummeting sales, as Mattel seemed unable to regain mainstream cultural relevance — can also be found in interior design. In 2022, Architectural Digest specifically noted the “hyper-pink” trend permeating the worlds of interior and furniture design. Barbie’s dream house, anyone?

A more mature approach to the trend

It’s perhaps worth noting that a slight variation of the colour — viva magenta — is Pantone’s current colour of the year, with the institute noting that it is a “pulsating colour whose exuberance promotes joyous and optimistic celebration…. It is an animated red that revels in pure joy, encouraging experimentation, and self-expression without restraint.”

For the adults in the room, who might find the hot pink Barbiecore hue a bit too imposing, perhaps viva magenta can serve as a more acceptable option for tapping into the escapism of this trend cycle.

The recent pandemic is really what most observers attribute to the desire for escapism that this underscores, meaning Gerwig’s Barbie is right on time to play on our nostalgia. This is what the studios are hoping will put bums on seats come July 21, with lots of adults who grew up with Barbie dolls queuing up alongside much younger girls hoping to catch a glimpse of Barbie’s fantastic-plastic world.

Barbie’s future relevance

It’s a boon for Mattel — capturing the cultural zeitgeist in this way after years of losing market share to the likes of Bratz and other toys as Barbie failed to remain at the forefront of social progress over the past few decades.

Whereas last century, Barbie, with her ambition and high-flying career womanhood served as a vision of what the future may look like for little girls, in a world where their mothers have themselves become empowered, that role became somewhat obsolete. Barbie couldn’t quite find her pink-stiletto heeled feet in the context of being just one of many symbols of female aspiration. In the 2010s, attempts at tapping into diversity — a burning social issue — by releasing more dolls of different races and body types helped, but only a smidgeon. Last decade was simply too late as the Bratz had already stepped into that vacuum as early as the 2000s.

Reports say several sequels to the Barbie film are planned, so only time will tell if the brand can remain relevant for decades to come. In essence, will the film franchise continue to rely on the nostalgia of yesteryear’s little girls, who are today much older women, or will it find resonance with a new generation — one that is empowered, but continues to face challenges in the form of regressive laws (for example, the US Supreme Court overturning the right to abortion) and stubborn social ills, such as the gender-based violence that plagues South Africa. For now — of course — with a trend named after her and first theatrically released film taking flight, Barbie and Barbiecore rule the world.