Host: Suzanne Rust
Suzanne: [00:00:01] Welcome to The Moth Podcast. I'm your host for this week, Suzanne Rust. I work as The Moth Senior Curatorial Producer, helping find unique voices and stories for our Mainstage shows.
March is International Women’s Month, but here at The Moth, we're always celebrating and elevating women's stories. This week on the podcast, Carol Spencer, who led the way for career women of today in more ways than one. Carol told this story at an LA Mainstage. The theme of the night was Close to Home. Here's Carol, live at The Moth.
[applause]
Carol: [00:00:42] It all began back in Minneapolis in 1950, five months after I had graduated from high school, when I said no to my fiancé, when he told me that his parents wanted me to continue working to support him through medical school. [audience laughter] [audience cheers and applause]
At that time, there were basically five jobs for a woman. Nurse, teacher, wife and mother, secretary or clerk. I was working at a job in an office earning minimum wage at that time, 75 cents an hour. And I hated that job. Well, when the tears were over, I took stock of myself. What was I going to do? My parents were both dead, my sister had moved to Chicago and I was kind of lost. I looked around to see what would be appealing to me when I found it in the Sunday newspaper, a seminar that talked about jobs in the fashion industry. I attended that seminar, and I found MCAD, the college that would teach me how to become a fashion designer. I enrolled quickly, and four years later, I was in New York.
One night in 1955, I was in the ritzy penthouse apartment of Helena Rubinstein, the cosmetic entrepreneur, who lived in this fabulous apartment on Fifth Avenue. I had just won a coveted seat as a fashion editor in the Mademoiselle magazine College Board contest. How I won over 37,000 applicants, I'll never know. But I was there. And soon, I found an advertisement in Women’s Wear Daily saying, "Fashion designer stylist for sunny California." I answered that ad immediately, but they didn’t answer me.
I decided I'm going to move to California. So, I drove out to Los Angeles, and then I found an advertisement in California Apparel News. And this time, it said, "Barbie needs a fashion designer." [audience chuckle] I answered that ad immediately, and soon I heard from Mattel. Well, I got the job. And on my first day, I was ushered into security, where they took my picture and made a badge for me to wear at all times, and then they took me into the design studio where I met the designers on the way to my desk. There were three of us at the time.
It was wonderful designing and I got into it right away. And soon, Elliot Handler wanted to do something a little bit different to give more play value into the Barbie line. So, he wanted to incorporate Color Magic, where the color of the hair would change and where the color of the fashions would change. And so, I was asked to become the designer for that. I created both the prints that changed color, as well as the hair design. And in the 1970s, Mattel expanded the line to incorporate careers for children, so that they could play out their dreams of what they might want to be in the future.
I designed Surgeon Barbie fashion pack, shortly after, I had a biopsy where I saw up front, women as nurses and men as doctors or surgeons. Why shouldn't a woman become a doctor? Why shouldn't she become a surgeon? So, I put her into the fashion pack in that way. And then, one day, I was bar hopping, looking for my Mr. Right. [audience laughter] Because that's what they did back in the 1970s to find it. And soon, this handsome guy comes up to me and says to me, "What do you do?" And I said, "I'm a Barbie designer." [audience chuckle] And he laughed.
I quickly said, "Oh no, no, no, no, I'm a secretary." That was believable. That calmed him down. He invited me to have another drink. And I said, "No, thank you, I've had enough." I knew he'd never be my Mr. Right. I often began wondering why being a Barbie designer was laughable, but then I attended a fashion show luncheon featuring Yves Saint Laurent’s Mondrian designs. At the end of the luncheon, I went up to Yves Saint Laurent to ask him for his autograph. He looked at me and he said, "What do you do?" And I said, "I'm a Barbie designer." And he said, "I look at the Barbie line all the time to see what you're doing."
Well, if YSL looked at our line, we must be doing something right. But yet, the designers were this closely guarded secret. How could we ever be recognized as designers within the world? Soon, I found a man that I had a romance with. And he was a pilot. We would go soaring together over the top of mountains, following the eagles. It was wonderful. And one day, he handed me a magazine that outlined the new ____ uniforms for female astronauts. And so, I quickly started designing two uniforms for Barbie. One, the new ___ uniform and the other a fantasy astronaut uniform in pink and silver with gigantic sleeves and padded shoulders.
She had knee-high boots that went with either knickers, [audience chuckle] or with a miniskirt with silver pantyhose. [audience laughter] So, my fantasy astronaut was launched at Toy Fair very quietly, just days following the tragedy of the Challenger. It took a long time, almost 10 years, before we put another astronaut Barbie in the line. But learning about outer space and being able to enjoy a fantasy astronaut that I had designed, I feel good thinking that I played a small part in their healing. But I personally have [sobs] never forgotten.
And then the 1980s was a time of change. This was when computers were really being introduced and I was going to night school to learn the new technologies. And my designs were helping Barbie to become more and more popular, but I was not being recognized for anything. I was still behind that curtain of secrecy. How do you break out? Well, we tried. We decided that we wanted to have a collection featuring the name of the Mattel designer on the package. But that was killed very quickly.
But yet, when a visionary artist came to Mattel, he loved the idea. And together, we formed the Classic Collection that bore the name of the designer on the package. I was chosen to create this style, but I had to actually do my design and create the 3D models over one weekend, and that was to have three dolls in this collection. So, I knew that if the designer byline was going to happen at Mattel, it had to happen now. So, I asked my sample maker, Benito, if he would work with me. And together, we completed the three fashions. We were a team. I even hand sewed some of the ruffles on a coat.
I went home at 3 o'clock Monday morning, hardly slept a wink and I was back at the office setting up before the 08:00 AM meeting. I had three designs. One was an over-the-top gala gown in turquoise and gold. I designed it, so that it took your eye around and around the fashion, so you could enjoy every aspect of it. And the second one was a silver dress for Ingenue Barbie to wear as she went up to receive her Academy Award. [audience chuckle] And that was topped by this ruffled coat. And the third design, and this was the early 90s that I'm doing this. Everyone was thinking about the new millennium, what would happen.
I decided that Barbie had to have a poodle to take with her as a pet into the new millennium, into the unknown. And so, I made it out of pompons and pipe cleaners. Well, when Jill Barad, our CEO, came in at 8 o'clock in the morning with the VPs over design and marketing, she absolutely loved my design. She said they were high style and glamorous, just what we needed. So, the next step was for marketing to plan the launch. And because the designs were already approved, the only thing they could pick on was my name, Carol Spencer. It was too plain. I should change my name to a different name, to a foreign name that had flair, that had a twist to it, so that they could have something that would really be saleable.
They kept commenting and commenting and commenting. At the end of the meeting, I felt as if I was skinned alive. Well, I stood my ground and I said to them in a very small voice, "Do not do the doll if you do not use my name. It is Carol Spencer." I didn't know for months if the designs would be in the line or not. And then, one day, packaging came to me with releases for me to sign, so that my name could be on the package. [audience cheers and applause]
Well, this started my name recognition, but it also gave all of the other Mattel designers name recognition from that day forward. [audience cheers and applause]
I'm thrilled that I was able to work at Mattel and design for Barbie doing so many things to encourage women forward. My great-shape Barbie doll made it into the Toy Story movies [audience chuckle] and my 1990s Totally Hair Barbie still holds the record for being the best-selling Barbie of all time. [audience cheers and applause]
But the most wonderful thing that I love to hear, is when I meet people all around the world and they learn that I was a Barbie designer, they look at me and they say, "Barbie inspired me forward." Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
Suzanne: [00:14:02] That was Carol Spencer. After 35 years as a Barbie fashion designer with Mattel, Carol retired and wrote the recently published book, Dressing Barbie, which tells the longer history of Barbie through the decades and dives deep into some of Carol's most iconic designs.
To hear an interview with Carol after the show at the Broad Theatre and see photos of the hundreds of Barbies in Carol's private collection, go to themoth.org/radio-extras.
The best part about my job as a curator here at The Moth is the treasure hunt aspect of it. I came across an article about Carol Spencer in the New York Times last year and discovered that she was the designer behind Barbie's fabulous wardrobe. And here's my full-on confession. Growing up, I was a huge, huge Barbie fan. So, I had to reach out to Carol.
As I flipped through the pages of her book, Dressing Barbie, I literally felt like Proust biting into his madeleine. From Barbie's lime green bell-bottom jumpsuit and glittery gowns to Ken's groovy ultra-suede suit, all of my favorite Barbie looks were there and happy childhood memories of playing with my dolls flooded back to me. Big thanks, Carol. We're sending out a very special happy birthday to Barbie herself, who turns a youthful 61 on March 9th.
Well, that's all for us this week. Until next time from all of us here at The Moth, have a story worthy week.
Podcast production by Julia Purcell. The Moth podcast is presented by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange, helping make public radio more public at prx.org.