The Sisterhood
The Sisterhood
1963
First thing on a Monday morning, Charlotte escorts a trio of young ladies around the office, giving them the grand tour, pausing here and there to make introductions. Stevie sees them and thinks, There they are—the new Barbie fashion designers.
She’s known this day was coming. With Barbie, plus the Ken doll, the Dream House and now Midge, the workload is too much for just her and Charlotte. So now, in addition to Stevie, there’s Dee Pryor, Ellen Watson and Carol Spencer. They’re all young, about Stevie’s age. Dee is soft-spoken and has a little cherub’s face that fits her angelic personality. She doesn’t swear, doesn’t drink or smoke. She seems frail and delicate, hardly someone who could stand up to Ruth, and yet here she is. Ellen appears to be just the opposite. Like Stevie’s former classmate Bob Mackie, Ellen got her start in costume design. She wears heavy dramatic makeup with thick eyeliner winged out at the sides. Carol is the youngest among them and has a terrific head of reddish-brown curls. Fresh out of the Minneapolis School of Fine Arts, she is every bit as friendly as she is talented.
After the introductions are made, Charlotte calls all of them into her office, which is small to begin with. The surface of her desk is flooded with pattern books, fabric swatches, pincushions, fitting dolls and dozens of fashion magazines. There are only three chairs and Stevie opts for perching on the window ledge, letting the new girls sit. Out of seniority, she feels it’s her place to do this.
“Okay,” says Charlotte, her hands splayed out before her on her desk, “let me be very blunt—” As if she knows how to be any other way. The only person more direct than Charlotte is Ruth. “We’re entering a new phase with Barbie. You’re all wonderfully talented, but only the best of the best designs will make it into production. That means you’ll be competing against each other. But don’t worry,” she says with a good-natured laugh, “a little friendly competition is healthy.”
Is it? Suddenly Stevie and the other designers are eyeing each other through a different lens. Now they aren’t just coworkers; they’re rivals. Not the best environment for promoting creativity and risk-taking, which are what have led to some of Barbie’s most exciting outfits and accessories. In the 900 series, for example, they created that charming straw cartwheel hat, and there was the matching tote bag in Suburban Shopper. And what about the red hat and teeny-tiny gold compact mirror with the pink powder puff and a B for Barbie embossed on the top for Roman Holiday ?
“And, of course,” says Charlotte, “Stevie and I will be here to help if you have any questions or need assistance with something.”
It doesn’t take long for Charlotte’s so-called friendly competition to become a breeding ground for jealousy and paranoia. If one of them sees that another designer is in a meeting with Charlotte or Jack—or, God forbid, Ruth—they’ll start to worry. Dee hides her sketchpads inside her locked desk drawer. Ellen keeps her fitting dolls out of sight, and Stevie and Carol make Mia and the other sample makers promise not to share their ideas with the others.
And yet somehow the four of them get along beautifully. After just a few weeks, they form a sisterhood of sorts. They all sit together at lunch in the cafeteria. They wait for one another after work so they can all pile into someone’s car and head over to the beach. They attend fashion shows together, and on the weekends they all go scouting for fabrics and do some window-shopping, hoping for inspiration. When Ruth snaps at Ellen one day, the others circle around her in the bathroom while she cries off all her eyeliner. When Dee finds Barbie and Ken on her desk, naked and posed in a compromising position, Stevie goes after the culprits—Twist and Frankie—and tells them to knock it off. And they all take Carol out to celebrate when she dazzles Charlotte and Ruth with her very first design— Crisp ’n Cool —inspired by First Lady Jackie Kennedy.
Not that she’s proud of this, but Stevie can’t help but feel a bit threatened by the newcomers. With each victory scored by the other designers, she finds little ways to solidify her place in the Barbie team. She plays big sister to these girls, showing them the ropes and at the same time letting them know her place in the Mattel pecking order. She tells Ellen why one of her designs wouldn’t work because of Barbie’s arm length—something Stevie learned early on. She is also quick to point out to Dee that her step-and-repeat pattern is still too large, too busy for Barbie’s frame. In her own way, Stevie lets the others know that while she’s here to help them, she’s also the elder statesman.