Barbie Exhibition

Explore the world of everyone’s favorite ten-inch tall fashionista with Barbie: A Cultural Icon – The Exposition at the Shops at Crystals. This unique experience offers a colorful and thorough history lesson about this pop culture phenomenon that spans decades. 

Travel back to 1959 to find out how this itty-bitty blonde beauty took the world by storm. What makes this exhibition truly unique is the bird’s eye view it offers of the world’s changing culture through the lens of this singular children’s toy. 

Your tour starts with the original design that features demure, downcast eyes, housewife fashion, and the most intricately made miniaturized doll accessories we’ve ever seen. From that striped bathing suit style, Barbie has evolved through the decades to highlight the most important parts of each era. The 1970’s Malibu Barbie changed the body design to bright, forward-facing eyes, a glowy suntan, and an open-mouthed smile that continued to be the basic face design for the next few decades. When the feminist and civil rights movements began to rise in the United States, Barbie was the first company to make a black doll to show support for desegregation in the 1960s. 

Throughout Barbie’s lifetime, she’s been a doctor, a president, a pilot, and an astronaut, showing girls from multiple decades that there is no limit to what women can do.

Barbie has been on the cutting edge of culture and fashion throughout her time on department store shelves, and Mattel continues to update her design to be a positive role model for future generations.

So snap a few photos of your favorite doll or take a seat in the Barbie dream house because at Barbie: A Cultural Icon, we’re all  Barbie girls in a Barbie world.