Makeover

York, UK – Fashion designer Matty Bovan is celebrating girlhood with an apt new film for Barbie’s 58th birthday.

• A capsule collection of Barbie dolls, unisex T-shirts and badges is sold at the Fashion East pop-up shop in Selfridges, London
• Bovan questions identity and what is considered beautiful and feminine in his work

Together with film-maker Lucy Alex Mac, the Yorkshire-based designer cast a posse of girls from his home town who represent authentic attitudes to beauty and fashion in 2017.

The characters, resplendent in an eclectic mix of colourful gender-neutral pieces from the designer’s spring/summer 2017 collection, speak about fashion as ‘everything and nothing’, and make-up as a transient form of self-expression.

The project comes at a time when Barbie is also keen to push the boundaries of what is defined as femme. ‘Barbie is like pop art,’ Bovan told Dazed Digital, of his latest muse. ‘She can be transformed into anything your imagination wants.’