Part of what has made Greta Gerwig’s Barbie movie look immediately enchanting, aside from pretty much everything, is how its design has embraced the retro-classic camp of Barbie’s chintzy aesthetic — nothing in Barbie’s world in the movie feels real, and yet Barbie and her fellow Barbies (and the occasional Ken) have to occupy that space in the movie. Now, a new tour video shows us just how greatly the film is capturing that balance.
Margot Robbie herself has taken Architectural Digest on a whirlwind tour through the hottest film location of the year, Barbie’s iconic Dreamhouse, giving us a look and insight into just how Gerwig and her production designers envisioned bringing the playset to life.
It’s delightful — all the details like capturing the evolution of the Barbie toyline’s design stylings from the ‘50s all the way to the modern day, the choice to make the props a mix of physical objects and stickers just like the toys themselves do, the many, many, shades of pink that give it a visual texture while still being a glorious assault on your eyeballs. It really is, for something that on the surface might read as “simple,” fascinating piece of design work.
Also, this video is just filled with the most unhinged sentences that you definitely want to hear out of promotion for a Barbie movie, such as “There is no water in Barbie Land. There is no water or fire, there are no elements,” or “All the writing in Barbie Land is actually just gibberish, it’s just scribbled the way kids write endless amounts of nothing… but it’s all very beautiful.”
Suffice to say, the full video is worth a watch, perhaps on loop until we too can join Barbie in Barbie Land for a while on July 20.