Vancouver Girl

description

VancouverGirl re-imagines fashion dolls by creating new products from local waste stream materials. We have three different sustainable strategies for creating value in fashion dolls: making new dolls from old ones, giving dolls makeovers to extend their life, and exhibiting unique designer doll outfits to inspire creativity.

Toy manufacturers hasten the end of life of their products through stylistic obsolescence, leaving a waste stream of durable but forgotten dolls. These can be easily restored, and used to create new fashion dolls that better reflect the interests and values of their community while supporting local crafters.

VancouverGirl was initiated as a co-design project with a group of six year old girls, to work with them to develop a sustainable toy that would be just as fun as any mass-produced toy they currently enjoyed. Our co-designers were particularly interested in the major brand name fashion dolls on the market, which gave us an opportunity to examine identity, appropriation, and craft practice as tools to re-position their favorite toys. We feel this project was successful because it was directly responsive to the participation and direction of our collaborators – they told us they would be just as likely to play with VancouverGirl dolls as they were any other major brand on the market, which we feel is a substantial accomplishment for formerly discarded toys.

Our principal goal in investigating fashion dolls was to understand how they lost their value, on the assumption that a valuable toy would not be discarded so easily. We identified a number of different factors that could make a toy seem less valuable: stylistic obsolescence, destructive makeovers, or growing older and out of interest in dolls. Further research uncovered studies that proposed that girls grow to understand the irrelevance and emptiness of the commodity doll and either abandon it or mutilate it as right of passage that marks their growth away from younger toys. While the doll can materially break down, most of these cultural factors left the doll intact - a durable lump of ABS and PVC plastic that that is thrown out before its functional end of life has been reached.

We next paid attention to how value was added to toys - primarily through story telling, maker experiences and cultural relevance. Our co-designers were instrumental in demonstrating their preference for toys that told specific stories, particularly if they had altered the toy in some way to better tell the story. This led us to examine craft practice as the method for restoring value in old toys, through customization and personalization, and by the kids‘ involvement in telling stories through making.

Our final point of interest was branding – both in the essential nature of brand to sell product, but additionally in brand’s capacity sell sustainable products to people who would normally not be engaged by sustainability alone. We developed three levels of engagement with the three brand lines - from VGirl fab which was aimed at people already open to craft and activism, to VG Couture which tries to find an audience in those not interested in environmental discussions.Therefore, we believe this project is important because it demonstrates how co-design and local engagement can create a service that rivals the desirability of a mass-produced product, how giving girls craft opportunities can guide them to create personalized value, and how brand can be used to sell a rich sustainable message to those not otherwise open to the concept. We hope this project could be expanded and adapted to other markets, and to other lines of otherwise durable toys.

Paper on Vancouver Girl in the 2010 issue of CURRENT