Prototype 001 isn’t like other Barbies—she’s a robo-babe with a blonde hime haircut, a pink headset, silver body armor, and a cyborg cat companion.Prototype 001 isn’t like other Barbies—she’s a robo-babe with a blonde hime haircut, a pink headset, silver body armor, and a cyborg cat companion.
Ambush designer Yoon Ahn wasn’t really a Barbie girl growing up. She received them as presents, as many children have since the toy’s inception in 1959, but her primary interest lay in Legos—the instructions, the engineering, and the act of building. Still, it was Barbie that hinted at her future as a disruptive fashion designer. “When it came to Barbie, I think I became a little more creative by trying to change their character by cutting the hair, cutting up the outfits,” Ahn says over Zoom from Tokyo. “Instead of playing with what was given to me, I was always just being kind of imaginative.” When Mattel approached Ahn three years ago to design her own Barbie, she immediately decided that it would have to be just as subversive as the unsolicited haircuts she gave her own dolls in her youth.
“I looked at the other collaboration designers, and it’s always been some sort of likeness of them, with the brand outfit and everything,” says Ahn. “I wanted to leave a stamp that reflects the world-building we’ve done as a brand, but not in a literal form of fashion.” Ahn’s Barbie is neither one of the classic reprisals we saw during the 2023 press tour for Greta Gerwig’s film nor a vintage Y2K It kid. She’s a robo-babe—dubbed Prototype 001—with a blonde hime haircut, a pink headset, silver body armor, and a cyborg cat companion.
