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If you’ve been on social media recently, there’s no doubt you’ve seen bright pink Barbie promos grace your feed. And with all the hype, it’s no surprise that the film premiered to record-breaking box office numbers, not to mention critical acclaim and deep audience adoration. But when Ivana Primorac, the movie’s lead hair and makeup artist, first heard about the film, she wasn’t sure what to expect.
“I was very excited, but I couldn’t figure out why we would make a movie about [a] Barbie doll,” Primorac says. “And I was like, well, because it’s Greta, I’m immediately interested. … Once I read the script, it was clear to me that this is going to be an amazing thing to try and help create.” Soon, Primorac jumped right in and proceeded to create one iconic look after another.
On the latest episode of Who What Wear With Hillary Kerr, Primorac is bringing us inside her process. She speaks on how she achieved the perfect shades of blonde, the sheer number of looks that appear even before the opening credits finish rolling, and the rough draft looks for some of our favorite characters.
For excerpts of their conversation, scroll below, and make sure you tune in for the full rundown.
Hillary Kerr: Everyone has a specific idea of what Barbie looks like and how to play with that, reference, and subvert it. At times like that, [it] does seem like an enormous task. Will you walk me through a bit of the process and approach that you actually landed on?
IP: Absolutely. Well, the first conversations [are] between all of the creative team and Greta and Margot as a producer. That was great fun because we were far away from starting a physical production and the testing process. So we discussed what we saw, what makes each Barbie a Barbie. [It] has to be her plastic skin, has to be the hair that’s slightly unreal, and maybe plastic. So we did start to prototype all those looks. And that was great fun, but it was also very, very, very quickly obvious that that’s not what makes a Barbie. And that is because it’s not really pleasing in the actual physical world. Because the Barbie is the most beautiful person in every child’s mind … So we very quickly decided and realized that it’s the scale we needed to pay attention to. So her toothbrush is enormous. Her ceiling in her house is always too low. She doesn’t bend her knees when she’s flying into her car, and you have to jam her into her car … She doesn’t fit into anything comfortably. Also, her hair is always the width of her shoulders and is always too long. But it’s not ginormous on top of her head, it kind of grows out naturally, but then it’s always really thick and wide and too long. And but it has to be so beautiful and luscious and perfect till you cut it all off and you get to a Weird Barbie.
I’m curious about what that process was like in perfecting [Margot Robbie’s Barbie hair] color, figuring out what shades you were interested in, what it should be, and what it shouldn’t be.
That was really, really tough. Well, I first made all the prototypes in Barbie yellow. And Barbie yellow was too awful for words. It doesn’t enhance anyone’s skin or skin tone, and it doesn’t really suit anyone. And that was great to start with that because it was like, okay, now we know that it can’t be Barbie yellow. So it has to be the best version of a blonde that would suit Margot … I think what we found very quickly was that it had to be almost peachy creamy blonde, slightly pink, to suit the pinks of the outfits. With the heat of any hair, hair dryer, or hair irons, it was very quickly the hair could become slightly yellowish. And that would never suit anything that’s got pink undertones. So I had to have a special toner made so I could tone her blonde according to each costume. So every night, the hair would have to go, and I handed in formulas where we could put one scoop or two scoops or three scoops of this to make hair just right.
I’m also curious about the access that Mattel gave you to Barbie archives for research and prep. Did you have any special moments during that process?
Yes, I mean, I didn’t realize in the beginning that we were going to actually dive into the archive the way we did. I’m very pleased that we did. I now have a huge library of books on Barbie and the history of Barbie. I didn’t even know that I had to research that in such depth. And I’m so delighted that we did. But Mattel was very generous with their archive and with access … The hair was based on many different existing Barbies, but we then kind of gave it our own twist as well.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. Next up, check out our previous episode featuring Daphne Guinness.
