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For Barbie: real plastic surgery
Woman's hobby is to restore other people's
favorite doll to its original beauty
May
30, 2000
By Gestin
Suttle
The News Tribune
From
her quiet Steilacoom home, Debbie Marsteller transforms worn, long-legged dolls
into the dream girls they once were.
Marsteller fixes vintage Barbies - those 25 years old or older.
Her work isn't kid's play. She has turned her passion into a pastime that
commands upwards of $100 for some restorative work. Next year, she plans to make
the leap and turn her hobby into a regular small business.
She believes she is the only person in the Pacific Northwest who restores
Barbies for other people.
While Marsteller collects other dolls, her heart belongs to Barbie. Her house is
a shrine of sorts to the American doll-next- door.
Eighty-three of the absurdly proportioned beauties encircle her tidy living
room.
A dozen more Barbies live in her bedroom. They stare out from china cabinets and
table tops.
There are Barbies from the 1960s and '70s, and one, her oldest, from 1959. They
wear dresses of sparkling sky blue, pink lace and red-and-white polka dots.
Their hair ranges from platinum blonde to raven black.
And these are just the Barbies (or the doll's relatives, such as little sister
Skipper) that Marsteller owns.
She gets the dolls - or often, just their heads - from people who live all over
the United States who want their Barbies repaired.
The work she does depends on the injustices a particular Barbie has suffered.
She "reroots" the tresses of the Barbies who are having the worst of bad hair
days. She repaints the lips, eyes and eyebrows of the ones who have lost their
color.
She'll clean a Barbie until it shines as it did when unwrapped by an eager
8-year-old girl at Christmas.
One day recently, Marsteller secured a doll's head with new locks. The original
color was an unusual goldish-orange hue.
"I'm trying to match this gold and this yellow color," she said. "It isn't
easy."
Marsteller gets her doll's hair from various places, including wig and beauty
supply stores, which have long samples of wig hair that she is able to purchase.
As she threaded the hair onto a doll's scalp last week, Marsteller described her
task: "You take the needle and stick in right in their little heads. They don't
gripe," she joked. "It's like dot-to-dot."
Some of Marsteller's clients just like to collect old Barbies and are looking to
improve a doll they got at a low price.
Others are professional Barbie dealers who sell their restored dolls for a fine
penny. On eBay last week, one vintage Barbie had a $1,600 bid on it.
However, fixing Barbie can hurt her price, doll collectors warn.
"A retied or restyled hairdo may enhance the current look of a vintage doll but
can affect value," according to a Barbie collector's Web site.
Marsteller said that often "it's a real fine line" whether restoration will
boost or pare a doll's price tag.
Some collectors prefer dolls that show their age, while others like them looking
newer, Marsteller explained.
Some clients send their Barbies to Marsteller in hopes she can bring back their
childhood friend.
"This doll is unbelievable, gorgeous, stunning, surreal, striking," wrote
customer Judy Leinweber of Boulder, Colo., in an e-mail to Marsteller after
getting her restored 1960 Barbie back.
"I started to cry seeing what had been my childhood doll transformed into a
beautiful collectible. You are truly a genius."
When Marsteller got the doll, "It had blonde hair, which my childhood scissors
had found over and over again," wrote Leinweber in an e-mail message to The News
Tribune.
Leinweber's Barbie also had green chemical stains around her ears, a common
defect that older Barbies get from their earrings. Additionally, the doll had a
large spot on the back of each leg from ink.
But the worst problem was the hair, the Boulder woman wrote. Marsteller called
Leinweber and asked how she would feel if her doll got brunette hair, because a
match for the blonde hair was going to be very tough.
"I was very excited, as I had always wanted a brunette," Leinweber wrote.
She was not disappointed.
"When I ... opened the box, I could not believe it was my childhood doll," she
wrote.
She said the hair "was stunning," and that according to Barbie collector books,
the doll's "ponytail was identical to the pictures and was perfect. The
bangs, which are very difficult to 'correctly form and curl' were perfect!"
Marsteller also repainted Barbie's lips to a hue that went better with the brown
hair.
Marsteller said she really enjoys the responses from people who've owned the
dolls as children.
"That makes you feel nice and warm," she said.
Marsteller, an aerobics instructor by trade, began restoring her own Barbies
nearly five years ago after she saw vintage dolls at a Sea-Tac show.
Those dolls looked like the Barbie the 46-year-old used to play with when she
was a girl -- only much nicer.
"I saw these gorgeous dolls with beautiful hair and thought, 'Why doesn't my
doll look like that?'" she said, recalling the occasion.
A woman at the show told her why. The other dolls had been restored.
After about a year and a half, when Marsteller gained confidence in restoring
her own dolls, she started doing it for others -- and for pay.
She learned tricks by doing research in magazines, talking to other dealers who
had done restorative work of their own and by trial and error.
Marsteller majored in art in college, so she has a natural flare for the work.
Barbie "is just a different canvas," she said.
Over the years she has learned a few secrets, such as using Soft Scrub with
bleach to best clean Barbie's body and 409 cleaner for the face.
Marsteller charges $20 for simple work, like retouching Barbie's lipstick. To
"reroot" Barbie's hair, she charges $100. She charges $40 for what she calls a
"total spa" restoration, which is complete hair cleaning and styling, face
repainting and body cleaning.
"Isn't she pretty," Marsteller exclaimed after brushing one doll's matted hair
with a flea comb. "For the most part they just need a little TLC."
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