‘If you're building a world, it doesn't matter if it's Georgian or if it’s Barbie - you just dive in,’ says Barbie set decorator Katie Spencer, who created Barbie’s universe together with production designer Sarah Greenwood. ‘It doesn't matter if you know the subject matter massively beforehand. Just learn it, and understand it's all about the character and about the storyteller.’
The duo, who have previously created female spaces in Pride & Prejudice, Anna Karenina and Atonement, turn their gaze to a hyper feminised world for the first time with Barbie. ‘We worked with things that we'd never worked with before,’ Spencer adds. ‘Those colours - pink, blue, green - were so out of our normal work world. Then, I'm working with the plasticized and the soft edges, and with the finishes there’s no patina, no layering - that was a journey in itself.’
