Forever Barbie_ The Unauthorized Biography of a Real Doll - Lord [17]
She was also fussy about the fabric, which translated into a headache for him. He had to convince textile merchants to make small batches of cloth to her specifications, and small batches were rarely profitable. After much haggling, he obtained the black-and-white striped fabric for Barbie's first bathing suit. With still more haggling, he got minuscule snaps, buttons less than an eighth of an inch in diameter, and yards of miniature zippers from zipper manufacturer Yoshida Kojko (YKK).
Charlotte was similarly fussy about foundation garments, which sent Nakamura scrambling for pastel-colored tricot. A doll like Barbie couldn't wear couture clothing over bare plastic, after all. Among Barbie's first garments were two strapless brassieres, one half-slip, one floral petticoat, and—God knows why—a girdle.
Unmarried and what people used to call a "career girl," Charlotte never suffered for male attention. "She was very resourceful," recalled Adler. "Before she would have dinner at the Imperial Hotel, she would survey the three dining rooms, and if she saw an eligible male eating by himself, she would eat in that dining room." Eventually, Nakamura said, "She found a boyfriend at the hotel. A Westerner—a gentleman from Germany or something."
Nevertheless, doing business was tough for a woman in Japan. Often Japanese men expressed their scorn by excluding women from work-related socializing. But textile consultant Lawanna Adams, who worked with Charlotte in the Orient, remembers the exclusion as a blessing. After a typical business dinner, the men "would go out to get bombed"; she and Charlotte, however, would be dropped off at the hotel, free to get a good night's sleep.
WHILE CHARLOTTE BRAINSTORMED IN TOKYO, HOUSE- wives all over Japan made her ideas real. Eyes straining, needles flying, they handstitched gold buttons onto Barbie's red "Sweater Girl" cardigan and attached flower appliques to her "Picnic Set" sunhat. They added chestnut fur to her "Golden Splendor" jacket and tacked bows onto her "Cotton Casual" sundress. They trimmed her "Barbie-Q" outfit with white lace. Then, after their handiwork had been vetted for flaws, they gave the garments to other housewives who stitched them into cardboard display packages.
Called "homework people" because they toiled at home, they went blind so that Barbie could wear taffeta. They pricked their fingers so that she could have a ski holiday. They hunched over and wrecked their backs so that she wouldn't have to sleep in the nude. They were the original slaves of Barbie.
"I think Japan was the perfect place [to make the doll] because of the patience of the workers," said Joe Cannizzaro, the Mattel efficiency expert who went to Japan in the sixties. "And their desire to do it right. I never saw any dresses—even white wedding dresses—get soiled, though they were in the homes and on the tatami floors, because everything was so spotless, so well taken care of. They were delivered by bike and by pickup truck. They were handled four, five, six times. And they never got dirty. It's amazing, really. I don't think there's any other country where you could do that."
In factories, too, men sweated so that Barbie might dress. Machines pinged and clattered to make her clothes. One cut the fabric for her dresses and another sewed up their seams. Unlike homeworkers, who were paid by the pieces they produced, factory workers received a fixed wage. They lived in dormitories and were fed by factory owners. In August, however, everybody quit. "It was rice harvesting time," Cannizzaro explained.
By 1958, dolls had begun to emerge from doll molds in Tokyo. Filaments of gold or brown Saran were machine-stitched along their vinyl hairlines and pulled taut over their otherwise naked skulls. Ponytails were affixed. Eyes were painted with a masklike template that became clogged about every twentieth doll. Their glance was sidelong, formed by eerie white irises under ominous black lids. The dolls looked as if they had a history; as