Rock dollies – when Andrew Yang created a whole rock show of dolls, he shared them with The Bold Doll.
The inspiration for this collection came from the work of Jean Paul Goude, the Artistic Director for Galeries Lafayette for the last 20 years. His work is whimsical and humorous. Yang approached the project as if designing costumes for a film, each scene informing what the characters wear, “I love cinema from the silent era on, but was really feeling the sixties with a lot of these costumes, more like Tim Burton’s version of the sixties.”
The boys are a new development Yang had been wanting to do them for a while, so this project really gave him the chance to develop a boy body and explore how to translate his expressions in a masculine way but stay true to my voice as a dollmaker.
Several of the dolls are based on real people, as an inside joke, and to make the process more fun, “Jillian, my right hand woman, and I decided to cast our friends as some of the characters, ourselves as stylists in the photoshoot, and our friends as crew members. After my first feature in FDQ, I was put in touch with Darian Darling, whose apartment was featured in the same issue, and made her a makeup artist in the photoshoot! All of the other dolls were characters from my imagination – most of the major characters were made up – but one of the girls I worked with in Paris closely inspired one of the main ‘Kouklistars’.”
“I think that people will always love ‘street’ clothes, although I feel like it is a bit inconsistent with the price point of my dolls, and not what I would personally produce. For custom and display work it seems as though there will always be a demand for ‘real clothes’.”
“I generally start with a sketch for every doll, but I try and only let it be a guide. I try to stay pretty close to the sketch for clients. But, for my personal work, a sketch sometimes is just a line or a facial expression. For a long time I was doing simple pencil sketches and colorizing them on PhotoShop, since I ended up emailing most of the images. Only recently have I gone back to basics and finished my sketches completely on paper, and kept them all in a book. It makes things a lot more organized. After producing over 200 sketches for Galeries Lafayette, I learned my lesson.”
“Most of my early work was completely freehand – I really just went with the fabrics I love, hair and eye color combinations I fantasized about, or fixated on certain ideas – like, feathers! or stones!! The more I try to map out my personal work, the more the actual piece strays from what it looks like.”
Yang couldn’t be more pleased with how the Kouklitas have grown up. At the time of writing he was in Tokyo for an event in the Ginza Barneys New York shop, with Snejana his first doll. “She is almost six inches shorter than the dolls I use now for display – and evokes something completely different, raw and visceral, but still me. They have evolved, that is for sure. I love the exhibit realm they have ventured into, but it has made me realize more and more that I do want to create something more mass-market and playable, as well as something even more high-end. As my background is in fashion, I operate like a fashion house, and the dolls have echoed that pattern as well. The gallery work is like couture, the windows and retail work is like ready-to-wear, and the mass-market doll – well, we’ll see.”
“I am waiting for the right collaboration. Part of me wants a Kouklita in the hands of every kid in America – my dream is really to make the next Cabbage Patch Kid – but I am a stickler for quality, and the labor involved in making these dolls, even on a mass level, is hard to do inexpensively unless I take production to China, which is where I hesitate. If I were to do something like that, then the doll would be something different, a different concept, but the same aesthetic. Its very hard for me to escape from my aesthetic!”
To see more of the Kouklitas and the first ever Kouklitas Boutique, check out http://astoryang.com/shop. “It’s taken a long time to launch, but I am a perfectionist who has a hard time meeting my own deadlines – generally because I try to meet those of my customers first! A set of limited edition outfits on one-of-a-kind dolls, has allowed me to slightly lower my price point. I want to take this concept and create a more interesting custom service.”
For the future, Yang is in discussion with Barneys Japan about working on their next holiday windows. He is also preparing for a solo show in Paris next year, where the goal is to exhibit 8-10 over-the-top dolls, “No fashion, only frills – going back to basics. A lot of those pieces are utilizing found objects and antique textiles from my travels, and I will be collaborating with Masaya Kushino a phenomenal shoe artist from Japan. Jillian Carrozza, my assistant, is a knitwear master, and she will be doing some insane crochet on the pieces as well as couture-level construction on the gowns. The lovely Thanos Samaras, the genius behind Yatabazah wigs, will be creating hair like the Kouklitas have never seen. These dolls will be classic incarnations of dolls through time – the Bride doll, the Queen doll, etc. It’s my passion project, but I couldn’t be happier about it.”
This feature first appeared in Fashion Doll Quarterly magazine in 2012.
See Andrew Yang’s latest dolls at astoryang.com