IT’S A BARBIE WORLD!
70-YEAR-OLD MIKE RICHARDS HAS DISCOVERED A HIDDEN FLAIR FOR DRESS DESIGN USING ABANDONED BARBIE DOLLS AS MODELS
IT’S a Barbie world for 70-year-old Mike Richards of Carcur, Wexford who has become a fashion designer in miniature to raise money for the Irish Cancer Society.
Mike, who was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2019 and is due to undergo a course of radiotherapy in Waterford University Hospital at the beginning of March, has so far dressed 50 Barbie dolls in elaborate hand-made costumes worthy of a Milan catwalk, and is planning to make more.
Mike’s partner Noreen Kennedy is a team leader with Wexford Relay for Life and the couple decided they wanted to do something special for this year’s fundraising event in the aid of the Cancer Society, after a virtual relay last year.
‘Noreen is interested in crafts and the two of us have crafted together for a few years. She was the one who got me into it. I was thinking about what I could do. I put out a call for Barbie dolls on the Wexford Reduce Reuse Recycle Facebook page and started making costumes for them,’ he said.
Mike received a large number of unwanted Barbie dolls from people who had them stored in attics and cupboards and most of the dolls have one feature in common - ‘nine times ouf ot ten the hair is in a state so I have to start by combing all the tangles out.’
The outfits are made from fragments of fabric, ribbons, lace and wool with Mike’s front room now resembling a dressmaker’s workshop filled with‘ boxes of bling nd ribbons’.
Much of the material for the costumes is also generously donated, with people regularly sending him random pieces of material.
‘People have been so kind and so generous and when I’ve posted photographs of the dolls on Facebook, the comments have been so positive and complimentary. Nobody has ever said what are you doing, a 70-year-old man sitting down making outfits for dolls’.
‘I love doing it. I just love to sit here and make them. I’m retired. I don’t go out because of the way things have been with me and you can’t have people around. The only thing I do is go shopping.’
‘If I need anything in particular - I might be looking for a piece of flowery material - I’ll put a post on Facebook and someone will come up with it.
‘ To tell you the truth, I don’t know where I get the ideas for the costumes. They come out of my head as I’m making them. I saw a picture of a Barbie doll and I thought, I could do that. I made the first one and it worked out well so I made another. Each one takes about four and a half hours.’
Mike uses the folded pages of a book to create a cone underlayer for the bottom of the dress before covering it with material and making the top of the outfit.
He is planning to sell the Barbie dolls through the Reduce, Reuse, Recycle website for about €20 each, with the proceeds going to Wexford Relay for Life.
Mike will begin radiotherapy treatment in March, travelling to Waterford Hospital five days a week for 10 weeks. Following his prostate cancer diagnosis in November 2019, he had a tough time last year - ‘2020 sort of went bottoms up for me and that’s one of the reasons I started doing this.’ A few years ago, Mike organised a campaign against dog fouling on the Carcur Road, painting slates with messages for pet owners, reminding them to clean up after their animals.