Digital dollz

In Child's Play I've made it abundantly clear that I'm a big fan of dolls with Barbie being my all-time favorite. This fondness also found a place on the internet. In 2004 Mattel had launched an online contest to kickstart their new Barbie-line: Fashion Fever. You had to go to a specific link and make your own design and give it a name. The contestant with the best design would be featured on the next Fashion Fever doll, I think. My siblings and I spent hours playing this game; mixing and matching patterns and colors. The hardest part was giving our designs a name. For one of them we opted for "Kersace" because it was a play on words with the Dutch word for cherry (Dutch: kers) and the Italian fashion house Versace. The design was a dress with a cherry motif; yes, we were going to be the next generation of fashion designers. This contest really kickstarted my love for dress-up games because it added more options than what I had to work with before.

Barbie PC by Patriot

Dress-up games were already my bread and butter when using the family computer. Before the Fashion Fever contest this was limited to The Doll Palace. This was a website that hosted a drag-and-drop avatar maker (the struggle of lining everything up perfectly was too real) that was originally made for users of The Palace. The Palace was an online chat room program, created by Jim Bumgardner in 1995, that allowed users to import their own avatar. Many people opted for an avatar created on The Doll Palace and it became a real hype around 2003. Back then I felt really stressed when playing this game because some doll parts wouldn't be fully clothed (sans nipples), thinking that if my parents would see this I wouldn't be allowed to use the PC anymore. So I would always make sure that the dollmaker I'd selected wouldn't involve too many unclothed torsos. I would mainly play with Preps, but Wonderkins definitely had a special place in my heart because of their facial expressions. Thanks to the webring system I also discovered the Candybar dollmaker and the Mini Room Maker. The owner of Gurlpowerrr Easy Doll !!! even left some tutorials on how make your own dollmaker and on how to make a "blinkie.""Blinkies" are tiny pixel art gifs that people add in their forum comments and such. If you're interested in making one I recommend using Blinkiemakers.

Screenshot of The Palace featuring a Prep Pajamas Maker doll (courtesy of merrit k on fanbyte)

Through the Fashion Fever contest I discovered EverythingGirl which - if you're not a girl growing up in the early 2000s - was doll valhalla. This page was completely centered around Mattel's girl-oriented IPs: Barbie and a Kelly Club, myscene, Polly Pocket, Flavas and Winx Club (Mattel was licensed to make the season one and two dolls). Later this also included Diva Starz, BarbieGirls.com, Pixel Chix and Monster High. Keep in mind that these weren't available at the same time since contracts would change and doll lines would be discontinued (R.I.P. - Rest In Plastic). Every doll line would have their own dedicated page with fitting games. Barbie certainly had the most games and all of the little sound bites and sound tracks still haunt me everyday. The harp from Barbie as ... and the flowers from  Flower Song Fun are the main offenders here. In the distance I can still hear Miranda from Diva Starz repeating "That's totally me!" when picking an outfit in Fashion Emergency. You can be sure that I enjoyed spamming the buttons so she'd keep saying it.

Screenshot of EverythingGirl from 2004 featuring Pippa, The Great, The Digi-Pixie (courtesy of Web Design Museum)

Around the same time I discovered Paperdoll Heaven because it was a link on a web directory page for dollmakers. Paperdoll Heaven was a website with digital paper dolls of celebrities designed by Liisa Wrang and is since 2005 known as Stardoll. That's also when they added the option to create an account with your very own "AvaStar" (later changed to "MeDoll"), which I only dared doing because they were very clear in mentioning it's free to sign-up. So in the autumn break of 2006 I officially made my Stardoll account. Apparently I'd already made a mistake: I mistyped my own name resulting in me not being able to log in the next day when I wanted to show my siblings. Luckily we al decided to make ourselves accounts (I also showed them how to be a Superstar for free), and I abandoned my old account until I realized I'd written "Nesrne" instead of "Nesrine" one year later. Recently I tried logging back in but it seems my accounts have been removed. R.I.P. - Rest In Pixels dear Nesrne11001 and Nesnai, you have helped me love fashion even more. I'm very grateful to my past self for saving the introduction I'd added to my Nesrne11001-account since it really shows how much care and thought I put into these online persona's.

It's amazing how these games allowed for so much creativity. And to think I've only highlighted a small part of my online fashion ventures of more than ten years ago. For those aching to know a bit more about what fashionistas used to do on the web I highly recommend Li Speaks and Izzzyzzz on YouTube. Both of them cover other browsergames I used to play as well like GirlSense and the Avata Star Sue games. The reason why I wrote this post is because I'd found Dollz Mania on NeoCities, which is a tribute to The Doll Palace with links to working doll makers. They really sent me twenty years back to the past in the most pleasant way. It really made me hungry for more old web content. The Wayback Machine is now my best friend when surfing online looking for Web 1.0 content. I'm also going to try my hand at creating a personalized homepage on NeoCities: Rosiers Sauvages. This will definitely be a sideproject so don't expect anything new the coming months. Besides that I've started playing Everskies to scratch that itch Stardoll can't for now as I'm awaiting their response to my email asking what happened to my old account. I go by RosiersSauvages but I'm currently still starting out so my avatar doesn't look that great for now. With this post I also wanted to show that you can enjoy fashion without spending a cent on real clothes. These games are a way to express your creativity in a accessible way. Sure, you could spend money on different kinds of subscriptions but they aren't necessary to enjoy the game.

Thank you, and take care.