« Excerpts from an Interview with Robert Tonner at Figures.com | Main | Bisque Dolls Information »
February 19, 2008
Fashion Clothes Activities for Girls of All Ages!
from: The New York Times
Dress-up for Dollars
by Rob Walker
Stardoll
This is a game that girls have played for centuries: it’s about standing in front of the mirror and dreaming about being a princess, a rock star or the cool girl next door.” Mattias Miksche is on the phone from Sweden, making a fair point. But like a lot of things that have been done for centuries, identity play is a little different now, and Miksche’s company, Stardoll, is a good example of a 21st-century version.
The Stockholm company’s product is, for instance, digital and transnational. Its variations on paper dolls and dress-up games help attract 7.8 million unique visitors a month to a Web site that is published in 15 languages and combines elements of a social network and a virtual world.
The majority of visitors are girls — average age 13.8 — who spend between two and two and a half hours a month there. Another contemporary difference is that Stardoll is backed by venture capital and is battling a range of competitors all seeking to capture, and monetize, the attention of young fans. These range from Cartoon Doll Emporium to Club Penguin, Webkinz to Habbo.
At Stardoll.com, you will find a long list of celebrity names: Brad Pitt, Heidi Klum, Amy Winehouse, Paris Hilton’s dog. Click on a name to get a digital paper-doll version; nearby is a rack of outfits you can click and drag to dress the celebrity as you please. Younger users (up to age 12 or so) generally stick to this solitary pastime, possibly showing off their dress-up results to a sibling, or to Mom. But you also find many appeals to get more involved: join the millions who have registered and signed up for a free account, and you can create a MeDoll — a digital paper doll rendering of yourself, or of whatever self you’re interested in expressing. Chat with new online friends, join or form a club (there are more than 360,000) and expand your audience from Mom to users in Tennessee, Britain and Israel. It’s the 13-and-over part of the audience that generally takes the plunge.
Posted by fashiondoll at February 19, 2008 03:24 AM