Modern Fashion Doll Museum

The collection of fashion dolls has been gradually growing since 2009. In 2020, the total amount of items reached one thousand. We needed a separate room to store it. At that time, I (Natalia Taranova) learned that there was a similar museum in Orel, and through their page, I found the Association of Private Museums. After carefully studying the information provided by the Association, I decided to transform my own collection into a museum.

We started the registration procedure in the fall of 2020, and in early 2021 the museum opened to visitors.

The museum’s main goal is to demonstrate that fashion dolls are a multifaceted hobby suitable for any age. The overview tour will introduce you to the diversity of fashion dolls, tell about the invention of the Barbie doll and the further development of fashion dolls, and show the characteristic features of dolls from various manufacturers. The themed tour “Scandals, Intrigues, Investigations” is designed for adults only. It shows how the manufacturers of fashion dolls reacted to the public critic of their products. The themed tour “Fashion Doll as a Call to Creativity” is designed for families. It tells how to encourage creativity in children through playing with a fashion doll. The museum also regularly updates its temporary exhibition dedicated to seasonal holidays (New Year, Chinese New Year, Defender of the Fatherland Day, Women’s Day, Cosmonautics Day, Children’s Day, Russia Day, Family Day, etc.) and special events (such as the Olympic Games) displaying various selections of items from the museum’s collection. In the future, the museum plans to offer public lectures on the history of fashion, workshops on fashion design and creating a look based on a factory fashion doll, etc.

The permanent exhibition presents about 500 fashion dolls covering the period from the 1980s to the present. There are dolls from Russia, Belarus, the US, Japan, and China, including rare collectibles and mass-produced dolls that were never on sale in Russia.