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Describe your job in curating the exhibit at the Louvre Museum in Paris.

A 'Cumulus' member had approached me from a design school in London, the Ravensbourne College of Design & Communication. ('Cumulus' is the name of a community of a number of world class, European Art and Design institutions that operate a forum for the exchange of 'Ideas', student/teaching staff exchange, special projects and finance program between the schools and is based in Helsinki, Finland).

Their Fashion and Interior Design students were about to embark upon an international competition, (competing with other leading design schools in Paris and London) with Mattel France, to exhibit Lifestyle concepts using Barbie, in the year 2030 to be exhibited at the Louvre, Paris.

The brief was to place Barbie in a white cube housing an environment depicting the students' projected ideas on lifestyles of the future. Working with Barbie could be tricky for a spirited art student in that Mattel would not allow any concept that challenged the image and ethos of the Barbie brand. My role was to inform the students of those parameters.They found it took more skill and was infinitely more challenging to communicate their ideas within the limits of the Barbie brand by employing metaphor and a high level of craft,as well as working convincingly in scale rather than to create explicit pieces that shocked to get attention. I critiqued their proposals for the design of the environments and the fashions for the doll. I traveled to Paris with the 13 submissions and presented them to Mattel's marketing department. I styled and directed the photography for publicity, oversaw the placement of my students winning submissions in the exhibition space. The exhibition was televised and visited by members of French Government.

All of my students had their work accepted into the exhibition, a number were featured in French Elle magazine and went on to be exhibited in Korea.

Describe the mood boards you use in developing designs. Most collectors work from patterns or choose fabrics, and are not familiar with the merchandising aspect of development.

The purpose of the mood board created by the designer is to introduce your audience, who may be your CEO, the person to whom you report, Marketing, or a potential licensee. This is the first visual articulation of a concept, in some cases from the designer, in others, in response to the marketing department's brief. It is a sales tool for the designer to sell their idea, a tool to get approval to move to the next stage, the sketch, or the board may be pivotal in gaining a lucrative license for the company,say in the case of Elizabeth Taylor, or Todd Oldham.

On the other page is an example of a mood board I created for the proposed Andy Warhol doll for Mattel. I select photographs that give a sense of time (the 1960's) place (New York) the person (Painter whose studio was named 'The Factory' and spray painted silver) His studio was frequented by his many muses who I picture here. I emphasize actress Edie Sedgwick. I see using her image for the doll. I create the Warhol palette by overlaying colored film over their images. This adds a layering of information, using a selection of words. 'Your 15 minutes are up', a play on Warhol's famous slogan, is used as a cultural reference. On a board measuring 20"X 30", I aim to show, in one take, how I will work with the brief. On this occasion, this brief came straight from the CEO. At Executive Approval meetings, in industry, you may only count on a matter of seconds to get an idea through, so the more creative, striking and well crafted a mood board is, the higher your chance of success.

The mood board remains as your central point of reference while going through the processes of creating a doll. It can be so useful to re-visit your first gut reaction to a brief or idea to keep your design fresh and alive.

The process at Mattel is unique to doll companies. Describe the creative process in developing a new doll, such as the Elizabeth Taylor figure. In fact, a large part of the creative process at Mattel that I practiced was my own process or ÔmethodÕ that I brought with me. The Elizabeth Taylor doll was a groundbreaking project and there wasn't a precedent to rely on. Although my title was Staff