Stevie Nicks stands under an image of her new Barbie doll during a concert at New York City’s Madison Square Garden. (Jamie McCarthy/ Getty Images for ABA)
This Barbie is known for her bewitching voice and sense of style, particularly her love of shawls. She’s topped charts for decades, both as a band member and a solo artist. And she’s the first woman to have been inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of fame twice.
Yep, she’s Stevie Nicks.
The Fleetwood Mac singer is the latest icon to have her likeness celebrated in doll form as part of Mattel’s Barbie series of famous musicians, along with Tina Turner, Gloria Estefan, David Bowie and Elvis Presley. It will be officially released in November.
Mattel says it designed the doll in honor of Nicks’ 75th birthday, which was in May. It was inspired by her outfit on the cover of the 1977 album Rumours.
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The doll has recognizable blond bangs and smoky eye shadow, wears a flowy-sleeved black dress, platform boots and moon-shaped pendant and holds a tambourine cascading with ribbons.
Nicks is known for her flared, fringed all-black ensembles, a look she’s been honing since the 1970s. She told USA Today that after her first Fleetwood Mac tour she contacted a designer, Margi Kent, and drew her a stick figure wearing a handkerchief skirt and platform boots.
“I said to her, ‘Margi, I want to wear this when I’m 60 because I know I’ll be on stage when I’m 60,’ even though I’d been in Fleetwood Mac all of eight months, and she said, ‘OK,’ and I went back in a week and by the time we did Rumours I had my beautiful black outfit,” Nicks recalled.
More than a dozen albums, tours and Grammy nominations later, that ever-iconic ensemble is now immortalized in Barbie form.
Nicks said in a tweet that she was overwhelmed when Mattel first approached her with the idea of a Rumours Barbie: “Would she look like me? Would she have my spirit? Would she have my heart?” The final product, she said, absolutely does.
“When I look at her, I see my 27 year old self~ All the memories of walking out on a big stage in that black outfit and those gorgeous boots come rushing back~ and then I see myself now in her face,” Nicks wrote. “What we have been through since 1975~ the battles we have fought, the lessons we have learned~ together. I am her and she is me.”
Nicks — who just extended her current North America tour into next year — officially introduced “Stevie Barbie” on stage at New York’s Madison Square Garden on Sunday night.
“I hope you all love her as much as I do,” she said, holding up the figurine as the crowd cheered.
And it seems people do. The $55 doll sold out on Mattel’s website within hours of its preorder release on Monday, and quickly emerged on resale markets at almost twice the price.
For Nicks, the ’70s-era doll represents a lifetime of memories
Nicks — in her signature black outfit and flowing sleeves — performs with Fleetwood Mac in May 1977. (Michael Ochs Archives/ Getty Images)
Nicks, a longtime baby doll collector, played an active role in designing her Barbie.
She told TODAY that after Mattel contacted her in March, she sent them her original Rumours dress, straight from the vault. Instead of the ballet shoes she wore on the cover, she sent them a pair of suede boots, but didn’t expect to see them on the doll because “that would be way too hard.”
“If you can copy these boots with a little, teeny tiny platform, you can get it,” she recalls telling the company.
When Mattel sent back the prototype a few months later, Nicks said, she couldn’t stop staring at the boots: “I was like, ‘Oh my God, these are real.’”
She did have a few suggestions, like making the doll’s teeth visible and eye shadow higher. The second version came back in June.
“I opened her up and I went, ‘She’s just perfect,’ ” Nicks told USA Today. “This little Barbie is so precious and they helped her have my soul. If nobody else in the world got her but me, I’d almost be OK with that.”
Nicks says the doll is meaningful because it’s not just a collectible, but a collection of all her life’s experiences.
She compared it to a dream catcher, telling People, “she catches all the memories and dreams, holds them in her hands and shows them to you.”
“I see everything in her,” she added. “When I look at her, it’s like she’s my whole life from beginning to now.”
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