LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Dionna Douglas holds a doll's head in her left hand, a needle in her right, carefully threading strands of hair through the plastic pores.
"What kid doesn't dream of being able to play with toys when they grow up?" Douglas said.
Like many people, Dionna Douglas grew up playing with dolls, especially Barbie dolls, the blonde hair, blue-eyed dolls that are one of the most recognizable toys in the world.
"Barbie's always been like a representation of what's cool, what's beautiful, what's fashionable," she said.
It wasn't until she had a stepdaughter of her own that Douglas realized there was something missing from the toy store shelves.
"Back then there really wasn't any natural hair dolls," she said. "There wasn't dolls with afros or braids or dreadlocks and stuff like that."
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So, Douglas decided to do something about that. She admits that while she has always been crafty and enjoys DIY projects, learning to make dolls was a brand new venture for her, filled with many mistakes and lessons at first.
Her first doll was for her niece. Douglas outfitted the doll with the same blue top and black tutu her niece had wore to a Taylor Swift concert where she was invited to meet the pop star, immortalizing a special moment for the young girl. She said after the first doll, word took off and the requests started pouring in.
"People started asking me like, 'Hey, I see that you make over dolls. Could you make a doll that looks like my daughter?'" she said. "Maybe there's something here - there's a need for little African-American girls and women to have dolls that actually represent them."
Douglas said the majority of her clients are black women and girls, many frustrated with the lack of dolls that have hair similar to theirs.
Doll maker strives for representation
"Afros, dreadlocks, braids, stuff like that," she said.
Douglas founded Kimani Dolls in 2015 and has made hundreds of dolls over the last five years, each one customized to the client. She said she has received orders from around the globe and from some big names, including rappy Remy Ma and the hosts of the talk show "Sister Circle," which featured her dolls in May 2019.
While people used to strive to meet Barbie's beauty standards, Douglas is trying to turn that concept on its head, making her dolls meet the beauty standards set by her clients, no matter what they look like.
"This is all about you," she said. "You're fashionable. You're beautiful. You're perfect just the way you are."
For more information about Kimani Dolls, check out her website.
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