Barbara Krasner
The ABCs of a Preteen Fashion Designer
April 1969: Bunny comic book, No. 8
Across from an ad for 250 Magic Tricks. Bunny Ball, Fashion Model, chats on her princess phone—clothed in my creation. A halter dress with a gray belt and neck straps. I am eleven. A published fashion designer.
Barbara Millicent Roberts
On one of our family Saturday night jaunts to Korvette’s book and record department, I ask my father to buy me Barbie’s Fashion Success, in which Barbara Millicent Roberts of Willows, Wisconsin, tackles an assignment as a swimwear design intern in California. The book becomes my bible. After all, I am Barbara, too.
Crayola 64
In the winter of 1968, on another Saturday night, I take the Crayola box out of one of the playroom drawers. I chose silver and bronze. See lightbox.
Daydream
I dream design. I can see a silhouette in my mind’s eye. I envision my own line of clothes one day. Labels with my own name. It all starts with Bunny Ball.
Esmeralda
Bunny Ball’s nemesis. I don’t want to create any designs for her. On the comic book page of my fashion design, she takes a pair of scissors to Bunny’s phone cord. Maybe it’s Esmeralda’s mismatched ruffled midriff shirt and striped pants that causes her distress.
Fab Fashion
If I could draw, I could create a whole line of fantabulous fashions for Bunny Ball. Maybe for my own Barbie, like Grandma Ruth makes for her, knitted dresses with fur collars. But I want my designs to be mod. For now, that means borrowing rather than drawing shapes.
Groovy
A Bunny Ball leitmotif. See also ultra-groovy.
Honey
Bunny’s pigtail-wearing little sister, who has her own adventures and zroovish fashion designs like a granny gown. Think Barbie’s sister, Skipper.
Imagination
Bunny offers so many opportunities to engage the imagination: Submit fashion designs. Write an ending to a story and win a contest. Join the Bunny Ball In-Crowd Club. Tell Bunny how much you love her. But then, Bunny is a figment of imagination, too.
Jealousy
My own version of Esmeralda, my twin sister, shares a bedroom and a closet. We have many of the same dresses, or the same styles in different colors. Our mother says, “They’re both very nice,” when we show her our artwork. My sister rips apart my craft projects. She says I threw something at her nose, and that’s why she has a bump. I don’t remember that.
Krasner’s Korner
Enter my uncle’s toy store. Turn right at the cash register. Turn left into the far aisle. There, on the left. All those pink and purple cardboard boxes piled high. All those outfits and accessories for Barbie. One day, my design could be displayed behind that plastic overlay.
Lightbox
From my uncle’s store, I choose my tool of the trade: a Barbie electronic drawing kit that includes a lightbox, tracing paper, and fashion template stencils. Just plug it in. I spend hours creating designs and coloring them with Venus Paradise pencils or my trusty Crayola crayons from Ronson’s Five-and-Ten.
Metallics
When I trace my design for Bunny, I choose bronze for the dress and silver for the belt. I don’t think about its transfer to the page as gray and brown. Still, even with dull colors, see phantasmogoric.
Nets
Fishnets, that is, those net-like stockings I wear with my white Hullabaloo boots. Bunny often sports fishnets. This is one way for her to catch the fellow she likes, William Wordfellow.
Outasite
Bunny’s air balloon stickered with Paris, London, Rome—places I’d like to visit someday. Poofy daisies of all colors. The adjective used by the Soular System rock group to describe themselves as they float in their air balloon alongside Bunny and William.
Phantasmogoric
A reader from Australia uses this word in her fan letter. Bunny replies, I didn’t know that they said things like phantasmogoric all the way in Australia. But I guess they do, and that’s phantasmogoric.
Queen of the In-Crowd
Bunny Ball’s moniker. Yes, I want to outfit fashion royalty.
Readers Write
Your comics are the grooviest! writes Book Lover in Maine. Your comics are the wildest thing on earth, gushes New Friend in Ohio. And to Esmeralda: I think you’re a little stupid sometimes, but I still like you, admits Loyal Fan in New York.
Sumptuous Splendor
The editors of Bunny Ball caption my fashion design, Bunny’s Sumptuous Splendor. My twin finds it first while reading Issue 8 in the bathtub. She screams. See jealousy.
Twin
Born four minutes apart, my sister and I make up songs, “ice skate” on the kitchen counter we cover with Ivory Snow flakes, toddle on the windowsill until our mother installs iron bars. But we’re no Frick and Frack. The difference between us is obvious in her drawings of magic carpets and mine of hippopotami.
Ultra-Groovy
Beyond mere groovy and not to be confused with Esmeralda’s ultra-zoovy slacks set. Enter the Finish-the Story Contest Now! insist Bunny Ball’s editors. Readers, finish the story, make it ultra-groovy, and send it to us. We’ll announce the winners in an upcoming issue. I’d rather design for Bunny than write about Esmeralda.
Verona
My father stops and parks the car outside a shop in Verona. The smoke shop: his name for it. The candy and comic bookstore: my name for it. I comb the racks to buy Archie and all manner of Harvey Comics—Bunny Ball, of course, Stumbo the Giant, Casper the Friendly Ghost, Hot Stuff the Little Devil, Wendy the Good Little Witch, and Richie Rich, the Poor Little Rich Boy. My sister and I coordinated our selections. At home, we each read our pile and then swap.
Wild
Bunny’s fashions have to be bold and wild. Otherwise, Bunny (and her editors) won’t choose them. Use wacky colors. The wilder the better and that applies to cars, boats, and planes, too. See outasite.
X
In the playroom, I cross out a design that I trace badly or choose colors that make no sense. I shouldn’t care, my sister says, because Bunny wears a red dress with blue stockings.
Yvoorg
A bastardization of Groovy, obviously. Get an Yvoorg Bunny Ball “In” Club Membership Card! My sister and I use this word in conversation like “That scarf is so yvoorg!” and then laugh like crazy.
Zillion
Of a zillion designs submitted to Bunny, she (or her editors) chose mine.
Barbara Krasner holds an MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her work has been featured in more than seventy literary journals, including nonfiction in The Journal of Expressive Writing, Collateral, South 85, The Manifest Station, and Vassar Review. A multiple Pushcart Prize nominee, she lives and teaches in New Jersey.
