12 Seasons of Barbie
A pink dress to represent your Barbie mood for every personal color season.
Disclaimer: Amazon certainly does carry more notable brands, shall we say? These are mostly not those, so proceed with a reasonable amount of caution. I put them here so that everybody could get a feel for a way of expressing a Barbie vibe, color-wise, for their season.
Why is Barbie a thing?
Barbie the movie is currently the highest-grossing domestic film release in the US for 2023 and has topped 575 million in the box office – so far. And why not, with its incredible directing, catchy sets and tunes, and female empowerment around every Barbie glitter corner.
If you like Barbie, pink, over-the-top girliness, or any part of the essence of Barbie core, then I think it’s fun to think about what sort of color from each palette you could wear to evoke that kind of feeling.
Barbie has probably worn every type of pink over the decades, but I thought a good starting point would be to reference the official, trademarked Barbie pink color.
Everything below (and other great items!) can be viewed on my Amazon Influencer Board.
NDU numbers are referenced below.
Update 11/30/2023: Amazon no longer allows embedded images, so they have been removed. The below image is there for a resource. Click to view all Barbie dresses mentioned below.
Barbie for Bright Spring
To my sensibility, the classic Barbie pink is a bright spring color. I think this dress really encapsulates the kind of bright spring pink that fits with what we think of as Barbie pink. On the NDU palettes the 6.6 color or maybe, even this 5.4 color seemed pretty on the mark as far as my personal concept of the official Barbie pink.
Barbie for Bright Winter
So for bright winter, it’s easy enough to just go with your classic bright winter fuchsia pink, close to NDU 6.5 or 6.6.
Certainly, I think every bright winter out there probably already owns something this color because it’s such a hallmark color for the season, and quite easy to find in stores, but I do think it’s a great fit.
Barbie for True Winter
True Winter’s versions of these fuchsia colors are just a little softer, cooler, and deeper than what we see for Bright Winter. This is a good comparison on that front where the bright winter one is a bit of a “whoa” pink and True Winters is a little more just… pink. NDU 7.4 is a good reference point.
Barbie for Dark Winter
Mostly, we don’t think of Barbie pink as being a terribly dark color. Dark Winter’s version of this color is one where we’ve got to be a little more selective.
NDU 5.5 is about what dark winter hot pink looks like. This one’s a little more coral than the other two Winter seasons. And dark winter’s hot pink kind of is, in addition to obviously being a little bit more of a muted version of that color.
Barbie for True Spring
This seemed pretty bang on the money Barbie to me. Add a matching lipstick and a little flicky eyeliner, and no one would question it as being Barbie. For True Spring, in particular, even the pinkest pinks are still coral. Still, they have enough of a pink quality to them to work here, especially versus some of the autumn versions of coral, which can come across more terra cotta.
Barbie for Light Spring
As soon as I saw this dress, I knew I had to choose it for Light Spring because it gave me a flashback to a Barbie I remembered from my childhood, which turned out to be 1984’s Peaches and Cream Barbie. This peach, which looks pretty close to NDU 6.3, is really just an absolute 80s Barbie cream puff of a color.
Barbie for Light Summer
When it comes to Light Summer, you could choose basically any pink that harmonizes with the season and come out with a Barbie effect.
For this exercise, I picked one similar to NDU 4.2, which I think is a really good iteration of the Barbie pink. A mid-tone pink that’s definitely more pink than it is coral, but a little bit on the warm side and I think that kind of thing is pretty classically Barbie.
Barbie for True Summer
What this season may lack in terms of brightness for creating a Barbie effect, so to speak, I feel you can make up for by choosing a fairly pastel pink that’s very much on the cool side. It makes things a bit more aggressively pink, and I thought that worked well for what we are going for. In, this context, it definitely reminds me of stuff my Barbies had in the 80s and 90s. You know, when I had Barbies.
Barbie for Soft Summer
All three summers are really loaded with pink, as we expect for cooler seasons. So there are plenty of things to choose from. I like the way that a really cool-toned pink, like NDU 5.3 has almost that hyper-girly effect to it. It reminds me of how little girls all like pink and purple and these colors are like the apex of pink and purple.
Barbie for Soft Autumn
Maybe this isn’t the pinkest thing ever, but the style of this dress with the color sold it to me. I thought the whole thing gave a little Malibu Barbie vibe because the mixture of the pink and the style of the dress felt like Barbie in her beachiest mode.
Barbie for True Autumn
True autumn is probably the season least known for its pinks. It’s definitely not going to be high on the list of what people think of when they’re coming into a true autumn palette. Autumn coloring seems to push even the barest hint of pink out of a color, and so we can play into that and take advantage of that against an autumn coloring to make colors that are maybe compared to other pinks, not quite as pink-looking come off that way.
Barbie for Dark Autumn
I decided to go with this color, close to NDU 13.1. When I drape Dark Autumns, I have a similar color to this in my drape set, which I find works the way that a hot pink would for another season. They do have some very hot coral reds that possibly could also do the job here, but these warm red-violets are the ones that always read as dark autumn’s version of hot pink. I know it might not look like that right here, but trust me when you see this on Dark Autumn, it just pops on them.
By the way, for anyone looking for color examples, there are always going to be pinks over at Christine Scaman’s Pinterest Boards. So always a great place to check out.
Not sure what your personal color season is? Check out my Personal Color Analysis service to find out.
Be sure to check out my blog for other great articles pertaining to your season.
The first picture is a white dress. Is this correct or did the wrong photo post?
Thanks!!
Thank you for letting us know! Looks like Amazon changed the product code. Should be fixed. You can also click this link to view the dress. 🙂
https://amzn.to/3Q7nXFK