by Greta Gerwig Barbie production used so much pink paint to bring the fantasy world to life that it actually led to a shortage of the color.
In a recent interview with Architectural abstractPublished online Tuesday, the director shared how Barbie Land took shape and who helped create the iconic pink set design in the highly anticipated film.
“Maintaining the kid-ness was paramount,” she said of the film, which stars Margot Robbie as Mattel’s iconic fashion doll and Ryan Gosling as Ken. “I wanted the pink tones to be really bright and everything to be almost too much.”
Gerwig also noted that it was important to “remember why I loved Barbie when I was a little girl.” So then she decided to enlist production designer Sarah Greenwood and get set decorator Katie Spencer up for the challenge.
Greenwood told the magazine that in order to help “make Barbie real through this unreal world,” they took inspiration from Palm Springs’ mid-century modernism.
That’s what the production designer told earlier IndieWire that “pink became the film’s thesis”, and that when it came to finding the perfect pink, “handling the painters and mixing the right colors was epic.”
But because of construction, Greenwood said ADVERTISEMENT that there was ultimately an international shortage of the fluorescent tint of Rosco paint. She added, “The world… ran out of pink.”
Overall, Gerwig said her goal was “to capture what was so ridiculously fun about the Dreamhouses” in the film, which will hit theaters July 21.
