- Barbie and Joanna Gaines, co-founder and co-owner of Magnolia, have teamed up for a new collaboration.
- The Joanna Gaines Barbie Doll is wears a graphic t-shirt with Gaines's birth year on it, flare jeans, and a pair of green-and-pink roller skates.
- In addition, the Barbie x Hearth & Hand with Magnolia Townhouse is a three-story play set with tons of unique details, like a fireplace and hanging chair.
When you think of the home designs of Joanna Gaines, the co-owner and co-founder of Magnolia, the screaming neon pink of Barbieland might not immediately come to mind. But Barbie and Gaines have teamed up for a new collab, and when you see it, it feels like a perfect match.
Of course, it helps that Gaines is a Barbie fan. "I can still picture my sisters and me sitting on the floor of our bedroom and the hours we’d spend playing with Barbie as little girls," she tells Good Housekeeping. "We had the dolls and accessories, and of course, the pink-and-white dollhouse."
Now, Gaines gets to see herself transformed into her Barbie form, but with true-to-herself touches, like a flared jeans and green-and-pink roller skates. "It was important to me that everything felt authentic to who I am now, but also who I was when I first fell in love with the world of Barbie," she says.
"Roller skating was my favorite thing to do as a little girl, and even now in my late 40s this is something I still do often," she adds. "Whether I’m at the office or at the farm you will always find my roller skates close by, so including a pair of green and pink retro skates just felt like a fun way to nod to my playful side and to the 1970s, which is the decade I was born into." The shirt her Barbie wears even has 1978, the year she was born, emblazoned on the front.
But their team-up doesn't just end at the doll. They're also debuting a three-story townhouse play set.
The townhouse has a living room, kitchen, bedroom, and bathroom, plus a roofdeck and—my favorite—an elevator that can take dolls between the three floors. But more than the spaces, it's the details that make it special. "I knew early on that I wanted to figure out a way to put people in the designer’s seat, so to speak, and create a townhouse that they could really make their own," Gaines says. "So, we designed a collection of removable stickers that function as a styling toolkit—everything from potted plants and home decor to kitchen essentials. This way, people can tap into their own well of creativity and personal feeling of home as they build out these spaces."
The '70s details present in the shirt and roller skates carries through in the townhouse, with its retro record player and swing chair. "One of the first things we did when we started the design process was track down as many dollhouses we could that Barbie had distributed in the late-'70s, then we pulled them apart and studied every detail," she says. "That’s why you’ll see elements borrowed from that time period, including the mid-century breezeblock on the exterior and the pink-and-white color palette. From there, we layered in details that define me today, like my love of cozy spaces and baking at the kitchen island."
The whole thing gives Gaines a freedom that her day job can't always afford. "In real life, I’m constantly having to balance my design plan with reality, meaning budgets and timelines and permits," she says. "Here, there were no constraints—no plumbing lines, no building codes, no practical limitations—which meant I really got to let my imagination and creativity run wild."
Both the Barbie Joanna Gaines Doll and Barbie Hearth & Hand with Magnolia Townhouse are available for pre-order on Target.com and then on December 7 they'll be fully available in Target and on Target.com. Beginning on October 23, they'll also be available at Magnolia’s shops in Waco, Texas.
Marisa (she/her) has covered all things parenting, from the postpartum period through the empty nest, for Good Housekeeping since 2018; previously, she wrote about parents and families at Parents and Working Mother. She lives with her toy-collecting husband and daughter in Brooklyn, where she can be found helping out her team at bar trivia or posting about movies on Twitter and Bluesky.
