In My Obsession, one creative person reveals their most prized collection.
After the Spectrum, a D.I.Y. nightclub in Brooklyn, was evicted from its underground venue in 2016, one of its co-founders, the performance artist and nightlife impresario Gage Spex, sought out a new site. Later that year, Spex leased a banquet hall in Ridgewood, Queens, that had oversize chandeliers and walls padded in kitschy diamond patterns and gave it a title befitting its carnivalesque interiors: the Dreamhouse.
The name of that space, which closed in 2019, was taken from the brightly colored plastic or cardboard homes that Mattel sold for Barbie dolls, which Spex, 40, began collecting as a child growing up in western Massachusetts. Spex recalls constructing “fantasy worlds” for the toys in their bedroom: “gigantic, sprawling houses that were like mansions and nightclubs, ironically.” These days, their collection of over 200 dolls — including their first Barbie, a parental reward for potty training — is arranged like a shrine on pink shelves in their Bushwick apartment. In adulthood, Spex, who has recently thrown parties at Judson Memorial Church in Greenwich Village dedicated to the living dolls of our world (“doll” is often used as a slang term for a transgender person), has developed a new perspective on their hobby. “I love the symbol of dolls being any kind of woman,” they say. “You can be whatever you want.”
The collection: “It started off with me going to flea markets with my parents, who were antiques collectors. I grew up in a house that was basically a house museum from Victorian times.”
Number of pieces in the collection: Over 200 dolls, plus accessories.
Recent purchase: “I bargained with a woman at Brimfield [the flea market in Massachusetts] to get a number of different mod outfits from the ’60s and one brunette flip hair doll. I’ve always wanted these outfits, but they’re hard to find. They’re an iridescent, reflective blue kind of mylar.”
Least expensive: “I recently got a doll for $10. Her name is Walking Jamie. She’s a red-haired doll from the ’70s.”
Most precious: “I have these Julia dolls that I really love. They were based on Diahann Carroll’s character on the TV show ‘Julia’ in the late ’60s. It was one of [Mattel’s] early celebrity dolls, and one of the first dolls that wasn’t white. I was adopted as a baby from Colombia, so, when I came back to collecting Barbies later in life, I [thought] understanding the importance of the P.O.C. doll universe was the most important thing.”
One that was damaged: “A lot of the ones I have are actually kind of broken. That’s part of the collection: getting dolls for a discount and then fixing their hair or their ears. My friends joke about [my apartment] being like a doll spa because sometimes they’re just around the kitchen in a bubble bath.”
One obtained through unorthodox methods: “My parents found this doll at a dump in Maine. It’s a brunette ponytail doll [from the ’60s]. Those ponytail dolls are very expensive; they’re some of the oldest Barbies that exist. The fact that they found it in the trash is amazing.”
This interview has been edited and condensed.
Photo assistant: Rich Soriero
