CEBU CITY, Philippines— A Cebuano collector brought his love for dolls to a totally different level by transforming these ordinary figures into beauty queens.
Vai Cochise Babiera, 29, said that he loves transforming things that he would touch into something more beautiful.
“I love replicating stuff like this in a doll scale esp. pageant looks, fashion and the like. When I saw this beautiful winning national costume in Miss Universe 2019, I was like OMG!!! I immediately told my mom ‘I want to make something like this in a 1:6 Scale Ma!,” said Babiera, a sales coordinator from Barangay Kinasang-an Pardo in Cebu City.
Babiera said that he started dressing up dolls to transform these into famous beauty queens in 2015.
And just recently, while under home quarantine, Babiera, started to work on the nationalistic transformation of one of his collections. He started to dress up one of his dolls to make it look like beauty queen Gazini Ganados when she was wearing her national costume in the Miss Universe 2019 pageant.
“This is my first time to make something like this, the national costume. I started doing it this month and just finished the whole look last Sunday,” he said.
According to Babiera, transforming dolls is not as easy as it looks.
“Getting the details right! mao gyud na. Kay doll man gud siya nya kasagaran baligya na material kay pang life-size baya so mag struggle jud ka to find something na mo fit sa doll aron swak gyud hehe proportional siya ba,” he said.
(Getting the details right is the biggest challenge. Most of the available materials are for life-size figures and since you are trying to dress up a doll, you need to work on something that is proportional to the doll’s figure.)
But he did not mind the hard work.
Barbiera said he is always determined to get his work done.
Let’s take a look at some of Barbiera’s doll creations:
Babiera’s Gazini Ganados doll wearing the beauty queen’s national costume entry during the Miss Universe 2019 pageant. Ganados won the best in national costume award for wearing the creation of Cebuano couturier Cary Santiago.
A closer look at some Babiera’s Gazini Ganados doll.
Miss Universe 2015 Pia Wurtzbach.
Miss Universe 2018 Catriona Gray in her sultry lava gown.
