Rock’s witchiest woman, Stevie Nicks, just got her own spellbound Barbie
A chiffon swirling, top hat tilted just so, tambourine at her side — now lives in eleven and a half inches of vinyl and lace. Fleetwood Mac frontwoman Stevie Nicks has turned her myth into a Barbie doll, and somehow, it’s still alive.
When Mattel’s new Bella Donna Barbie dropped this October, it wasn’t just another collectable. Inspired by Nicks’ 1981 solo debut Bella Donna, the doll captures her in flowing white chiffon, slouchy boots, and that sky-high hat — a mirror image of the woman who once walked away from Fleetwood Mac to find her own voice. “The first Barbie is all in her black,” Nicks told People. “When I did the Bella Donna cover, I said, ‘No. I have to wear all white.”
It’s the opposite of mourning. The release lands at a moment when women over 70, Nicks, Joni Mitchell, Patti Smith, and Cher are no longer treated as cultural relics. Since Greta Gerwig’s Barbie rewired the conversation about female icons, this “Barbiefication” of rock feels like a logical next act: Women rewriting their own mythology in miniature.
For Nicks, the dolls are autobiography made tangible. Her first Barbie, inspired by the song Rumours, was all witchy black — the Fleetwood Mac years. This new one, the Bella Donna Barbie, is light incarnate. “They’re a story of my whole musical life,” she says. “If I have a legacy, if I have ‘What do I leave behind that is sacred?’ I think that’d be Barbie.”
Even rock historians agree. Pop culture analyst Rob Sheffield once wrote that Nicks is “the only rock star who could turn chiffon into chain mail,” a woman who’s turned vulnerability into armour. The doll doubles down on that — soft fabric as a statement of endurance.
On Instagram, the singer called her second Barbie “an homage to the Bella Donna era, the album that launched my solo career.” Fans promptly sent it viral, many joking that the “white-winged dove finally got her wings.” Within 24 hours, it sold out.
Critics see this as more than a nostalgic cash-grab. “She’s playing with image as legacy,” noted music writer Will Schube. “It’s a full-circle moment for a woman who’s always controlled her own myth — now she literally owns it in plastic.”
That control feels particularly poignant after a rough year — wildfire evacuations, a fractured shoulder, postponed shows. “It’s the only good thing since I broke my shoulder,” she laughed. But she’s touring again, performing Bella Donna tracks alongside Fleetwood Mac classics. “There’s a lot of music,” she said. “It’s all fallen into place exactly the way the spirits meant it to.”
The doll is a totem. Nicks keeps both Barbies in her studio while working on new music, calling them her “alive, amazing puppets.” She even plans a photo book devoted to them.
