Lakmē Fashion Week x FDCI 2026 began in Delhi inside a giant pink Barbie box. Live Barbies stood in boxes across the space, and before the first look had even walked, the room already felt like a dollhouse come to life. Opening the season was Péro, and Aneeth Arora’s Spring Summer 2027 collection, Dream Dress-Up, turned her Mattel collaboration into a show that felt part toy shelf, part rock gig and part craft archive.
Then rock music kicked in with live musicians, and the Barbies came to life, stepping out of their boxes to meet more walking in from backstage. It was exactly the idea Arora had described to us. “Every box is meant to be opened. It’s about freedom of expression. There’s no set way of dressing up,” she says.
The collaboration began somewhere personal. Arora grew up with three Barbies, one of them in a sari, and she had to earn the first few. “My mom said, you have to earn it. Do well in your exams. That’s how I got my first few Barbies,” she reminisces. When Mattel approached Péro, a year after Hello Kitty, she did stop to ask whether Barbie was a match. “There are a lot of stereotypical thoughts around Barbie, that it’s always pink and it’s only about beauty, with high beauty standards,” she admits. What settled it was the approach. “It was like a kid who opens a Barbie’s box and dresses her up the way they want, and plays with the toy the way they want,” she explains. And the starting point was the wardrobe. “The thing that stands out about Barbie is her very extensive wardrobe,” Arora says.
The first look went back to 1959 and the black and white swimsuit Barbie, and a few outfits riffed on it. Then came the eras and the characters: Skater Barbie with Skater Ken, Princess Barbie, Punk Barbie. Arora had expected a sea of pink, so the starting point was a relief. “When we started researching, we realised the first one is only black and white. There was no risk of any colour overpowering another, because black and white balances out all the other colours beautifully,” she shares.
The clothes carried Péro’s hand throughout. Jackets came heavy with appliqué, trench coats had painterly prints, and retro prints shared looks with a mix of textiles. The jersey was deliberate. “Barbie started in 1959, so it was almost entering the retro era in the 1970s, and there was a lot of jersey at that time. So we worked with a lot of stretchable material like flatbed knits and jerseys,” Arora explains. The stripes and checks came straight from Barbie’s own wardrobe, reworked by Péro and woven in different parts of India, with the black and white stripes also appearing block printed and hand knitted. The new Péro Intimates line, in light khadi and European lace, started the wardrobe from what sits closest to the skin.
Accessories went full childhood: bow bags, silicone plastic-style shoes, beaded nostalgia jewellery, eyeglass cases with Barbie details and the iconic B turning up everywhere. It was fitting that all of this happened on the opening night, a slot FDCI and Lakmē give each season to a designer pushing craft and creativity forward. Péro also opened the Delhi edition in 2024 with Hello Kitty. Barbie has gone from one swimsuit to every skin tone, hair type, body type and profession, and Arora dressed for that audience, the artist, the doctor, the lawyer. On this runway, there was something for everyone.