Behind Little Souls dolls is a social conscience

Noble Nick

In this story: Plight of Romanian orphanages Female entrepreneurship 'Artists of the possible' RELATED STORIES, SITES

By Eri Kim
Fashion Wire Daily

(Fashion Wire Daily) -- Not long ago, artisans Gretchen Wilson and Colleen Charlston had to find excuses for their occupation of dollmakers.

"People would hang up when they heard a woman saying that she's selling dolls," Charlston, 47, remembers, laughing. So for a while, the two women relied on terms like "folk art" to describe what they were producing.

But that was all before their Little Souls dolls became a favorite treasure for children and adults across the United States. And who could resist those enchanting dolls with huge feet, mismatched outfits, trippy hats and real, glued-on teacups?

Their popularity led to Wilson and Charlston's appearances on Oprah and CNN, and a celebrity following that includes Whitney Houston, Demi Moore and Susan Sarandon.

Founded in 1986, Little Souls now sells about 25,000 to 35,000 dolls a year (prices range from $40 for a sock doll to $600 for some collectors' items), and employs a staff of 28.

Little Red Riding Hood

This holiday season, Saks Fifth Avenue -- which has carried Little Souls' products since 1997 -- chose the company's whimsical toys for its holiday display in the Manhattan flagship store.

In addition to the dolls, Charlston has also written "One Enchanted Christmas," an illustrated book for children.

Plight of Romanian orphanages

Yet it isn't the heartwarming idea of two women making fancy dolls that landed Charlston and Wilson on "Oprah" or made Al Gore pick the company's factory near Philadelphia as a campaign stop this summer. What makes Little Souls different is its sense of social responsibility.

When the partners heard about the dreadful conditions of Romanian orphanages after the fall of the Ceausescu regime in 1989, they were determined to make a difference.

With the help of a designer who had family in the village of Ionesti, about 400 miles from Bucharest, they gathered 50 village women to make clothes for Little Souls' dolls and donated profits from the sales to Romania's orphans.

"It was the first time in their lives that these Romanian women earned money for their work," Wilson says. "And for us to be able to make that happen was amazing."

In the United States, the company's artisans work with central-city children, teaching them the art of dollmaking.

"We have a seven-foot tall, male African-American dollmaker who goes and talks to the kids," says Wilson, smiling. "It's very effective if somebody like him talks to them about issues like gender and race."

Limited Edition dolls

The artisans also show kids how to make accessories, like bags for the dolls, which Little Souls then buys from them. Other Little Souls works include cottage industry projects in Ghana, Guatemala, Armenia and Brazil, where Wilson travels twice a year to meet with street girls living in ghettos.

Female entrepreneurship

She teaches them her doll-making craft, hoping all along to spark a new light of female entrepreneurship.

"I am still nervous when I travel because it is fairly new to me," confesses Wilson, 55. "You know, I didn't grow up traveling around the world."

In the '60s, Wilson was barely out of her teens and a struggling mother of three children. Trying to save money on toys, she made sock dolls for her children. Her first sale was the doll her daughter was holding: she received $3 when a grocery store owner fell in love with it.

But it wasn't until Wilson met Charlston in 1979 (they were colleagues at Pottery Barn), that she decided to indulge in her lifelong passion of dollmaking. Bonding over similar life philosophies and the need to be creative, the two made dolls after work.

And one evening, Wilson's then-husband presented them with the math: Here's how many dolls they'd have to sell to make as much money as they earned from their day jobs. The women fearlessly took the plunge.

"We wanted to create an environment where we wanted to raise our children in, an environment of diversity and inclusion," Wilson says about her company's philosophical foundation.

Justina Sally

'Artists of the possible'

Illustrating that is a quote from Youssou N' Dour, written on the wall at Little Souls' workshop: "Life on this earth in our time is, above all, a parade of interdependent people, interdependent ideas, interdependent solutions. We are all artists of the possible and dreamers of that which is just now beyond our reach, but may not be tomorrow."

And "artists of the possible" is exactly what Wilson calls her employees, which include a former homeless man, Cambodian immigrants, a Nigerian refugee and women who were once stuck in dead-end jobs, but are now master-dollmakers at Little Souls.

The company's dolls come in various skin colors and eye-shapes so kids and adults of all ethnicities feel they can identify. But one thing they all have in common is a sense of humor.

"Some have a note in their bag. Some put spoons in their hair and money in their underwear," a grinning Wilson says. "Oh yes, our dolls can be very silly."

Copyright, Fashion Wire Daily 2000

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