The Paris Boutique Origins and Bleuette Legacy (1992)
The concept for this landmark art doll was born in May 1992 in Paris, France. At the time, the world-renowned artists and fashion designer BillyBoy* and Lala lived and worked in the heart of Paris, where he operated his celebrated, ultra-exclusive designer boutique and atelier in 6 Rue de la Paix, Paris.
It was within this Parisian storefront that all of his avant-garde doll creations were originally showcased and sold directly to elite international style collectors.
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The creation of La Petite Fille Modèle (PFM) doll served as a conscious, purely artistic counter-statement to the mass-market commercial fashion dolls of the era, as well as a childlike alternative to BillyBoy*’s own anatomically defined, high-fashion adult art dolls such as Mdvanii Doll.
The doll's development occurred simultaneously while BillyBoy* was editing his monumental, hundreds-of-pages-long historical encyclopedia on the classic French La Semaine de Suzette magazine doll, Bleuette (1905–1960)—a scholarly masterpiece book Bleuette, la petite fille modèle de la collection BillyBoy (Maeght Éditeur 1993) revered globally in the doll community as the "Gutenberg Bible of Bleuette."
La Petite Fille Modèle was carefully created to echo the delicate scale and nostalgic charm of Bleuette without being a direct modern reproduction. The title "Modèle" carries a dual artistic meaning: her innate ability to wear haute couture garments flawlessly like a high-fashion model, and her personification of the ideal, well-bred young girl featured in the classic 19th-century educational tales written by La Comtesse de Ségur.
The initial first-edition run of exactly 50 dolls was introduced exclusively to the Japanese market in May 1992 through Sumiko Watanabe Japan (SW JAPAN), achieving instant legendary status and selling out immediately to eager connoisseurs (later in 2004 there was another limited collection of PFM dolls released with some exciting alterations).
It was only many years later that BillyBoy* and his partner closed their Paris boutique and relocated their primary residence and working archives to their current estate and atelier in Switzerland.
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