Hi everyone! I'm Ekaterina from St.-Petersburg. I'm into doll hobby for more than 5 years. I own and maintain DollPlanet and its communities, Blythemania the first Russian
community dedicated to Blythe dolls, and several smaller projects. I work in a collectible doll and teddy bear shop in SPb, support international doll shows in Moscow and St.-Petersburg, write articles about dolls for different offline Russian magazines, take part in organizing personal exhibitions of doll artists....... But the Russian doll culture and doll market are very young so often I have to do something else to make a living :D

People say that childhood impressions are the strongest. The dolls is USSR lacked colors, detalisation and quality, and we had no adult dolls at all. So when the first Barbie dolls were imported to Russia in the early 1990s, it was a total craze, it was like a neutron bomb explosion. My Mom brought me my first genuine Barbie in 1993 from Moscow, this was a Moonlight Magic doll, and I'm so grateful to my parents that they understood my passion for Barbie and bought me the doll of my dream! (A Barbie doll in a post-Soviet Russia cost an average salary of an average Moscow/SPb citizen).

Fashion dolls still are my favourites, though I like OOAK dolls by many artists as well. The only dolls that I keep buying regularly are Barbies (mostly from the early 90s, the dolls from my childhood, and their friends). It doesn't matter if the doll is "highly collectible" or not - the main thing is the emotion that you get from having this very doll. Most of my dolls are NRFB (again, a childhood dream of living in a doll shop full of sealed dolls :D).

Beside the dolls, it is the art nouveau epoch in Russia that makes me happy. I am a photohunter for rare stained glass windows and decorations from the houses built in early 1900s, I collect antique postcards and adore decadence literature of this time period.