Shortage of Pink Paint

Ahead of the premiere of Greta Gerwig’s Barbie movie on July 21, it seems like the whole world turned pink. Since pictures of Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling dressed in full Barbie gear emerged on our timelines last summer, Barbiecore became one of the main trends in the current zeitgeist, dominating everything from fashion runways to viral makeup hackst and DIY projects.

Of course, a big part of the trend takes inspiration from the trademark hot pink shade we associate with the iconic Mattel doll, which Gerwig used and abused for the sets of the film — so much so that they caused an actual international shortage.

Architectural Digest recently published an entire feature highlighting the fuchsia sets of the Barbie movie, getting all the intel from Gerwig herself as well as production designer Sarah Greenwood and set decorator Katie Spencer.

For the movie, the team created a three-story home for Barbie at the Warner Bros. Studios lot in Leavesden, just outside London. (Yes, that’s also where the Harry Potter film saga was filmed.) For Gerwig, translating toy-like qualities to the set was paramount — it’s what she calls “authentic artificiality” — and, thus, everything had to feel like you could almost touch it. That’s why the skies were hand-painted instead of CGI, and that’s also why the pinks were the pinkest they could be, which meant gallons and gallons of paint needed to be used. In fact, all of the gallons available needed to be used.

“I wanted the pinks to be very bright, and everything to be almost too much,” Gerwig shared, which Greenwood notes resulted in an international shortage of the specific pink paint used for the set. “The world ran out of pink,” Greenwood confessed to AD with a laugh. (They used Rosco fluorescent paint, in case you were wondering).

After a year of memes and anticipation, promotion for Barbie is now in full swing, and it won’t be long until we see how exactly the paint was put to good use. In the meantime, you can get a tease by watching the new trailer below: