Thirty-two-year-old Yvette Caro Ilyazi has turned her childhood love of porcelain dolls into a brand that combines art and play. Caroline Handmade creates soft, glamorous dolls that bring joy and delight. In this interview, Yvette reveals her creative path and explains how she creates a symbiosis with art through psychology and marketing. Through the conversation, we learn how her creations are born, what emotions inspire them, and how she manages to maintain the artistic authenticity of her brand.
Read how she uses her knowledge and talent to build the Caroline Handmade brand and in what direction she plans to develop it.
- How did your story begin, what inspired you to create handmade dolls with such a glamorous aesthetic?
Once, as a child, I received a porcelain doll as a gift. I was very happy for her, she was beautiful, majestic, but our friendship ended quickly because I broke her leg while playing. Since then, every porcelain doll I received has adorned shelves high in my childhood room, but I did not play with them for fear of breaking them. Now I regret that I allowed fear to prevent me from enjoying playing with dolls in my childhood. That is why I created the Caroline soft dolls. They are made entirely of textile materials and although they are glamorous and inspired by porcelain dolls, they are intended for play.
- Can you describe your creative process to us, from choosing materials to adding the elegant final details?
The creation of each doll begins in the creative chaos in my head. Sometimes I am inspired by the material itself with a special pattern. Sometimes it is a new color of wool for making hair that will be my guide for the design of the entire doll. But most often the inspiration is some inner feeling I have at the moment while working on the doll.
The practical part begins with cutting and sewing the doll's body. The character is hand-embroidered, and then the hair is sewn and added. The biggest challenge is dressing the doll and finding the right details – butterflies, pearls, hair accessories and the ballet flats that come at the end.
- How long have you been making these kinds of handmade crafts and how much is your profession tied to what you do?
Caroline Handmade will celebrate 5 years this summer since the first doll found its place under the sun. It started as my creative outlet while I was on maternity leave without a job, and it grows with me every day. I graduated in psychology, but I was never lucky enough to work professionally because during my studies I fell in love with writing and started working in marketing. Now I use that experience of almost 10 years to weave my own and the dolls' story. But the truth is that the background of creating dolls, for me, has a psychological thread. Psychology has been using doll play for years as a tool for children to more easily express their feelings, to tell how their day went, and to develop better communication. There is research that emphasizes that doll play also encourages the development of empathy in children, a feeling that is increasingly lacking in the younger generations.
My hope is that through puppet play, we will be able to create more empathetic generations and that we will get closer to children to develop healthy communication. So, maybe from time to time, it's not a bad idea to replace phone games with puppet games. Maybe we can all learn something.
- How do you manage to maintain the artistic quality of your dolls while also meeting your customers' demands?
My technical skills in creation have advanced greatly from the beginning to today, so I finish some things much faster today than in the past. But I take the time I need to make the doll, so that it is perfect. Customers understand, appreciate and know that. That is why many come back again and again with a new order and that makes me very happy.
- Which of your creations do you consider to be your greatest personal success?
I couldn't single out a specific doll and say, this one is my greatest success. But it's so nice to my heart when clients don't doubt my choices, they like my aesthetic and they trust that the end result will be a phenomenal, fully-fledged doll. That feeling is priceless to me.
- Many of your dolls seem to have unique personalities. How do you bring individuality and character to each of your creations?
This is probably my story, and every story has its own characters. It's fascinating how each doll gets its own background, character, individuality, and it's a process that I can't describe how it happens. Sometimes the doll reflects the girl it was intended for. Sometimes it's the girl I imagined would like that doll. This is an enigma for me too, but it works.
- When you think about the future, where do you see your brand?
I have a few plans, but I have many dreams. I dream of more interactive dolls, workshops for creating dolls from start to finish, puppet shows, costumes for girls who want to look like Caroline dolls, picture books. For now, I am working on the realization of a corner where the dolls will be exhibited and anyone who wants to can come see them, choose them and even play with them.
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