It all started fewer than 10 years ago when Passant Said was visiting her grandmother one day and learned that her grandmother’s sewing machine was being passed on to her. At the time, Said already had a high-profile government job. However, she was also rethinking her career and wanting to see a shift or even a new beginning.
“I was always a doll collector… and I was always interested in fashion. I even did a short training course on fashion design and sewing,” Said recalled. When she received her grandmother’s sewing machine, the idea of making dolls clicked with her.
Following some thorough research, Said knew that she did not want to make fashion dolls. This was not just because there were plenty of them already out there for all categories and tastes.
Instead, it was because Said did not think that a doll of her own making should be about fashion. “I wanted either a traditional doll that would be compatible with our Egyptian identity or a cultural doll that would be inspired by our very rich history,” she said.
Moreover, Said was not keen on plastic dolls because what she was after was dolls made of fabric and mostly natural or recycled material. This, she argued, would be more compatible with the notion that a doll is there to be hugged.
Despite the success of hand-made crochet dolls in the Egyptian market, Said was more in favour of a sewed doll as this was a technique that would allow her to produce a cultural doll and not just a pretty one.
A doll, she said, is more than just a stuffed toy for a little girl. Instead, it is one that leaves the girl with particular impressions or memories. Said’s plan was to produce history-inspired cultural dolls that should appeal to girls and boys alike.
Said produced her first doll in 2015. “I did not like it at all,” she recalled. Following several more goes, in 2016 she created her very first traditional doll and one she liked. It was the beginning of a project that has since evolved and diversified to allow for the production of traditional dolls that bear an Egyptian identity including from rural areas and pharaonic times.
In 2017, Said established PAF Dolls, her own company.
At first, she worked on creating a set of dolls “each with a different style from within the rich basket of Egyptian history.” Then she started to become more commercial. When she received an order for 30 dolls from a client for the birthday of her daughter, Said thought that her project was going to pick up fast. However, the client did not pick up the dolls, and Said did not receive any calls.
She is still not sure whether this was due to a change of plans or a reconsideration on the part of the client about whether her daughter and her friends would like the cultural dolls.
However, Said was not surprised that her dolls made a slow start in the marketplace. It was expected, she argued, because the fashion of pretty dolls still appeals to general taste. She knew that it would not take a short while to convince people to rethink their taste in dolls and of course also to get children to change their taste about what a doll is supposed to be.
She was aware, too, that it would take serious promotional work to get the word across on any new project, especially on one trying to push the line on established cultural norms, including one as profound as the need for every doll to be modelled on a pretty girl.
Said worked on professional photoshoots of her dolls and opted for a professional social media promotional campaign.
However, progress was slow, so she then decided to expand by creating printed bags, notebooks, and mugs with themes matching her cultural dolls. This helped a little, and the puzzles, bags, and mugs were a success.
“It is important when one creates a start-up to know how to run the business and not just how to create the products,” Said said. “It is also important to learn which are the right doors to knock on.”
Said decided that her Pharaonic-inspired cultural dolls needed to find a way onto the shelves of souvenir shops or the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir Square or the Luxor Museum in Upper Egypt, because though not every Egyptian girl or boy might be interested in a stuffed toy replicating the kings and queens of ancient Egypt, a foreign child might very well like to pick up one of the dolls in memory of a trip to Egypt.
Almost five years after she registered her company, Said is still committed to her core theme of cultural dolls. She knows that it would be a lot more profitable to go for cartoon characters or fashion dolls, but she is not prepared to switch paths.
She has faith that her project to create cultural dolls inspired by Egyptian history will eventually work, and that it is just a matter of time before it does so. It will be just “a few more years” before the average Egyptian girl will want to have a soft doll in the shape of a woman from Sinai or Nubia or from the Delta or Upper Egypt rather than one of the current fashion dolls, Said concluded.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 14 September, 2023 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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