Fashion dolls collector Fadime Geleş, 53, is an art historian and a museology expert. Since her teenage years, she has been interested in art and culture and also has a bachelor`s degree in art history. At first, she started with small collections; books, postcards, letters and photographs. During her master's degree, where she studied art history, she visited various museums in Germany, the Netherlands and France and she became interested in museology. For the past 23 years she has been working in museums, but her interest in dolls dates back to her early 30s. She started with collecting Ottoman-era toys. Later, her small collection got bigger with rare dolls. Geleş has the only international doll collection in Turkey, which she has been developing for the past 20 years. When her friends started to notice her devotion to fashion dolls, they would bring dolls to her from all over the world.Sometimes she attended auctions; sometimes she gathered rag dolls, wooden, porcelain and plastic dolls at flea markets. Dolls from France to Morocco, India to Italy, and the United States to Japan take place in her collection. She has included folkloric, toy and fashion dolls into her collection over the years and she describes her journey as a search into the world of dolls. "As I started studying different dolls from different countries, I realized that toys have different characteristics. With each new doll, I started learning something new. For example, there is a difference between an Asian doll and a European doll, which you can tell from the facial expression, hair and clothes; all offering something about that country," Geleş continued and added that dolls tell the history of women in each continent and we can gain information about the economy, culture and belief system in each country. According to Geleş, dolls from each region in Turkey are also different.She has included 100-year old rare dolls she found at European flea markets in her collection and even though she could find all the dolls she searched for, what fascinated her most was the fashion (model) dolls. When she talks about fashion dolls' history, her knowledge about them is fascinating. "At first fashion dolls were sent by tailors from the French queen to give other imperial women an idea about the clothing in French palaces in the late 14th century. Tailors and fashion houses from the 17th century to the 20th century dressed the fashion tolls from France to Italy and sent them to the aristocrats, palaces and mansions. They showed new fabrics and models on these dolls and took orders accordingly. These dolls were wearing the most high fashion clothes of the times," Geleş further said.These fashion dolls were mostly made of porcelain and represented that time's fashion and also hairstyles. Porcelain and bisque dolls were produced from the mid-19th century to the 1930s and most of them have made it until today.Geleş also has stamps, historical exhibition catalogs, old photos and documents about the dolls. Praised as one of the top 100 collectors in Istanbul, Geleş's dream is to open the first international doll museum of Turkey as she notes that there aren't any museums in Turkey that reflect the international history of dolls, and her collection is the only one that tells the story of dolls from Asia to Europe and America to Anatolia. "My biggest dream is to open a doll museum in Turkey," Geleş said.

A short history of dolls

- Dolls with bodies have been made of wood, clay, wax, fabric, porcelain and bisque for centuries.

- With industrial developments, instead of hand-made dolls, mass produced dolls were manufactured.

- Beginning from the late 19th century, fashion dolls dominated the industry. These dolls were made to represent ladies, and they were dressed in exquisite, elaborate reproductions of current fashions. Most of these dolls were made in France.

- The first plastic dolls were introduced in 1947.

- After the 1960s, a revolution took place in the doll industry; during that period dolls that could sing or had washable hair were produced.

- The American toy-company Mattel introduced Barbie in 1959, and it was followed by similar fashion dolls intended as children's toys.

- Today, fashion dolls are generally made of vinyl or plastic. 3D software versions have also appeared.