Why KiSS?

Dress-up is important

Whether it's KiSS, Adobe Flash dollmakers, Barbie, or Bratz, dress-up dolls are important.

Playing dress-up is an exploration of how you can tell a story by presenting yourself in certain way.

For very young children, they may not have the ability to choose clothes for themselves yet, but they can dress their dolls however they like.

But dress-up fantasies aren't just for little kids.

Fashion is a BIG DEAL. Consider:

• poor people who can't afford to experiment or take risks buying clothes
• people with bodies that are too big or too small for mainstream fashion
• goths/punks/hipsters who are shy and are scared to draw attention to themselves by wearing the clothes they would like
• people who others perceive as being the "wrong" gender for whatever clothes they'd like to wear
• people who live in communities where they might face physical danger for wearing what they'd like to wear

Playing dress-up can provide an outlet for a lot of frustrations.

Further, because of all these tensions, it's a great artistic opportunity.

What makes KiSS special?

Several things distinguish KiSS from dress-up games and dollmakers. The most important is that KiSS is a format, not a single doll. Many young girls have played with apps like "Barbie Fashionistas" -- but could those girls then draw their own outfits for Barbie from scratch, add them to the doll, and share them with their friends? Could they take Barbies others had uploaded and build their own dolls around different characters? Very few dress-up apps have this flexibility. But KiSS does.

The "Set" in Kisaeke Set System comes from the ability for dolls to have multiple "sets" of clothing. Artists often used this to tells stories about the characters they were dressing up. Set 1 could be Spring, set 2 Summer, set 3 Fall... The sets could follow a rock star's rise from poverty or fame, or tragic goth kid's descent into madness.

KiSS has it's own scripting language to create fun and useful effects. Artists often coded menus for changing hair or makeup. The dolls themselves might react to a player's actions. Clicking on a specific wardrobe item might lead the dolls to "speak" about the significance of that item. "I made that dress out of a concert t-shirt!," she might say.

One of my favorite things about my generation of KiSS artists, mostly teenage girls, was how dolls often reacted to players trying to remove underwear with a fierce "quit touching me!". Sometimes older artists would poke fun at this sort of thing as being "prudish" but, looking back, it was a way for girls to strongly assert that we should have control over our own bodies.