Lisa Vossler Smith holds up a Barbie that’s straight out of Mad Men. A lithe blonde sporting a limoncello-colored hostess suit and a bouffant, the doll looks like the desert’s quintessential midcentury entertainer.
“She was one of the first vintage dolls that I started photographing,” says Smith, better known about town as the CEO of  Modernism Week. “She’s from 1969 or 1970. She is a Walk Lively Barbie, and she’s in great condition. I bought her on eBay, but she’s one of my faves.”
This Barbie features heavily in Tiny Palm Springs, Smith’s Instagram account that documents the fictionalized lives of Barbies living, loving, and socializing in Greater Palm Springs. Her collection of dolls numbers 200 and counting.
The endeavor has allowed Smith, who was raised in the Coachella Valley from a young age, to embody her creative passions: photography, architecture, Barbies, and miniatures.
Lisa Vossler Smith poses with her collection.
“I was anonymous for the first five years of Tiny Palm Springs,” she says. “After the pandemic, I started owning my creativity and stepping into myself. I’m finally owning the fact that I really enjoy spending time in this creative place.”
The account has made a big wave in the Barbie community. The National Barbie Doll Collectors Convention (an annual event that is “sold out, with a very long waiting list,” according to the website) takes place July 30–Aug. 3 at the JW Marriott Desert Springs Resort & Spa in Palm Desert. Smith is one of four individuals invited by the chairman to speak at the convention. Her talk,  “The Real Dream Houses of  Palm Springs,” nods to the 60th anniversary of the Barbie Dreamhouse while also toasting Modernism Week’s 20th in February 2025. The topics are naturally aligned; Barbie has always had a fondness for Southern California — the Barbie movie even featured a hand-painted backdrop of  the San Jacinto Mountains.
Smith relates. “Celebrating the beauty of Palm Springs is something that comes naturally to me,” she says. “Palm Springs is the secret sauce behind everything I do.”
Her journey to the heart of the Palm Springs aesthetic had unlikely beginnings. Smith was born in Oklahoma City. When she was 10, she and her mother decamped for Palm Springs to be closer to her grandfather, Hall of  Fame PGA golfer Ernie Vossler. Ernie was instrumental in developing La Quinta Resort & Club, and Smith and her mother went to work at the hotel as soon as they arrived.
Her years at La Quinta would prove formative.
“My life became somewhat enchanted,” Smith says. “The movie stars and the lifestyle that came along with that … I grew up kind of like Eloise in that hotel.”
This desert-inspired diorama created by Lisa Vossler Smith features a collection of  1958 midcentury modern doll furniture made by Mattel before the 1959 release of Barbie and stars a 1962 flocked-hair Ken doll.
Celebrities like Johnny Carson, Willie Nelson, and Marlon Brando were soon part of her every day. Frank Capra lived with his wife on the property and became Smith’s close friend. The most glamorous couple to glide through the property, she reports, was Don Johnson and Melanie Griffith. “They were both so beautiful to look at.”
At the same time, desert modernism was making an enormous impression on her developing sensibilities. “I could tell that our flat-roof style, desert stone, and use of glass and other materials was different from everywhere else,” she says. “I remember being enamored with the stark white concrete buildings against palm trees and cacti, and the swimming pools and vintage cabanas. I was taken with the Palm Springs aesthetic even as a very young child.”
It was a particularly poignant contrast from Oklahoma City.
After graduating from the University of California, Irvine, with a degree in urban planning, she returned to the Coachella Valley in 2000, landing a position as an event producer for Palm Springs Art Museum. She worked there for eight years before joining the team at Modernism Week.
Around that time, she began to experiment with photography. A photo-a-day project on Facebook led to taking pictures of vintage dolls in vintage clothing, which she’d held onto from childhood. She soon realized she could merge her passions by posing the dolls in front of  beloved local buildings.
“It felt like the convergence of my favorite things,” she says. “Modern architecture, Barbies, and photography. It was all coming into play.”
These vintage 1960s Barbies are part of Smith’s collection of 200 Barbie and Ken dolls.
Smith posted her first picture on Tiny Palm Springs in March 2016. Soon, she was crafting elaborate storylines involving Barbie and her friends, who shop on El Paseo, drink from tiny Starbucks cups, and party at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, sometimes wearing impeccable replications of  designer threads — Chanel suits, Tiffany diamonds, Louis Vuitton handbags. Some of those outfits are sourced online, and some are handmade by Smith’s mother-in-law.
Storylines range from irreverent and playful to steamy; Smith doesn’t shy away from intimate moments between Barbies and Kens or Kens and Kens.
Soon after the convention ends, Smith will begin preparations for Modernism Week October, which takes place Oct. 24–27 and offers a sneak peek of the main event: 11 days in February full of  house tours, desert history, design showcases, and fabulous parties that even Barbie enjoys.
Some pieces in Smith’s colorful collection of clothing were handmade by her mother-in-law.
In years past, Smith’s miniature characters have acted as Modernism Week tour guides for her Instagram audience while the event is underway. They provide facts about historic homes, such as the Kaufmann Desert House and Frank Sinatra’s Twin Palms estate. In addition to shedding light on her beloved city, Smith hopes her account will inspire others to follow their passion.
“If  I could tell anyone, as a friend,” she urges, “find it sooner than later. It’s hard to make  time  for  a  hobby,  but having  alone time and something  to escape the real world, let your mind drift, not have a deadline or a boss … whether it’s gardening, cooking, all of  it counts. I would encourage anyone to find their joy in a creative space.”
