Allison Hoffman’s tagline sums it up well: “I make weird stuff out of yarn. Anything pop culture goes.” In fact, it would be fair to say that Allison Hoffman’s career as a crochet designer is fueled by pop culture. She recreates celebrities as yarn dolls and fairly often those celebrities find their doll likenesses to be charming enough to share in a public way.
Back in 2007 Allison was a mom of two young boys, both of whom who were fans of the kid’s television show, Yo Gabba Gabba. As a gift she crocheted them a doll of one of the characters on the show and posted a photo of it online. Demand for the pattern led her to open a Ravelry store and she’s never looked back.
In 2010 a Conan O’Brien doll Allison crocheted went viral online when Perez Hilton and Entertainment Weekly blogged about it. From there, Allison was hooked on making dolls in the likeness of her favorite celebrities. It’s become her signature product. Looking through her photos you’ll see Allison’s dolls in the hands of Pee Wee Herman, Questlove, Richard Simmons, Martha Stewart and more.
Allison is clearly a talented crochet artist. She’s the author of AmiguruME: Make Cute Crochet People and has designed patterns for Lion Brand and Caron yarns and for Michaels. I figured there must be more to her story, though. It’s not every crochet designer that’s given a doll to Mayim Bialik and Jimmy Kimmel, right?
When I first emailed Allison about this post her response was, “I have been kind of ‘in the right place at the right time’ for the most part, and just really pushy.” In a nutshell, this is her approach to getting noticed.
“I usually make things that are ‘hot’ on Twitter and Instagram,” Allison explains. “An example is Guardians of the Galaxy. I went to see it and was literally planning out the dolls in my head while I was sitting in the theater. I thought Groot and Rocket Raccoon would be so fun to make. They got some online attention coinciding with the movie being so popular.”
“Being really pushy mainly means that I just do a lot of tagging and mentions when I make a certain doll and I know that person is active on social media. Then my followers share the pictures which means that person might be more likely to actually see it. I am not tweeting celebrities 20 times, more like once or twice, at the most, because I would rather the person just happen to see it than be annoyingly mentioning and tweeting all day at celebrities.”
“I’ve been fortunate that a lot of celebrities have liked my work and have told their friends and family about me. Most of my work now comes from word of mouth and people directly contacting me to get a doll. This is what happened with Joe Jonas, Josh Groban, Jorge Garcia, Jimmy Kimmel, Richard Simmons, Mayim Bialik, and Angela Kinsey. Really the only dolls I’ve sent unsolicited was a big orange ‘Conan’ blimp to Conan O’Brien and then several dolls from my book, AmiguruME, to celebrities that were in the book (Ellen, Willie Nelson, David Letterman, etc). I got several responses that way, either direct emails from the celebrities, or posts from them on Facebook, and I just feel like each little contact like that just gives me more ‘street cred.'”
“The most exciting thing that has come from giving celebrities dolls is being asked to make them as gifts. For instance, I made a doll of Questlove from The Roots because I was going to a Roots concert and knew someone who worked at the venue where they were performing. I was able to give Questlove the doll and that led to a working relationship in that I’ve made him many (MANY) dolls to give to friends and am working on another large order for him to give another well-known celebrity for Christmas this year.”
“I truly do not try to bombard a celebrity with a doll. Some people are into it, some people just don’t seem to care, but I can kind of pick up on that and haven’t really made dolls for people who don’t seem in touch with their fans or have much of an online presence. If I make a doll of someone and don’t hear anything from that person, I don’t really mind. I’m flattered when they like them, but in the end it is a form of fan art and it’s for the fans, like me!”
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I love Allison’s approach. Build slowly. Keep an ear towards what’s happening right now. Be pushy, but not too pushy. And, most of all, make a great product that people will recommend to their friends. Even their celebrity friends.
This topic is funny because I just saw on thief and bandit’s instagram over the weekend that they had sent a box of clothes to the Kardashians a couple years ago, and one of the dresses had shown up in a recent episode. I wondered, though, if people watching would make the effort to figure out who made the dress that they liked.
Great article! I love love love the challenge of recreating celebrities and characters but I am always concerned with copyright, in particular with selling someones likeness or character design.
I would be interested to know others thoughts and if Allison has had any issues with this.
I really don’t like to follow trends that much it’s not so fun when everyone is doing the same thing but I guess it’s how you put your signature spin on it, like you did Abby with your adorable taxidermy creatures 🙂
thanks for always being on top of it and sharing varied mix of makers and trends 🙂
I have the same question as Emily above. How can it possibly be legal to sell a pattern to create an item under copywrite protection? I understand a person can create a “one-of” art piece, but there are people on etsy selling patterns to make Despicable Me characters and others. And even if it is legal, I would feel weird selling someone’s likeness without their explicit permission.