Bella is a story intimately linked to the Pyrénées-Orientales, like other emblematic companies in the department, Job cigarette paper or Cémoi and its marshmallow bears… If these last two companies still exist, even Although they have left the bosom of the families who created them, it has now been more than 35 years since Bella dolls left center stage.
“It is an important part of the industrial heritage of our department”, recalls Joan Nou, municipal councilor responsible for culture in the municipality of MILlas, also initiator of the exhibition which will be held from January 20 to Sunday January 23 in town hall. “The company employed more than 1,000 people. Almost all of us have someone in our families who has worked at Bella. »
The story of these dolls begins at the end of the Second World War. We are in 1946. Its great competitor, the Barbie doll, is not yet a dream, it will not be created until 1959. It is a couple, Salvi and Lucie Pi who is at the origin of the adventure and will help shape and modernize the same doll concept.
Eight thousand a day and number one in Europe
It was first made of tempered cardboard, then of plastic, then learned to sit, to speak… Over the years, the company filed patents, invented a revolutionary technique for implanting hair. And above all, she is dressed with care. In the 1950s, Bella became the European market leader. When the Tressy fashion doll comes out, 600 people work in the factory making the dolls and 150 making the clothes. In the 1970s, eight thousand dolls left Perpignan workshops every day. Before the fall in the face of competition, the cycle of sales and resales and the final closure following a final rescue in 1984.
In Perpignan, a small museum perpetuates the memory of this family and local industrial adventure. The sixty dolls that will be exhibited at Millas come from these collections and they will all be dressed in Catalan colors… “We had the idea for this exhibition for months, before the Covid, we are happy to be able to open it now to the public. . We are expecting a lot of people. We’ve had a lot of inquiries since we circulated the information because we all miss Bella here! »