“It’s filling my heart to see this many dolls together,” my friend September told me at the event, decked out in a celestial, shimmery fishnet dress by Dion Lee, pink Crocs, and Serenade Aux Fraises, a light, refreshing scent not unlike strawberry shortcake.
“I didn’t know I needed this,” Ceyenne Doroshow said as “Got to Be Real” thundered in the background. “It’s what I needed, losing my sister, finding out what the next chapter of my life is gonna be.” A while back, Doroshow brought a few straight men to Fire Island so they could see how she was treated in gay and lesbian spaces. “They were horrified,” Doroshow told me, adding that to her, Doll Invasion is an attempt to make a difference.
The matriarch was carrying around a Balenciaga bag and wore a flowing, white dress pinned perfectly around her. “This is how you hold people,” Doroshow continued. “I think if we present ourselves well in the world, the younger people will see you in the right flair and they’ll see some of this is protection. It’s literally your shield in how people see you. Especially cis women. Then they ask, ‘Who did that? Where did you get that done?’”
When Lina Bradford started working on the island as the resident DJ, she “was the only situation.” She left after a 10-year-long stint in 2015, and was excited to come back for the Invasion. “I’m here for you, always,” she said as she kept spinning house hits. “I’m not done with you, but I just wanted to say that.”
