Robert Tonner

Robert Tonner was born July 14, 1952 as a twin, to a working-class family in Bluffton, Indiana. As a child, Tonner turned to drawing and television as an escape from the difficult home-situation. He began his college career as a pre-med major, attending three different universities. However, in 1973 the struggling student abandoned his goal of becoming a surgeon and decided to pursue his true passion of becoming a fashion designer. That same year he would attend the Parsons School of Design in New York City.

In 1975, at the age of 23, Tonner was hired as the Personal Assistant to Don Sayres, a designer for Gamut, a sportswear company located in New York City. After three years with Gamut, Tonner accepted a position with fashion designer Bill Blass and was later asked to head the Blassport label. In 1983 Tonner launched his personal fashion label, "Robert Tonner for Tudor Square".

After leaving the fashion industry, Tonner joined the National Institute of American Doll Artists (NIADA). He served as Standards chairman from 1991 to 1995 and was later elected President of NIADA 1995, a post which he held until 1997.

Tonner launched Robert Tonner Doll Design in 1991 with his partner, Harris Safier. The first RTDD designs were introduced at the American International Toy Fair that same year. Backed by past connections within the NIADA and fashion design world, and the aggressive publicising by Tonner's partner Harris, RTDD saw exponential growth within the first few years. In 2000, RTDD was renamed Tonner Doll Company, Inc.

In 2006, Robert Tonner created the direct-marketing company Wilde Imagination, which built a collectible fashion doll design business based on his fictional character Ellowyne Wilde. Wilde Imagination continued to market direct to the consumer with new collections featuring Evangeline Ghastly and licensed pop-culture dolls based on The Wizard of Oz film.

Robert returned to the world of fashion design with the introduction of the Robert Tonner 2010 Spring Collection, which debuted on September 9th, 2009, at the Metropolitan Pavilion in New York City.

He has received national and international artistic awards and recognition including a permanent piece at The Louvre Museum of Decorative Arts in Paris. Today, he is missed by doll collectors and many of us wonder what he's doing now, but at the age of seventy one he has earned and deserves a happy life in retirement.