Louvenia “Kitty” Black Perkins is a fashion designer who spent most of her career designing Barbie doll clothing. She is also highly regarded for designing the first Black Barbie (previous Black dolls were Barbie’s friends, not the lady herself). Perkins was born in Spartanburg, South Carolina during the late 1940s and she graduated from Carver High School in 1967. Then she moved to California to study at the Los Angeles Trade Technical College.

After earning a degree in fashion design in ’71, she spent six years working in the fashion industry before joining Mattel. Perkins, who had never owned a Barbie doll before, studied the toy and her talent soon propelled her to principal designer for Barbie in ’78.

She spent over 25 years as the Chief Designer of Fashions and Doll Concepts on Mattel’s Barbie line. In her first decade of work, Perkins designed over 100 Barbie outfits per year, producing over one fifth of the doll’s clothing designs. Her work included designing the first Black Barbie in 1980, the Shani and Friends line of Black dolls, the Holiday Barbie (in 1988, ’89, ’90, and ’96), the Fashion Savvy Barbie in ’97, and the Brandy doll in ’99.

Perkins won the Doll of the Year award, she was a Woman of the Year honoree of the National Counsel of Negro Women, and in 2001 Mattel donated one of her Barbie designs to the South Carolina State Museum. In 2025 Perkins and her protégé Bill Greening worked together on the design and release of the 45th Anniversary Kitty Black Perkins Barbie doll.