In particular it's the ones with real working zips, albeit on a microscopic scale.

"They're a nightmare to put on, I have to use tweezers," she says.

An exhibition of about 586 dolls from Manley's collection at the Canberra Museum and Gallery showcases 15 years of her work, but she's left a few of the older, "decrepit" and naked dolls at home in her Ainslie studio.

Manley's real love is for fashion. She learnt to sew making outfits for the first fashion doll she received aged nine and took up the craft again when she began collecting seriously in 2000.

"You can make lots of mistakes and redo it and you only need a little bit of fabric," she says.

"It's really interesting to investigate how the dresses are put together … there's nothing like looking at an original pattern from an original dress to learn why the dress looks that way. The fabric has to be cut in a particular way and you have to choose the right fabric which kind of led me into an interest in movie costumes and how they're adopted for modern styles and tastes."

There are some famous faces among her collection; Cersei Lannister from Game of Thrones, Katniss Everdeen from The Hunger Games and Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra lendsome Hollywood glam alongside the gothic style of Morticia Addams and the highly recognisable Captain Jack Sparrow from Pirates of the Caribbean.

Unlike Barbie, the high-end ball-jointed dolls Manley buys from US fashion doll manufacturer Integrity Toys, and which make up the majority of the collection, are far more realistic.

"They're for collectors, not for kids. [Their outfits] are made like a real dress is made, with handbags made to work and shoes like runway shoes," she says. "The first thing I do is wash their hair and repaint them because they put a lot of product in their hair to glue it down.

"Most doll collectors are in their 50s; their kids have grown up and they're replacing their families."

Manley trained as a potter at art school and has a degree in art history. Her interest in how women are presented through different cultures fuels her collection.

About a third of the collection is dolls of the world in ethnic dress, a quarter is made up of characters from film and TV and historical outfits and couture make up the rest.

"Women are mostly dressed by men for men to impress," she says. "I think that's still the case today. Couture is about very wealthy men dressing their wives and mistresses."

When she started collecting in 2000, dolls with different ethnicities were just coming on to the market.

"Certain dolls lend themselves to certain types of costumes and there are certain faces which belong to particular historical times or look better in one thing or another," she says. "They're quite recognisable throughout history; there are certain archetypes of feminine beauty which are represented in art."

Fashion reflects the aspirational body type of the time, Manley says, and dolls from different eras are no exception.

The adult doll has a long history, Manley found in her research, with doll utensils found in Neolithic graves, whereas baby or child dolls didn't exist until about 1850 as children had always been dressed as mini adults.

By the time of the Renaissance, fashion dolls dressed in elaborate silks and jewels were a status symbol but children were unlikely to play with them, Manley says.

Before magazines, fashion dolls were used to communicate information on the latest fashion between European courts and during the 18th century during one of many wars between England and France, French fashion mannequins were the only thing allowed into England.

Manley works every day in her home studio and uses a jeweller's light and magnifying glass to paint the dolls' faces. Her patience paid off in the past when she won the Integrity Toys one-of-a-kind competition in 2011 for a Jean Paul Gaultier dress and later an award for repainting from special interest magazine Haute Doll.

"I'm not really interested in designing for manufactured dresses, it's kind of boring. I'm really more interested in how dresses work and the history of one-of-a-kind dresses."

She originally intended to sell commercial clothes and for a time she had a US agent who sold her creations, but it became too hard to give up her work.

She also dabbled in designing and dressmaking for humans, but decided the hard work wasn't worth it.

"I'm not really interested in the business side of it or selling, I'm really bad at it… so it [the collection] went on," she says.

So in a collection so large and varied does she have a favourite doll?

"I pretty much like the one I'm currently working on," she says with a laugh.

Fashion and Fantasy: 21st-century fashion dolls is on from Saturday, September 12 to Sunday, November 22 at the Canberra Museum and Gallery.

Julie Manley will give a talk on her collection and inspiration on Wednesday, September 23 from 1pm to 2pm.