The Daily Mall Reader: Mannequins of the '70s

A daily dose of mall-related reading...

"And Now, The Group"

TIME Magazine - Monday, Jan. 14, 1974

(Excerpt) The first distinctive changes were cautious: fluttering, real-life lashes and movable glass eyes. Later, as the times grew more daring, belly buttons appeared between skimpy bikini halves; dimpled knees and smooth, fleshy thighs flashed below microminis; nipples poked through braless blouses. Even mannequins, it seems, keep up with the times.

Last week a window of Manhattan's R.H. Macy's displayed the latest trend in store dummies: "groupings." There, apparently engaged in conversation, was a trio of plastic, stylized males with featureless faces and bald heads. Such clusters of interacting mannequins, now on display at many major department stores, often waltz, golf, and even play baseball, as silent spectators look on at the fence. "The old mannequins with their screwed-on heads and half-witted expressions are gone," says Norman Glazer, national sales manager for Wolf & Vine, a Los Angeles mannequin manufacturer. "They were real dummies, no better than hangers with heads."

Read the full article here.