(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."
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The Käthe Kruse company, best known for their lovely and very lifelike dolls, actually manufactured store mannequins up to the 1960s, specializing not surprisingly in child figures, though there were also a few adult women. These mannequins are absolutely lovely, lifesize Kruse dolls. And extremely valuable, should you happen to come across one.
ReplyDeleteRenate, my own department store mannequin, is a standard late 1980s polyester model, however.
I don't think I like the bald, hairless mannequins. Takes away from the creativity and mystery and shows us....nothing interesting.
ReplyDeleteI don't like hairless mannequins either, except as villains in [i]Doctor Who[/i].
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