premierludwig
Registered Guest
For all you mannequin lovers, there's an exhibition of them in Brighton... which has caused the creation of a *fabulous* write up on mannequins in The Guardian that you just have to read. I never realised mannequins were so intricately connected with culture, fashion, women's roles in society and all sorts of things.
love, moons and starrs,
Senti.*
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A century of the shop-window mannequin is celebrated by a new exhibition in Brighton. Jess Cartner-Morley charts the rise of the 'idealised' woman
Thursday April 21, 2005
The Guardian
In Manhattan in 1936, Cynthia was something of a celebrity. On the arm of the sculptor Lester Gaba, she attended the opera in the best box, and was seen at every upscale, uptown soiree. She was showered with invitations to all the chicest parties. Couturiers sent her clothes, Cartier and Tiffany loaned jewellery. But Cynthia was not your average It girl. She was a plaster mannequin, and Gaba, her creator, had fallen in love with her.
As the tale of Cynthia shows, society has had a strange relationship with the mannequin, or shop dummy, ever since it first appeared a century ago in the then new department stores of Paris. Suzanne Plumb, the organiser of a new exhibition in Brighton which explores the meaning and history of dolls, traces the root of our unease to the fact that "any representation of the human form is unnerving and strange". With mannequins - life-size, fashionably-dressed women - there is another layer of unease, which stems from notions about the perfect woman as mute, beautiful and obliging. These ideas are ancient: they can be traced back to Greek myth and Pygmalion, a sculptor with an aversion to real women, who created a life like ivory woman whom he had brought to life, and married.
For a century, mannequins have served as a reflection - albeit one at once distorted, idealised, sexualised and commercialised - of the women on the other side of the shop window. (It is probably not a coincidence that it was around the time of Cynthia, and the arrival of the upmarket mannequin, that the word "doll" came into common usage in America as an endearment.) Jackie Lewis, researcher for the Brighton exhibition, has written of how the mannequin first appeared during the period when women in cities such as Paris and London were becoming increasingly visible in the world outside the home. Representing both an idealised and a despised version of womanhood - dressed as a lady, in the most exquisite and expensive outfits, but at the same time as flamboyant and unchaperoned as a streetwalker - the mannequin reflected unease about women's changing role in society.
Physically, the mannequin as mirror has become increasingly convincing, with ever more sophisticated construction techniques. The initial wax models, which had a tendency to melt under shop lights, were replaced by plaster of Paris, and eventually by fibreglass; joints and suppleness were added. At the same time, while mannequins have begun to look increasingly like real women, many real women in the spotlight of fashion have begun to look more and more like mannequins. In magazines, airbrushing now gives live skin the impossible smoothness of fibreglass; on the catwalk and on the red carpet, silicone and collagen have blurred the division between a real body and a sculpted one.
There has always been something of the night about the mannequin. In the 1938 surrealist exhibition in Paris, André Masson displayed a mannequin with her head imprisoned in a birdcage, her mouth masked; a year later, André Breton and Marcel Duchamp collaborated on the design for the window of the Gotham Book Mart, which included a headless mannequin reading. Despite their stiff, cold bodies, mannequins have always had an erotic charge. When a video of Michael Jackson's Neverland ranch was shown at his trial last month, it was the life-size child mannequins that drew the most comment, with few newspapers neglecting to mention that one was dressed in a Boy scout uniform.
As a reflection of the ideal woman - which as Plumb points out "is what they need to be, to sell clothes" - the history of the mannequin charts the fluctuating ideals in body shape. Just as Barbie's feet are frozen on tiptoe, as if in invisible high heels, Victorian dolls had the extreme hourglass figure created by a corset; in the 1950s, mannequins had wider hips than those of a decade earlier, the better to show off the new, fuller silhouette. In the 1970s, the appearance of sheer blouses led to mannequins being given nipples for the first time; in the 1990s, the trend for minimalism was starkly reflected in a vogue for headless mannequins. (Sometimes, however, even in fashion, practical con siderations ruled. The advent of plaster, which was more difficult to model into facial features than wax, influenced the trend for abstract, blank faces in the 1920s and 1930s; after the second world war, a shortage of materials led to mannequins being made with shorter legs.)
But it was the fashion revolution of the 1960s that brought about the most significant shake-up in the mannequin industry. Realising that the austere, aristocratic mannequins imported from Paris looked quite wrong in Mary Quant and Biba, Adel Rootstein began to manufacture mannequins in London, using Twiggy and Patti Boyd as her first models. The new, more relaxed look was an instant hit, and Rootstein's company remains at the forefront of mannequin design today, 13 years after the death of its founder. At the height of the Wonderbra phenomenon, Rootstein brought out a new range of dummies with a bust modelled on a 34B Wonderbra; those stores that could not afford the price tag (a top Rootstein mannequin can cost £800) sent their existing mannequins to be surgically enhanced with the newly fashionable cleavage line.
Among upscale stores, Rootstein's most popular model of recent years has been a mannequin based on the whippet-thin, angular Erin O'Connor (both the Erin O'Connor and Twiggy mannequins are included in the Brighton exhibition). Their newest line is based on another British catwalk model, Jade Parfitt, and comes in a variety of poses. This, says Rootstein's creative director Kevin Arpino, is a response to fashion. Whereas very structured clothes hang best off a simply posed mannequin, "the floaty, 'boho' clothes that are around now really need mannequins with a bit of movement, to bring them to life in the shop window, otherwise they just hang there". The new range has been snapped up by Zara, and can be seen in its windows from next month.
In America, the newly glamorous status of the ample bottom, as championed by Jennifer Lopez and Beyoncé, has begun to be reflected in shop windows. Department stores including Saks in New York have placed substantial orders for a new mannequin dubbed the "Goddess", which has measurements of 34B-25-35 (a UK size 10), as opposed to the more usual "runway ideal" (32A-23-33, a UK size 6-8). Ralph Pucci, the manufacturer behind the Goddess, attributes its success to popular culture, and specifically an endless succession of hip hop music videos featuring scantily clad, voluptuous women. The Goddess is especially popular in lingerie departments, where it has proved very successful in persuading customers, both women and men, to spend money.
At Rootstein, Arpino agrees that the overarching trend is for "a more womanly, more fleshy, less bony" look. But he does not expect to see many orders for shapes above a size 10. "People want to identify with model looks. They like to live that dream. That's fashion."
• Guys 'n' Dolls: Art, Science, Fashion and Relationships is at the Brighton Museum and Art Gallery from April 23 to June 12.
love, moons and starrs,
Senti.*
- - - - - - - - - - - - - -
A century of the shop-window mannequin is celebrated by a new exhibition in Brighton. Jess Cartner-Morley charts the rise of the 'idealised' woman
Thursday April 21, 2005
The Guardian
In Manhattan in 1936, Cynthia was something of a celebrity. On the arm of the sculptor Lester Gaba, she attended the opera in the best box, and was seen at every upscale, uptown soiree. She was showered with invitations to all the chicest parties. Couturiers sent her clothes, Cartier and Tiffany loaned jewellery. But Cynthia was not your average It girl. She was a plaster mannequin, and Gaba, her creator, had fallen in love with her.
As the tale of Cynthia shows, society has had a strange relationship with the mannequin, or shop dummy, ever since it first appeared a century ago in the then new department stores of Paris. Suzanne Plumb, the organiser of a new exhibition in Brighton which explores the meaning and history of dolls, traces the root of our unease to the fact that "any representation of the human form is unnerving and strange". With mannequins - life-size, fashionably-dressed women - there is another layer of unease, which stems from notions about the perfect woman as mute, beautiful and obliging. These ideas are ancient: they can be traced back to Greek myth and Pygmalion, a sculptor with an aversion to real women, who created a life like ivory woman whom he had brought to life, and married.
For a century, mannequins have served as a reflection - albeit one at once distorted, idealised, sexualised and commercialised - of the women on the other side of the shop window. (It is probably not a coincidence that it was around the time of Cynthia, and the arrival of the upmarket mannequin, that the word "doll" came into common usage in America as an endearment.) Jackie Lewis, researcher for the Brighton exhibition, has written of how the mannequin first appeared during the period when women in cities such as Paris and London were becoming increasingly visible in the world outside the home. Representing both an idealised and a despised version of womanhood - dressed as a lady, in the most exquisite and expensive outfits, but at the same time as flamboyant and unchaperoned as a streetwalker - the mannequin reflected unease about women's changing role in society.
Physically, the mannequin as mirror has become increasingly convincing, with ever more sophisticated construction techniques. The initial wax models, which had a tendency to melt under shop lights, were replaced by plaster of Paris, and eventually by fibreglass; joints and suppleness were added. At the same time, while mannequins have begun to look increasingly like real women, many real women in the spotlight of fashion have begun to look more and more like mannequins. In magazines, airbrushing now gives live skin the impossible smoothness of fibreglass; on the catwalk and on the red carpet, silicone and collagen have blurred the division between a real body and a sculpted one.
There has always been something of the night about the mannequin. In the 1938 surrealist exhibition in Paris, André Masson displayed a mannequin with her head imprisoned in a birdcage, her mouth masked; a year later, André Breton and Marcel Duchamp collaborated on the design for the window of the Gotham Book Mart, which included a headless mannequin reading. Despite their stiff, cold bodies, mannequins have always had an erotic charge. When a video of Michael Jackson's Neverland ranch was shown at his trial last month, it was the life-size child mannequins that drew the most comment, with few newspapers neglecting to mention that one was dressed in a Boy scout uniform.
As a reflection of the ideal woman - which as Plumb points out "is what they need to be, to sell clothes" - the history of the mannequin charts the fluctuating ideals in body shape. Just as Barbie's feet are frozen on tiptoe, as if in invisible high heels, Victorian dolls had the extreme hourglass figure created by a corset; in the 1950s, mannequins had wider hips than those of a decade earlier, the better to show off the new, fuller silhouette. In the 1970s, the appearance of sheer blouses led to mannequins being given nipples for the first time; in the 1990s, the trend for minimalism was starkly reflected in a vogue for headless mannequins. (Sometimes, however, even in fashion, practical con siderations ruled. The advent of plaster, which was more difficult to model into facial features than wax, influenced the trend for abstract, blank faces in the 1920s and 1930s; after the second world war, a shortage of materials led to mannequins being made with shorter legs.)
But it was the fashion revolution of the 1960s that brought about the most significant shake-up in the mannequin industry. Realising that the austere, aristocratic mannequins imported from Paris looked quite wrong in Mary Quant and Biba, Adel Rootstein began to manufacture mannequins in London, using Twiggy and Patti Boyd as her first models. The new, more relaxed look was an instant hit, and Rootstein's company remains at the forefront of mannequin design today, 13 years after the death of its founder. At the height of the Wonderbra phenomenon, Rootstein brought out a new range of dummies with a bust modelled on a 34B Wonderbra; those stores that could not afford the price tag (a top Rootstein mannequin can cost £800) sent their existing mannequins to be surgically enhanced with the newly fashionable cleavage line.
Among upscale stores, Rootstein's most popular model of recent years has been a mannequin based on the whippet-thin, angular Erin O'Connor (both the Erin O'Connor and Twiggy mannequins are included in the Brighton exhibition). Their newest line is based on another British catwalk model, Jade Parfitt, and comes in a variety of poses. This, says Rootstein's creative director Kevin Arpino, is a response to fashion. Whereas very structured clothes hang best off a simply posed mannequin, "the floaty, 'boho' clothes that are around now really need mannequins with a bit of movement, to bring them to life in the shop window, otherwise they just hang there". The new range has been snapped up by Zara, and can be seen in its windows from next month.
In America, the newly glamorous status of the ample bottom, as championed by Jennifer Lopez and Beyoncé, has begun to be reflected in shop windows. Department stores including Saks in New York have placed substantial orders for a new mannequin dubbed the "Goddess", which has measurements of 34B-25-35 (a UK size 10), as opposed to the more usual "runway ideal" (32A-23-33, a UK size 6-8). Ralph Pucci, the manufacturer behind the Goddess, attributes its success to popular culture, and specifically an endless succession of hip hop music videos featuring scantily clad, voluptuous women. The Goddess is especially popular in lingerie departments, where it has proved very successful in persuading customers, both women and men, to spend money.
At Rootstein, Arpino agrees that the overarching trend is for "a more womanly, more fleshy, less bony" look. But he does not expect to see many orders for shapes above a size 10. "People want to identify with model looks. They like to live that dream. That's fashion."
• Guys 'n' Dolls: Art, Science, Fashion and Relationships is at the Brighton Museum and Art Gallery from April 23 to June 12.