Cynthia’s face remained completely blank, wearing that same empty stare at the theater, Bergdorf’s, a private dinner party, and even her regular hair salon. Everywhere she went, Cynthia tantalized the paparazzi and her adoring public—always seen on the arm of the fashionable Lester Gaba, wearing the runway’s latest styles and enjoying New York nightlife to the fullest—but still her gaze revealed nothing.Of course, that’s because Cynthia was a mannequin, crafted by Gaba to promote his retail display business. In 1937, Gaba’s irreverent experiment captivated the public by spotlighting our larger fixation with mannequins, made up of a strange blend of adoration, emulation, discomfort, and sometimes even terror. Cynthia was merely the descendant of a long line of mannequins, whose idealized bodies gave shape to our materialist fantasies at least since the time of the Egyptians.
When archaeologists opened King Tutankhamen’s tomb in 1922, they found a wooden torso bearing the king’s likeness near a chest containing the young pharaoh’s wardrobe, considered the oldest-known forerunner to modern mannequins. This bust was likely used to model Tutankhamen’s elaborate garments and jewelry, providing a stationary figure matching the king’s specific measurements to assist with clothing design and adjustment.
“That would be more like a display form made for tailors and seamstresses, used almost like clothes hangers back then,” says Dr. Marsha Bentley Hale, one of the world’s foremost mannequin experts, who began amassing an extensive archive of research during the 1980s. “Eventually, they became mannequins, the figures that sell fashion.”
Similar to the elaborate fashion dolls that preceded them, retail mannequins were first developed to model the latest clothing styles for wealthy shoppers. The Industrial Revolution generated a surge in mass-produced clothing, requiring new stores with larger shopping spaces in cities across the globe. By the mid-19th century, the garment industry recognized the display form’s potential to make clothing come alive, and with the proliferation of shops—from five-and-dimes to luxury department stores—came an additional market for mannequins.
As Emily and Per Ola d’Aulaire wrote in their overview of mannequin history for Smithsonian Magazine, “Most experts agree that the succession of stages set in motion during the Industrial Revolution—the manufacture of large, steel-framed, plate glass windows, the invention of the sewing machine, the electrification of cities—cleared the way for its arrival. The men and women who strolled the boulevards were the audience; all that was needed were players.” Thus, the familiar pastime of window-shopping was established, and mannequins became central to the drama unfolding on these lighted stages.
Mannequins of the 19th century were mostly glorified dress forms, headless bodies made from wood, leather, wire, and papier-mâché mounted onto heavy iron bases. If they had limbs, their poses were extremely limited, with either both feet together or one stepping forward, arms hanging limply at their sides.
