Cynthia and the History of the Female Mannequin
In New York in the 1930s, a woman named Cynthia began to appear in famous places such as the Stork Club and at opera houses. Sitting motionless with a cigarette in one hand, she became famous despite never uttering a word or even moving the least bit from her pose.
Going Gaga over the Gaba Girls
Cynthia was a female mannequin designed by the soap sculptor Lester Gaba. He created a line of plaster mannequins known as the Gaba Girls who became famous in New York society and marked the rise to the fore of American mannequin designers. The six Gaba Girls were a departure from their somber predecessors, being personable and realistic in the way the wax mannequins of other stores weren’t. They were dressed in fine clothes and jewelry and were the hit at parties.
Previously, the synergistic effect of the electrification of cities, the introduction of iron and steel in the construction of buildings, the mechanization of dressmaking and the advent of World War I all combined to make the department store with its large front windows suitable for advertising purposes possible. Mannequins began to populate the storefronts once the owners keyed in to the idea of using them to attract customers. They evolved from simple, static life-size dolls in clothing to lithe, posed models that reflected the ideals of female beauty at the time.
Subsequent History
The first shop mannequins, being wood dress forms, papier-mâché mannequins, wire mannequins, had their problems, among them a total weight of somewhere between 200 and 300 pounds. The first plaster models arriving on the scene reduced this to around 30, and with the Gaba Girls and their realistic successors’ appeal, mannequins became a hot new tool for sellers to attract their clientele.
As time has gone on, the mannequin has changed to reflect (or in some cases, challenge) the ideals of beauty and the conditions of society in its milieu. The slender, snobbish 1920s mannequins gave way to creations with boyish charm in the 1930s as well as reasonably-priced abstract creations that could substitute for full mannequins in that hard-luck time. During the Second World War, the mannequin became shorter and its clothes became far simpler, the victim of wartime exigencies. When it ended, smiling and happy creations were seen to grace store windows. The 50s was the era of both the innocent, Lolita-like figure with a suggestive charm, and the tough, sexy vamp, signaling the beginning of the reexamination of feminine identity which continued into the 1970s. Female mannequins also began to show pain, worry and pose in defiant attitudes. In the 1990s and beyond, the growth of the consumer base led the way to other types of mannequins such as ethnic mannequins, child mannequins and plus-size mannequins as well as reflects that era’s concern with health and physical fitness.
Posted in Mannequins