This is excellent article about the history of mannequins is a repost from the publication, Hopes and Fears. It was written by Leighann Morris and the illustrations are by Rachel Nosco.

The history of mannequins is as much a history of fashion as an overview of the 20th century. Over the past hundred years, figures change to reflect the advents of window shopping, subversive androgyny, women’s liberation, wartime rationing, Barbie doll fetishism, fiberglass, and Twiggy, to name a few. Art deco and Salvador Dali cross the storefront’s path.

Shapes rotate from poles to hourglasses and back. Nipples are a subject of debate! There’s even legend of a mannequin celebrity. Up to the present, mannequins reflect changing attitudes towards the female form, patterns in consumer behaviour, and developments in materials and technology, acting as epitomes for each era.

1900-1910

The evolution of the mannequin from a headless doll to a figure modelled on the complete human form is synonymous with the industrial revolution, a period in which the readily available manufacture of large plate-glass, sewing machines, and electricity transformed the shop-front into a performative space. This period marks the beginnings of “window shopping” as a bourgeois activity, and mannequins modelling the latest fashions take centre stage.

The 300 pound industrial woman

— MATERIALS: false teeth, glass eyes and real hair (there’s an air of taxidermy about them) feet of iron, legs and arms of dense wood, torsos and heads of solid wax. Mannequins break easily, are hard to clean, and melt under lights.

— TURN-OF-THE-CENTURY MANNEQUINS are clumsy and heavy, weighing 300 pounds. Mannequins also include realism; it isn’t only the period’s ideal body shape that was represented (Pierre Iman made mannequins that were up to a size 18).