Why Mannequins No Longer Smile

If mannequins are truly a reflection of our culture, then one can only hypothesize why mannequins no longer smile. In fact, mannequins have not been smiling for some time. Mannequins are dead serious. Are they taking their cue from us, or are we taking their lead? On recent trips to Macy’s, Saks and Bloomingdale’s, I was approached by salespeople with the emotional register of Grant Wood’s “American Gothic.” So I put it to you, when was the last time you smiled?

Mannequins perhaps taking their cue from fashion photography have adopted the dour faced look that has been popular in the fashion trades for some time now. Naturally, there was precious little to smile about if you were being photographed or hunted by Helmut Newton. Granted, it wasn’t a laugh riot if you were Edie Sedgwick, Gia or Kate Moss posing for some heroin chic editorial. The obsession with thinness has also eliminated smiles from the fashion pages. When you smile the uplift in cheek muscles can even make Linda Evangelista look apple cheeked, and that look went out with gingham and ruffles. Men in the fashion pages have long been sober and sedate. In reviewing the copies of DNR, Details and GQ on my desk, I was hard pressed to find any image of any man appearing happy, let alone actually smiling. It makes me question if life is really as bleak and mundane as the fashion monthly’s dictate?

Mannequins are traditionally closed lipped, suggesting they have nothing to say. They appear more like observers than participants in life. Their lips are usually pursed, pulled in at the sides, as if they are biting their cheeks, almost holding back commentary. Personally, I’d love to see a mannequin with a point of view. I’d love to see them caught in conversation doing something! Most of the major mannequin houses produce according to the corporate line, no smilers in the lot. Even the children’s collections they produce seldom have an out and out smiler.  I guess kids forgot how to smile too.

Storefront mannequins are always beautifully dressed, but they do not appear pleased; they do not appear happy; they appear innocuous, habitually posing off the hip, contra posto, assessing something unknown and perhaps intangible--they remain situated in some vague unknown.

Mannequins in the 50s routinely donned fake smiles and arched eyebrows typical of the period, the forced optimism of the McCarthy and Cold War era. They were little more than wax work figures, representational, not presentational forms. Today’s mannequins are most often headless, or if with head, sculptural, abstracted to every degree, down to no expression whatsoever, as evidenced in the classic and popular “egg” head. Mannequins just refuse to smile.

Many adjectives can be used to describe today’s mannequins, here are a few: serious, quiet, dull, soulful, sedate, pouting, authorative, sophisticated, bland, sullen, glamorous and haughty. Here are a few adjectives that if designed, might make for a real change of pace in the mannequin hemisphere and on the sales floor: joyful, jovial, friendly, amusing, pleased, confidant, teasing, flirty and euphoric. Wouldn’t it be a treat to see a happy mannequin? Maybe there would be happy sales people and happy customers.

--Ron Knoth, Guest Blogger

Photo: CK poster, 39th and 8th Ave., form by Fabulous Fit, photograph by Ron Knoth

Comments

[adrianna marie]

mannequins. . . are creepy period. But; i do think if they had some type of facial features they would look nicer than the mannequins SAKS FiFTH AVENUE has.

[Ron Knoth]

Dear Mannequin Enthusiasts,

Both of your points have merit. Granted, poorly sculpted smiling mannequins might, and often do look "creepy".

The purpose of psychologicaly neutral mannequins, customer identification, and assimilation to help promote sales is well documented.

Still, realistic mannequins tend to project the emotional range from A to B. I mean only to pose the question why current mannequin culture presents an emotionally conformist aestetic, a sameness that suggests limitation and a kind of uniformity.

[Bill]

Or perhaps the designers realized that smiling mannequins look creepy?

[Boot Kidz Mannequins]

One important attribute of a mannequin is that it is not recognizable with any current/past celebrity. The point is to decrease its attractiveness, and so increase
aspirational feelings within consumers (ie I can be like that! - cause I am like that!). Tend to agree that mannequins have become more like us and not the other way round.