Lifelike models Through the ages

18th century: The pint-size precursor to the mannequin, the “poupee de mode,” is popular. French design houses sent these dolls, which came dressed in the latest fashions, to the royal courts and elsewhere to showcase new styles.

19th century: The rise of the department store, with its glittering plate-glass windows, paves the way for life-size mannequins. Many are detailed and realistic-looking, with glass eyes and real hair. Some are also made of wax; legend has it that a few melted in sunny shop windows.

1920s: Highly stylized, art deco-inspired mannequins appear. “You start to see experiments with somewhat abstracted mannequins, with flat planes rather than curves in the body,” says Valerie Steele, director of New York’s Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology.

1960s: Fiberglass becomes a popular method of making mannequins — and the perfect pairing for the period’s mod fashions. Twiggy’s lanky limbs are immortalized when she gets a mannequin of her very own.

1990s: Abstraction — featureless, even headless figures based only loosely on the human form — is a fashionable concept. But that’s not to say mannequins are getting less real: Some even have nipples.

2000s: Proof that it’s not just a size 4 world: Plus-size mannequins and ladies with junk in the trunk — sometimes referred to as “J. Los” — make it big in stores.

Sources: Valerie Steele, Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology; Claire Brooks, ModelPeople