New York Mannequin Companies Impacted by Disease: AIDs to Covid-19
One of New York’s oldest mannequin manufacturers may close its doors after being in business for more than a century. The four years leading up to 2020 were some of the best for Bernstein Display, but since the pandemic shut down the economy in the spring, it has experienced a 74 percent drop in sales, said Mitch Bernstein, the company’s CEO.
“If we don’t make changes, we’re out of business,” Bernstein said.
New York is considered a capital for mannequin business. Companies such as Berstein’s rely on “brick and mortar” clothing stores as clients, and he points to store closures as the reason for the drop in sales.
“Business has dramatically changed for everyone in the (mannequin) industry,” Bernstein said.
Two other New York-based mannequin companies, Manex-USA and DK Display Corp, also reported a noticeable drop in sales. Sales at DK are down “at least down 40 to 50 percent, according to the company’s CEO and owner, David Terveen.
More than thirty years ago the industry found itself in similar trouble. The 1980s AIDs Crisis and 1990s recession affected mannequin companies. During that time, new trends began to emerge: mannequins were losing their facial details and realistic features.
Now, in the middle of Covid-19, the ensuing recession, and the Black Lives Matter movement, the industry is trying to stay afloat with the hope that the aftermath will bring a flourishing retail environment and increasingly diverse array of mannequins.
Lisa Maurer, Senior Account Executive at Manex-USA, was a new college graduate in the midst of the AIDs crisis in 1991. She was involved in the arts and was working at Macy’s Department Store. She described the time as “crazy scary” since there were no treatments for AIDs.
“Another health crisis was the incubus for the (egg head shape),” Maurer said. Key creative players in the window display profession passed away from AIDs. In addition, fashion retailers’ limited budgets restricted the amount of creativity in visual store displays. As a result, minimalist faces and abstract mannequins became the new norm. Buyers simply wanted the cheapest and easiest options available to them.
“All of the charm of the ’80s started to peter out,” Maurer said.
The public was tired of looking at realistic faces, said Anne Kong, professor at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City and expert on mannequins.
“I think that egg heads looked new and fresh,” Kong said. She likened the mannequin industry to a “pendulum,” that swings back and forth between trends, often bringing about “a resurgence again of something we’ve seen historically used in the past.” The 1980s was not the birth of egg heads, but rather a re-emergence.
While the economy did affect the industry, the 1980s were also a time for natural change in design, Kong said.
When the egg head mannequins started populating department stores they received criticism. Along with AIDs, there was a newfound awareness of breast cancer in the ’80s. Kong remembers having to cover the tops of mannequin heads with hats or bandanas in reaction to women who found the likeness to chemotherapy patients offensive.
“Believe me, if you don’t think people complain about store windows and store management doesn’t listen, you’re very wrong,” she said.
At the time of the 1990 cutbacks, Simon Doonan had just made a name for himself in the visual display and fashion world because of his elaborate window displays. His work at Barneys department stores was inspired by surrealist artists like René Magritte and Salvador Dali. His use of mannequins and display props were cheeky, unconventional, and at times provocative.
Doonan remembered the 1980s as tragic.
“We were all in our twenties and thirties and all our friends were getting sick and dying,” Doonan wrote in an email. “(AIDs) took a huge toll on fashion, retail and display.”
But unlike Covid-19, “AIDS affected the gay male population so it was confined to a smaller sub-group and easier for most people to ignore it.”
Current trends in the mannequin industry center largely around inclusivity with racial, body, and gender diversity on the minds of many designers.
“If mannequins are reflective of their clientele, then there’s been a lot of movement to make sure that they are being inclusive in lots of ways,” Maurer said. Maurer is proud of Manex-USA’s recent collection of gender-neutral mannequins, River.
Although egg heads still populate department stores, Kong predicts realistic mannequins will make their return because they are better candidates to represent ethnic diversity.
Despite the downturn in the economy, Doonan is hopeful the industry will bounce back.
“Human beings are very adaptable,” he said.
“I was born after the Second World War into a period of threadbare austerity, but within a decade or two we had a complete rebirth of fashion and style and music with the Beatles, the mod revolution and then the counter-culture.”
Kong shared his optimism. “I have been in conferences with people all over the world who said the surge of retail from being bottled up and ordering online will be incredible.”
“Mannequins are not going away,” she said. Customers will always yearn for that in-person experience of shopping, one that online stores can’t replace.
