DALLAS, Oct 6, 2000/ FW/ --- Times do change, so do mannequins.

The mannequin shapes of today is a far cry from the rounded figures of mannequins during the 1930s.

Today's mannequins are athletic, with great body tone, firm abs and calves. That's the beauty ideal of the 1990s, and mannequins are created to be the "beauty ideal" of its era, or the decade that it was manufactured.

In 1964, when Twiggy was 14 years old, Adel Rootstein created the Twiggy mannequin which was sculpted with Twiggy as the model.

"The idea of bringing to life the fashion models from the magazines was Adel's ground-breaking idea,"" quote Kevin Arpino, the Creative Director for Adel Rootstein who took over the company after Adel Rootstein died.

"Out-dated fifties mannequins looked the wrong age and the wrong shape modeling the new Mary Quant mini-skirts. Adel came up with figures of Patty Boyd, Sandy Shaw but she was most famous for the mannequins of Twiggy which were produced concurrently with the swinging 60's Kings Road era in London. In fact, she chose Twiggy before she really became the name of the decade."

Ian Proetta, Creative Director of Greneker, observed that customers today are independent-minded. "People dress more for comfort nowadays. Style comes second. Fashion can no longer be dictated by a few. Hence, we see mannequins today with size ranging from the ideal 6 to 8 to the plus-sizes of 14-18."

If we look at the fashion on the street, it is evident that people choose their own style. From western to romance, to the grunge during the early 90s.

Fashion can be everything or anything. Mannequins although they still represent the ideal, has to follow suit.

With today's fashion being so varied and can run to extremes the design of a mannequin is often in danger of being out of date before it is completed.

It takes about 12 months from the drawing to the showroom. That is the life cycle of coming out with a new mannequin line.

"Different fashions dictate different types, stances, positions and poses, short skirts and long skirts, trousers or shorts, ballgowns or bikinis: all demand different styles of fashion. So concept becomes fashion, and fashion is about stance, pose, and attitude; and attitude is where the creation of the mannequins begins." (Source: A Different Mannequin, Inspiration Magazine Issue 172)

The New York based Pucci Mannequin company made a name for themselves as separate and distinct by producing lifestyle and athletic poses that very much captured the spirit of the Calvin Klein and Bruce Webber era since Ralph Pucci took over the management of the company in 1976.

Ralph Pucci usually commissions artists to create the avant-garde Pucci mannequins. During the early 90s, he commissioned Lowell Nesbitt to create male mannequins with musculature closer to that of Arnold Schwarzenegger reflecting the interest in health and fitness of the times.

Among some of the most memorable mannequins produced by Pucci include lifelike renditions of Christy Turlington and Beverly Peel for exhibits at New York’s Metropolitan Museum.

However, the biggest changes occurred once they started experimenting with fashion realism and in turn took it upon themselves to commission fashion illustrators and designers such as Anna Sui and Karl Lagerfeld to help realize new ideas.

Lifestyle Forms & Displays manufactures their signature fiberglass translucent mannequins. "The design field was buzzing with clear and translucent products and the stuff was turning up everywhere - in galleries, furniture and even clothes. So it was the right time to present it as a material for mannequins," says Richard Rollison, Vice President of Lifestyle Forms & Display.

Both fashion and technology are taken into consideration when coming up with a new mannequin line.