Mar 27, 2000 / FW/ --- Something that stuck my mannequin historian eye, even at the fast clip I was cruising by the store windows on the way to the Marienplatz, was how mannequins more than a decade old were still at work.

They did not look old and worn out. Actually, they’re far from it.

Their make up, skin and hair were fresh and vibrant, if that is “mannequinly” possible.

The tell tale signs were the female feet and hands. No they're not rough from age. It was the sculpted positions or posturing of the feet and hands

Many of these mannequins were displayed with no shoes, (their shoes sitting on the side of the feet.) The feet were sculpted for high heels of the early and mid 1980s.

Many of the casual shoes today though they have thick tall soles are not at such an extreme angle as of the everyday high heel worn circa 1980s.

The female hands of the mannequins I saw were clenched, a tell tale sign from the era when women were marching to the glass ceiling ala ‘Diane Keaton in the movie Baby Boom.

Another body attitude of females and their counterpart mannequins were arms crossed, defiant yet self-protective.

Then there was the female mannequin with hands pressing against a wall in front of her, pushing ahead, yet in a sense powerful enough to hold the whole building and glass wall, i.e., display window on her own.

The fact that these mannequins are still being used shows they must be of quality construction to have held up even with restoration.

Also, even though style of body attitudes has changed over the decades, this still work in contemporary windows, a compliment to them being classics of a sort.

Hold your pose Generation X mannequin, age and recycling before youth… With exception of mannequins portraying Internet entrepreneur such as Martha Lane Fox of LastMinute.com