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Fashion analysts weren’t kidding when they recently predicted the return of the conventionally pretty model during this economic downturn. Given the slightly sinister Victor and Rolf 15-year retrospective in June, Vogue Russia’s 10th anniversary hand-painted matryoshkas, and last month’s UNICEF auction of designer dressed dolls at the Drouot Montaigne, the pint-sized market is booming. But whether it’s childhood nostalgia or high-fashion frugality driving the latest trend, there’s something timeless about little Mary and Barbie and Victoria in their evocation of the couture spirit that’s sure to leave even the most dismal-minded damsels reassured of fashion’s first legacy: play.

It was still technically wartime –a year after D-Day– when the Chambre Syndicale de la Couture Parisienne presented the Théâtre De La Mode at the Louvre in March 1945. Collaborating with the relief organization Entraide Française, artists designed elaborate sets to house 1:3 scale wire mannequins dressed by fifty-three Parisian houses back in business after over four years of German occupation. Labels we recognize today–Hermès, Ricci, Balenciaga– joined other giants of the time, including Schiaparelli, Worth, Carven, and Madame Grès, to create outfits that were perfectly wearable but for their size:

” . . . [The clothes] had proper linings, closures, buttons and trimmings.  Many were hand-beaded, and designers often provided miniature foundation garments to go underneath. The couturiers were not the only artists who were involved. The mannequins’ wigs were all professionally made and styled, and each one wore a pair of beautifully scaled-down shoes. Jewelery, little gloves, hats, purses, belts, and even little powder compacts had to be made.”(link)

Despite fabric shortages and factory closures, designers accommodated post-war fantasies in a luxury of littleness. After the Louvre exhibition, the Chambre Syndicale toured the dolls and sets around Europe and the U.S., where the fashion business had matured considerably while Paris was under siege. Not simply a fundraising effort, the Théâtre De La Mode commemorated France’s creative resilience as a nation and more pointedly provided an opportunity for Paris couturiers to reassert their place in a new, internationally competitive industry.

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As American designers Vera Wang, Betsy Johnson, Carmen Marc Valvo, Donna Karen, and surely more to come opt out of the biannual Bryant Park hoopla for smaller presentations in gesture to the Dow, perhaps it is an appropriate time to remind ourselves word-of-mouth was the only and rather unreliable avenue for conveying foreign fashions before the rise of the fashion doll. The mannequins of today (including the latest incarnation of model muse Coco Rocha) don’t hold a faux candle to the detail lavished on their forbears, which were life-sized and typically tailored to the client. According to Lynn McMasters, “It became the fashion for ladies to own a pair of dolls, one dressed en grand toilette, and the other en déshabille. These were known as the Grande Pandore and the Petite Pandore respectively, and they were the subjects of every extravagant whim of stylish dressing: hats, dresses, shoes, elaborate hairstyles and a great deal of miniature beads and jewelry. What began as an aristocratic whim developed into an important part of the high fashion trade of the seventeenth century.”

By the eighteenth century, they were essential. Hostilities between England, France, and Spain did not interrupt the flow of mannequins from Paris, eventually cited as les grands courriers de la mode. In 1704 the Abbe Prévost wrote, “By an act of gallantry which is worthy of being noted in the chronicles of history for the benefit of the ladies, the ministers of both courts granted a special pass to the mannequin, that pass was always respected, and during the times of greatest enmity experienced on both sides the mannequin was the one object which remained unmolested.”

Queen Anne, Catherine de Medici, and Marie Antoinette all made use of Pandoras. Clients could try on the garments or have their dressmakers dissect clothes to adjust patterns. Soon the English were sending their own mannequins to America to illustrate and popularize overseas trends. On July 12, 1733, the New England Weekly Journal advertised: At Mrs Hannah Teats, dressmaker at the top of Summer Street, Boston, is to be seen a mannequin in the latest fashion, with articles of dress, night-dresses and everything pertaining to woman’s attire. It has been brought from London by Captain White. Ladies who choose to see it may come or send for it. It is always ready to serve you. If you come, it will cost you two shillings, but if you send for it, seven shillings.

In the nineteenth century, with advances in printing, paper dolls became a less expensive substitute until fashion magazines filled the niche in the early 1900’s. Runway shows have become more extravagant by the decade– just last year Karl Lagerfeld presented his Fendi collection on the Great Wall in a 10 million dollar affair. Perhaps it’s a certain irreverence of itself, a morning-after bigger and better fashion hangover, that has designers retreating to less flashy venues. Following 9/11 the battle cry was to move forward! be positive! stay strong! the show will go on! And it did– until now. Now we’re breaking down in Ibsen’s doll house, where the fantasy– or is it reality?– has played us too far.

Yet younger designers like Chris Kelly and Sarah Flamm under the fitting label Theatre de la Mode are starting small and growing. For Fall 08, they dressed scaled down woodland creatures in their designs. This season provided a cinematic treat with shadow puppets then humans performing on a surreal, Quay Brothers-esque stage.

As Kelly explained to Kyle Landman: “The original movement of Theatre de la Mode captures perfectly our current economic climate. Understanding the financial implications of presenting a catwalk show, we wanted to take a new stance on contemporary fashion. One that allowed us to enter the fashion world without compromise and in turn reach a broader audience of fashion and art connoisseurs alike.”