Dummy dressed in fabrics at Strick dept.store. Braunschweig, Germany 1979
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A catching image, of the windows of Strick dept. store, Braunschweig, Germany, in September 1979. It belongs to the "Plastic Girl" series, a unique reportage about the evolution of style and costume through mannequins from 1978 to today.
Photo by Roberto Bigano.
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Plastic Girls — 50 Years of Artificial Beauty (1978–2026)
A long-term photographic study of window mannequins as cultural artifacts of their time — by Roberto Bigano.
Plastic Girls is a long-term photographic study of window mannequins as cultural artifacts of their time. Created over nearly fifty years, the project examines how artificial female bodies were designed and displayed in public space, reflecting changing ideals of beauty, femininity, desire, and social aspiration. Read as a continuous sequence rather than isolated images, the series reveals how consumer culture repeatedly shaped—and reshaped—the representation of the female form.
All photographs were taken from the street, through shop-window glass, without special access or permissions. Nothing is staged or arranged for the camera: the images record what is openly visible yet rarely observed with sustained attention.
Over time, this accumulation exposes patterns no single moment could reveal—recurring gestures, evolving materials, racial and anatomical codifications, and a gradual movement from abstraction to hyper-realism. The project seeks neither irony nor nostalgia, but sustained looking.
Available Chapters
- Plastic Girls: 50 Years of Artificial Beauty — A long-term photographic study of window mannequins as cultural artifacts of their time.
- Plastic Girls — The Age of Plastic Innocence (1978–1980) — Early Works – Shop-window mannequins before the rise of performative display.
- American Mannequins — Journey into Hyperreality (1982–1988)— Artificial bodies and performative realism in American retail display.
- Plastic Girls — Glamour, Aggression, and Display (1980–1997) — A shared escalation toward excess, beyond style, geography, or chronology.
- Spain (1997) — Glamorous Brides — Ritual, spectacle, and artificial femininity in Andalusian display culture.
