Pierre Imans 1896 Baseball T-Shirt

Pierre Imans started producing his unconventional, naturalistic mannequins in wax from his studio at 10 rue de Crussol in Paris back in 1896. Unlike the generic, faceless mannequins seen in shop windows at the time, Imans’s proxies had fully painted faces, resin eyes, eyelashes, and wigs of human hair. What is more, each model had a name and was treated to a celebrity-style photo shoot for his marketing catalogs. Their realism and elegant modeling render them veritable sculpture, modern portrait busts that hover fascinatingly between high art and popular, commercial appeal, something that might explain Imans refusal to call his creations mannequins.