David Seidner

I accidently stumbled across this looking at different photographers work and I fell in love with the idea that fantastic fashion designers have actually created garments for these tiny wire figures and made them look amazing!! Also how David Seidner has captured them in the set up of an old theatre looks fab... who needs real models to capture the presence of a garment?! My favourite is the second one as it is a very glamourous garment and also how the shoot has been done really makes me concentrate on the different shapes and wire... Before I saw this I would of said I would never want to syle a manakin or figure always models as you can get emotion and more movement, but how this has been created and then presented has really changed my opinion.

More info below:

In 1944, the war-battered French couture industry decided to revive its international reputation by conceiving a small exhibition entitled Théâtre de la Mode. The exhibition organizer enlisted the major fashion designers of the day, including Jeanne Lanvin, Lucien Lelong, Elsa Schiaparelli, and Pierre Balmain to create outfits for small wire-frame dolls just over two feet tall.
The exhibition of over 230 dolls, displayed in artist-designed sets, opened in Paris on March 27, 1945 at the Museum of Decorative Arts. It was an instant sensation, and traveled to London, Barcelona, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Vienna, New York, and San Francisco. With the return of the French fashion industry, the dolls had completed their work and were donated to the Maryhill Museum near Portland, Oregon, where they disappeared from view.
Under an extraordinary set of circumstances in 1990, the dolls were rediscovered and returned to Paris, recoiffed and restyled for an exhibition at the Musée de la Mode. Because of his pioneering work with French fashion and historical gowns, David Seidner was asked to photograph the little dolls. Working in the rough interior of an abandoned theatre set, Seidner captured the essence of French style in dolls dressed in designs made on the eve of Christian Dior's New Look, which radically changed fashion in 1947.
www.icp.org