I remember Karl Lagerfeld said that the concept of beauty changes with the times, What is beautiful today, might not be considered beautiful tomorrow. On the other hand, what was beautiful 20 years ago, is not the ideal beauty today.
Mannequins has always been considered as the reflection of the "ideal beauty" during the time that it was manufactured. And if there ever was a mannequin company who understood it best, it is Adel Rootstein.
Adel Rootstein & Co. started during the early 1960s, when Britain was beginning to influence the world of fashion. Mary Quant and Jean Muir were the symbols of the new movement. The personality cult was in full swing.
But there was a major drawback in the London fashion scene - mannequins. The ones displayed in store windows were stilted, stylized, rigid and lifeless. In short, they look like "dummies," and very far from the glamour and beauty of the fashion runways.
Extensive experience in window design had given Adel Rootstein an awareness of the void that existed between the catwalk and the store windows.
Adel wanted to fill that gap. With the Adel Rootstein Company, she was able to create a whole new generation of window mannequins, and finally bring the fashion catwalk to store windows.
From the 1960s through the 1990s, Twiggy, Sandie Shaw, Joanna Lumley, Janet Suzman, Joan Collins, Lord Patrick Lichfield, Marie Helvin, Dianne Brill, Yasmin Le Bon, Susanne Barscht, Ute Lemper, Karen Mulder and Jodie Kidd were as much as part as the international fashion scene and the store of display mannequins, thanks to Adel Rootstein.
In short, Adel turned fantasy into a living legend.
A Rootstein display mannequin starts life as a sculpture based on the chose model, a process taking several weeks to complete. The result is a figure which expresses the mood of fashion embodied in the qualities for which the model has been selected.
From this form, a plaster cast is made which is then used to produce the final mould. 80% of the perfect fiberglass display mannequins to emerge from this mould are exported all over the world.
Fashion which was once dictated by individuals, whether personalities or designers is now equally determined by economic and social climate, either as a statement of it or a fantasy flight from it.
Adel Rootstein mannequins continue to capture, reflect and transmit the evolving fashion shapes by epitomizing "the moment" as each mannequin is created.
