Store Changes Mannequin Designs To Be More Inclusive

Visitors to the Victoria’s Secret lingerie store over the last few days have been getting their first sight of a somewhat more rounded set of mannequins.

Earlier this month, the retailer revealed it had plans to alter the shape of its mannequins in order to be more inclusive to plus-size women. This means it has ditched the signature ‘Angels’ that it previously used, in order to provide a more realistic impression of what various undergarments would look like on the women wearing them.

The first place it did this was the US, which is of course notorious for having one of the highest obesity rates in the world. Nonetheless, Britain is not so far behind and while many women would not be classed as obese, it is clear that the image represented by the old mannequins was not representative of the typical shape of a woman today.

All this could have significant implications for the design of mannequins in the UK. As retailers and designers increasingly come to accept that their customers tend to have a different body shape to the idealised versions traditionally depicted by wafer thin catwalk models and petite mannequins, new approaches have been pioneered.

Indeed, changing mannequin sizes may be as much an acknowledgement of this reality as the emergence of ‘plus-size’ models in recent years.

However, even the new designs may not please everyone, as Business Insider reporter Mandy Shunnarah commented when visiting a store in the US.

She said: “While I noticed plenty of new and welcome changes during my visit, I left still feeling like Victoria's Secret is peddling a version of womanhood that's unattainable to lots of women - myself included. “ This included many displays looking the same as before and the size range remaining limited.

That may suggest there may yet be more changes to come to the market in terms of how mannequins are designed, as well as other assumptions about how individuals should look and how much this matters.

Victoria’s Secret is a major player in the UK lingerie market, with 27 UK stores. The UK mannequin manufacturing sector may be watching carefully to see how this impacts on the approach taken by the firm’s competitors.