But what made the show a word-of-mouth success that hit a nerve beyond the usual reach of Costume Institute fare was the unique way Apfel wore these pieces, which was recreated on the mannequins.
Whether mounted behind glass or draped on mannequins, the items serve as an index of a life lived in the limelight.
Government offices and seminaries on Martyr Street, which the locals call Time To Have Fun Street, are dwarfed by the multi-storey Pearl shopping mall, where the female mannequins wear tight jeans.
Some were yelling at the gendarmes, who were beginning to edge slowly forwards in neat formation past the mannequins in Dior's window.I approached a policeman sitting in a nearby police car, which had a line of gendarmerie vans parked behind it.
Guido Palau has designed the many, original and wonderful masks which tightly cover the mannequins' heads.
Others opted for even thriftier "presentations", where models were hired to stand on podiums like mannequins for a few hours, or to mingle with the ordinary mortals in the crowd.The collections were also smaller, a sign of the reduced demand for luxury clothing.
Designed to draw attention to the Metropolitan Museum of Art's new exhibition "Punk: Chaos to Couture", the Met's annual sartorial gala promised a frothy mess of leather and lace concoctions on pilates-toned living mannequins.
One rather static display consists of gowned and uniformed mannequins.
"It was cool," he says, after unloading 30 rounds of belt-fed 50-calibre ammo into the turf.The broken-down cars, leaky Boston whalers and department-store mannequins used as targets don't put up much of a fight.
THREE floors up an undistinguished building in Manhattan's Tribeca district, you suddenly find yourself in the world of Zac Posen: photos and sketches on the wall, pattern cutters at work, mannequins awaiting their toile, a couple of computers, an atmosphere of youth and nervous energy.
Half the 10,000 troops who crossed the border on July 1st, as stiff as mannequins, are said to have slipped back to Shenzhen, so that money can be saved.
