vienna

“Make the store interior a show room instead of a stock room. Repeat the
window inside, but without glass!” 309
Kiesler would have been shocked to see his advice so brutally ignored.
Here even the show window is a stock room! What is normally hidden from
the customer’s view is extensively exposed here. Everything looks provisional.
The rack, the backwall in paper and the presentation of the fashion pieces on
miserable hangers in the show window. In a boutique like this, the garments are
normally presented on mannequins in the show window. A clothes hanger can
be interpreted as a bone. In a manner of speaking, clothes hangers are the
skeletons of the fashion mannequins. Mircea Eliade describes the transformation
of shamans during their initiation process. The shamans are torn into pieces; all that
remains are their bones. They are then reborn from their bones. The belief that
animals and men can be reborn from their bones is not only restricted to shamanism.
“The same mythico-ritual complex, in addition, has been preserved in more developed
cultures, whether in the religious tradition itself or in the form of fairytales.” 310
The bones stand for death. In a way, this show window also seems to echo
such myths. During the winter, the collection is presented on mannequins, and
then comes the seasonal sale when the mannequins are dismembered and
stocked in the backroom of the store. The remaining bones (hangers) are used to
show the collection, which is no longer in fashion. Once the seasonal sale is over,
the mannequins seem to be reborn from the clothes hangers, wearing the new
collection. It is hard to imagine that a window dresser has consciously concocted
a story like this. But who did, and how did it come to be that it is dramatised in
the show window? The belief that life can be recreated out of bones can be found
in the bible as well, 311 for as long as the bones remain, life can be reborn out of
them. We now walk further and are astonished to see pieces from the new spring
collection so soon:
Its central entrance divides this boutique’s façade into two show windows. On the
right side are two mannequins dressed in casual street clothes. The prices of
their clothing are on a small price tag standing on the floor. On the floor in front
of the mannequins is a small photograph showing a fashion model wearing the
exhibited pieces. The backdrop for this side is a narrow banner hanging down
from the ceiling with the image of a prestigious chandelier on it. The show window
to the left is a little bit smaller. There are two mannequins here as well.
309 Kiesler (1929:85).
310 Eliade (1970:161).
311 Eliade gives the example of the book Ezechiel (37, 1-8), see Eliade (1970:162).
Mariahilfer Straße
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