Window Dressing · Part 1 (1/2)
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Angela had been working at the department store since she left college five years ago. She had picked up various qualifications to do with retail since then, but the main thing that had gotten her off of the shop floor and into window decoration had been her diploma in fashion, along with an A level qualification in art. She had started in underwear, but after a year, her flair for art and arranging displays had landed her current role as the shops window dresser.
Sophie’s dominated one entire corner of the high street. It was typical of most department stores of its age. A large building constructed in the 1950’s, it occupied a corner plot. Set on three stories, it catered for male and female fashions, as well as having a children’s clothes section. This meant that the large window space could be used to good effect.
This week’s display had been on the drawing board for months. This years fashions were tipped to be retro 1950s and 60s. Big, A line dresses, heals, crinolines. In short, all of the designers were trying to bring back the Hollywood golden age of glamour and Angela had been working on the launch of the spring range with her manager Diana.
Sophie had her own workshop in the basement, where she could prepare the window designs. It had power tools, wood, paints, and materials, as well as bits and pieces of old mannequins.
Now, at six O clock in the morning, she was stood in the shop window, arranging the final pieces. Paper had been taped over the windows while she worked on the display.
She had designed the backdrop of the display to look like a 1950’s high street. She thought that it was fifties anyway. Such programs as Bewitched had inspired her or animations like the Pink Panther. Consequently, she had created a stylised backdrop that looked like a bright caricature of the period. She had even borrowed a bit of shading and skyline from Top Cat. Fortunately, she had been able to come in yesterday, which had been a Sunday and move most of what she needed. Although she had stayed late, she had not finished quite everything and so had come in early to put the final touches to the display.
The street scene was angled so that an illusion of distance had the high street buildings appear to trail off behind the dummies. A bellboy, in red livery and small hat stood towards the back holding a selection of brightly wrapped boxes. The large, circular one at the bottom was obviously a hat box. The pile carried on above the dummies head and he could be seen, just peering around them to look ahead of him. Just to one side of this figure was an old, cast iron, lamppost. Angela had come across this several months ago in a junk shop and it had been sitting in her workshop ever since, awaiting just the right display to decorate the window.
It had taken Angela a whole day to cut up various mannequins in order to get the right pose for the bellboy. Normally the shop dummies tried to emulate a relaxed pose, rather than a doing pose. Angela had therefore had to cut and fabricate, using fibre glass to make the joints seamless. The end result was quite life like.
The next occupant of the window was just being secured to the floor. The bottom of the window had a hard plywood base, She had covered this in a length of old kitchen lino, which, while looking like stone kitchen tiles in any other setting, now looked like a pavement. It also had a set of small metal plates secured to the floor. It was into these that Angela was positioning the feet of the next dummy, although a more accurate description would have been paws.
“Click, click.”
Angela stood up as she admired the Dalmatian that she had created. This had taken her a while to make, but she had managed to get all of the pieces she needed from older projects. The end result was of a dog running at full pelt, with some of it’s paws in the air, its mouth open and tongue lolling out as it bounded towards the glass, chasing who knows what. The last feature, attached to its collar, was a dog’s lead. However, rather than trailing behind limply, this lead stood out at a rigidly at an angle behind it.
Although it looked like leather, the core of the lead was in fact steel. It had been wrapped in an old lead that Angela had unpicked before re-stitching around the core. It had also been welded to the metal clasp, which in turn was welded to the metal of the collar. The only flexible thing was the wrist loop, which would allow her to attach the lead to the arm of the final dummy. She had also placed a small leather loop over the wrist strap so that it could be tightened.
The final mannequin would need as much support as it could get, since the diorama depicted a woman being pulled off balance by her dog. The wrist would attach to the lead. One leg would clip into the floor. A pole would be needed to sit out of sight behind the front leg, giving additional support to the structure, while the other leg would be attached to the back drop via another metal clip. In this manner the dummy would be supported in several places so that, even if bumped, it would not fall over.
Angela’s windows had become something of a local cause. The press would usually take pictures at any of the big seasonal launches. So it was vitally important that she was ready on time.
If Angela had one peculiarity, it was her habit of getting into character whenever she worked on a project. Last year had seen a fascination with Sci-Fi in the fashion industry and so, while working on the summer window, she had dressed like an extra from a Buck Rogers movie. Hot pants, high collars and silver knee length boots.
This time she was dressed in true 1950’s style, just like the mannequin that she had made. She had arrived early in order to change. Although she had worn 1950’s clothes throughout this project, as well as styling her hair in a 50’s style, with her shoulder length hair having been curled at the ends and sporting a fringe for the first time since her early teens, while locked away in the basement, today was something special, as with all of her openings.
After arriving in her workshop and disrobing her street clothes, she had first unpacked the underwear. A large set of black silk granny knickers, that had a high waist cut were the first items of clothing that she slipped on. After this, she had unpacked a full-length, open bottomed girdle, in white, complete with built in bra, shoulder straps and suspenders. She had had to step into the girdle and pull it up, like a dress. In this instance however, the various panels and elastic construction meant that it hugged her figure tightly, ensuring that she had to wiggle and squirm in order to get the thing on.
At first she had thought that she would have to settle for the control girdles that were sold in the shop, but she was surprised to find, after searching on the internet, that she could order genuine 1950s underwear from theatrical suppliers. So she had bought two sets, one for the mannequin and one for herself. Once she had struggled into the garment, a zipper in the side ensured that the double thickness panels around the waist were truly figured hugging. On the other side, another zipper ran up the side of her hips, allowing the front panels to be pulled in tightly. The result of all of this pushing and shoving was truly medieval in its construction.
The cone shaped bra would have given Madonna a run for her money. However, the underwear had helped to achieve the classic hourglass figure.
Next, with difficulty, she bent over and pulled on a set of seamed stockings that she attached to the suspenders hanging from the bottom of the girdle. Just for fun she rolled a white garter belt up her left leg, arranging the small blue bow so that it faced the front. This bought a smile to her face. The next item, which she stepped into, was a voluminous taffeta petticoat. She then picked up the main item of her outfit. The dress. This was an armless, A line cut, with plunging neckline. It’s main feature were the large black poca dots that adorned the pristine white dress.
After checking her make up in a small hand mirror, again playing on the 1950s theme with bright red lips and dark eyeliner, which she had applied before leaving home, she put on a twin set and pearls. These large globes followed the circular theme of the dots on the dress. White, wrist length, gloves, a wide brimmed hat and black and white poka dot heels completed the outfit. Although the mannequin sported four-inch stilettos, Angela needed to work and had therefore chosen a two-inch heal. This was still enough to complete the effect and Angela sauntered happily from the workshop to begin lifting and moving.
Having secured the bellboy and the dog, Angela returned for the next item, the chrome pole. She screwed this into the metal plate in the floor. The other end of the pole would slide into the mannequins nether regions, in a re-enforced section of the dummy. There was no snap latches or screw thread, just a smooth metal pole that she would position the dummy over and drop into place.
Firstly she went and got the accessories that would be needed: handbag, special five-inch poca dot court shoes, complete with black shoulder bag and wide brimmed hat. The hat had had some alterations in that she had sewn one of the mannequin’s gloves to the top of the hat. Although she had bought hat pins, having the item attached to the dummy would ensure that it stayed exactly where she wanted it to stay. She had also bought a comb and wig. She would brush the hair once the dummy was in place and then attach the hat. Another alteration had been made to the shoes. These had been fitted with cleats so that they would clip into place once the mannequin was lowered into position.
Having set everything in place she went to get the mannequin. This had taken some effort to get right. Unfortunately, the dummies produced these days were not moulded with corsetry or girdles in mind. Consequently Angela had had to cut a mannequin in half and re-shape the mid section and bust so that it would be able to carry the style of half a century ago. More specifically, to accommodate the proportions that were even now being enforced upon her figure by the tight confines of the double thickness waist panelling, making movement a more sedate affair.
As well as alterations to the torso shape, she had also had to cut and re-attach the limbs to conform to sense of movement that she hoped to inspire in this diorama. Consequently, getting the mannequin, which was designed to be supported on one leg, with one arm thrust forward, the other clutching the head and it’s left leg stretched out horizontally behind the dummy, ensured that, no matter how it was positioned, it would not stand easily on the trolley that she had bought to move it to the window. The shocked expression on it’s face, that had taken many hours to get just right, seemed to remonstrate her undignified efforts to move the figure.
However, after a great deal of effort, balancing, catching and prodding, Angela eventually managed to drag the dummy into the window. Time was running short, but she still had some leeway. Bending down she retrieved the shoes and placed them on the feet, before buckling the slim ankle straps to hold the shoes in place. Lifting the dummy up, Angela struggled to get it into position. Its position did not make the job easy and so Angela returned to her workshop, returning after a few minutes with a stepladder under her arm.
Angela positioned the stepladder before picking up the mannequin and climbing up the steps, while dragging the dummy into position. Unfortunately, the streetlight, which she had bolted to the floor, did not make her job any easier. In fact it meant that she could not just slide the ladder close to the pole, but forced her to lean out slightly as she manoeuvred the mannequin over the pole.
All at once the world was dragged out from underneath her as she toppled forward. The mannequin fell towards the window, which it bounced off of, landing off to one side. Angela flailed her arms and stood upright as the ladder wobbled and then toppled forward, throwing Angela feet first towards the ground.
Angela was not sure what happened next, but she felt a strong pressure in the gusset of her knickers and then, accompanied by a ripping sound it was as though someone had punched her in the pussy and she started to double over as she felt the long metal shaft enter her, bruising the walls of her pussy as the cold metal brutally forced its way inside of her. She felt the shaft push deeply inside of her as the metal all but punched her cervix.
Angela was not sure how she had managed it, but she was impaled on the rod. Moving her feet together she found that she could only get comfortable by standing on tip toes, otherwise the metal shaft, designed to support a figure with inhumanly long legs, would cause her immense pain.
Bending over, Angela found that, after the initial pain had worn off, that she was not bleeding. She may be bruised inside, but she did not feel as though she had hurt herself too badly. This was confirmed as she lifted the skirt and managed, after unclipping the two front suspenders, to peel back the girdle enough to inspe
Window Dressing · Part 1 (1/2)
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