by Fiona Underhill, Contributor

Department stores mean much more to people than just being temples of retail and have more soul than anonymous malls. They are often historic and provoke a strong sense of loyalty in both their staff and customers. They can become iconic names associated with particular cities, such as Harrods of London, or Bloomingdales of New York. They also elicit a huge sense of nostalgia, especially in children’s or Christmas movies (or both) – think of the ‘dancing on the giant piano’ scene that takes place in FAO Schwartz in Big, or the fictitious Duncan’s Toy Chest in Home Alone 2, Gimbels in Miracle on 34th Street or Mr Magorium’s titular Wonder Emporium. 

This sense of nostalgia, loyalty and pride is certainly the case with Philly’s own Wanamaker’s – which was one of the first department stores in the whole United States. And in 1987, it became the setting for Michael Gottlieb’s Mannequin, where it stood in for Prince & Company. The department store is populated by a group of eccentrics who form a kind of dysfunctional family – there is the owner/matriarch Claire (Estelle Getty), manager Mr Richards (an unhinged James Spader), security guard Felix (GW Bailey) and window dresser Hollywood (Meshach Taylor). 

While the department store in Peter Strickland’s In Fabric (2018) is on a much smaller scale than Wanamaker’s, there is still very much the sense that the employees form a kind of (twisted) family and that the store is their home. The workers, including Miss Luckmoore (Fatma Mohamed) could even be said to form some kind of strange cult, with its own idiosyncratic language and rituals.

In Mannequin, Jonathan Switcher (Andrew McCarthy) finally finds a ‘home,’ after being fired from a succession of jobs. He also finds love, with a mannequin that he’s sculpted – the only artistic creation that he’s proud of – in the form of Emmy (Kim Cattrall). She comes to life only when she’s alone with Jonathan, so there’s a running joke that he keeps being found in compromising positions with a dummy. A mannequin is also sexualized in In Fabric, in a bizarre scene in which Miss Luckmoore and another worker wash and ‘anoint’ a mannequin (complete with pubic hair), while Mr Lundy, the store manager, excitedly watches.

While Mannequin is a light-hearted, cheesy 80s rom-com, it does become increasingly disturbing if you start thinking about it for too long. Jonathan creates Emmy in the image of what he finds attractive, he can manipulate her and bend her to his will. Naïve Emmy thinks that she can have a successful relationship with her owner/creator. The whole backstory behind Emmy makes little sense – she comes from Ancient Egypt and has existed for centuries as a muse, inhabiting artistic creations. But this makes it seem more like she is doomed or cursed, rather than a free spirit. In the horror film In Fabric, it is a particular red dress, rather than a mannequin which is cursed. Those who wear it; including Sheila (Marianne Jean-Baptiste), Reg (Leo Bill) and Babs (Hayley Squires) experience a series of misfortunes before meeting sticky ends. The curse comes from the woman who originally modelled it.

While the red dress does have sinister ‘intentions,’ both movies demonstrate the power of fabric, clothing, costuming and dresses in particular. In Mannequin, Jonathan is inspired by his muse Emmy to create incredible window displays that often use billowing fabric, props and costumes to be theatrical scenes that tell a story. There are also several montages of Jonathan and Emmy trying on different outfits, each one affording a different personality or character for them to inhabit. For Sheila in In Fabric, she initially gets a boost from the dress - she looks great in it and uses it for dates. The dress ‘magically’ fits its wearer, no matter who they are, which is why Reg can wear it at his bachelor party and his fiancé Babs looks fantastic in it too. Although the dress does cause harm, there is no denying its power. Women, in particular, can put a lot of pressure on finding the perfect dress – it can transform their fortunes, make them successful in business or in love and perhaps this film serves as a warning about putting too much stock in fabric.

Both films could also be read as critiques of capitalism, consumerism and materialism. One of the main weapons used against workers in corporate America is that “we’re a family,” in an attempt to instill loyalty and a sense of guilt, meaning that employees can more easily be exploited. Both Mannequin and especially In Fabric take this notion of the store staff as family to the nth degree, with Miss Luckmoore apparently being willing to kill or die for the store, while Sheila’s bank job is filled with petty bureaucracy, penny-pinching and micro-management. In Mannequin, Jonathan moves from job to job, desperate to be allowed to express himself artistically, but capitalism does not have time for creativity. In In Fabric, the obsession with material possessions and, in this case, coveting literal material leads to people’s doom. 

In the 80s and early 90s, many plots revolved around corporate buy-outs, such as Baby Boom, Santa Claus: The Movie, Working Girl, The Secret of My Success, Pretty Woman and The Hudsucker Proxy. In Mannequin, James Spader embodies the yuppie manager only interested in money, willing to sell out the “mom and pop” store to the bigger, flashier corporation. In just 1986-87, Spader appeared in Pretty in Pink, Baby Boom, Less Than Zero and Wall Street, as a succession of heart-throbs. Here, he plays thoroughly against type and is absolutely deranged in a hyper-physical performance apparently modelled on John Lithgow (which makes a lot of sense). Mr Richards and Miss Luckmoore are not a million miles from one another.

The endings of both films take a turn towards a darker tone. Emmy is almost put into a chipper with other (non-sentient) mannequins and Sheila, Reg and Babs are taken captive by the demented department store. While Emmy is theoretically freed from her life as a time-travelling artist’s muse, the people who have come into contact with the red dress are enslaved and set the task of sewing more of the malevolent material into sentient garments, to continue the dress’s dominion.

In two historic department stores – in Philadelphia and London – which instill a strong sense of loyalty in their staff, a cursed dress and a cursed mannequin wreak havoc. The mannequin is inhabited by a pure soul looking to inspire and find love, and the dress is inhabited by a serial killing model looking for some kind of vengeance. These two films are very much the angel on one shoulder and the devil on the other and provide two opposing spins on similar settings. They make for a weird and wonderful double-bill.

This originally appeared in the Fall 2021 print issue of MovieJawn. which is now sold out!