This article was taken from the March 2013 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by <span class="s1">subscribing online.
Transporting mannequins to fashion shows is like playing at serial killer: the heavy models have to be dismembered, then the limbs and torso carried in body bags. Mannequino wants to make this easier. "We've come up with a flat-pack, zip-up mannequin that fits in a drawstring bag," says Kelly Sant, half of the team behind Mannequino. She and husband Arash Kaynama, both graduates of London's Royal College of Art, first experimented with the idea in 2005, when they were designing dummies for a friend's collection. The clothes were customisable -- arms could be zipped on and off. "We were inspired by that." Sant, now 42, came up with a plastic zipping mechanism. "The first version, assembly-wise, was LEGO Technic," says Kaynama, 39, whose background is in engineering. "We had to create something that was Duplo."
The new Mannequino can support 2kg of clothes, and, with funding from InnovationRCA and the Atkins Foundation, the company is creating a production line in Cambridge. But the dummies are just a first step to other categories: "We're looking at luggage," says Kaynama. "Everyone has a problem of where to store suitcases -- mine are like Russian dolls."
http://www.mannequino.com/mannequino.com
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
