Stockman Silhouette © Stany Dederen

The body, once released from the corset, was ready to take on a new role with regards to the garment at the end of the 20th century. Martin Margiela playfully deconstructed the Western idea of the woman as a ‘living doll’, or the doll as a more perfect version of a woman: his collections featuring tailoring dummies turned into waistcoats (Spring/Summer 1997, Autumn/Winter 1997–98), and a 1950s adaptable metal wire dummy jacket (Autumn/Winter 1989–90). In this outfit, the sleeveless jacket in linen is inspired by a Stockman tailoring dummy. By dressing the actual, living body in a dummy, which acts as a fetishized version of the female body, Martin Margiela showed how foreign the standardized dummy is to the real living body.