Avery Trufelman

The show was extended for weeks and weeks and weeks.

This miniature beacon of glamour attracted 100,000 visitors who paid what little money they had to witness this luxurious vision of what Paris still was in their imaginations and maybe could be again.

The Louvre's exhibit of the Théâtre de la Mode ended around the same time that the war did, in May of 1945.

And so the Théâtre de la Mode went on to the next phase of its mission.

The show, rebranded in English as A Fantasy of Fashion, was packed up and shipped to London, then Leeds, Barcelona, Copenhagen, Stockholm and Vienna, all to rave reviews.

And then the little mannequins went to show off to the old rival, New York City, to more rapturous crowds.

In 1946, the Théâtre de la Meude made its final stop, the de Young Museum in San Francisco.

And everyone agreed this would be the exhibit's final resting place.

France didn't want the mannequins anymore.

The Teatro de la Mer was sent to a department store in downtown San Francisco that was named, confusingly, the City of Paris.

And the mannequins just stayed in the basement of the City of Paris department store for years, until they were found by a wealthy San Franciscan named Alma de Bretville Spreckles.

In 1952, she shipped them off to her pet project, a museum in rural Washington state.

They were sent without any accompanying documents or explanation as to their origin.

Perhaps Alma thought these mannequins needed no introduction, that everyone would, of course, remember this worldwide sensation, even though, of course, they didn't.

France pretty much forgot about the Théâtre de la Mode too.

The mannequins were generally assumed to be lost or destroyed.

But as you know, they weren't.

The Teatro de la Mud was perched on a mountaintop overlooking the Columbia River Gorge.

With Linda.

When this curator rediscovered the mannequins in the 80s, word traveled around academic fashion circles.