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How To Cut Up A Body

When I first seriously contemplated my foray into fashion I knew it wasn’t going to be overly glamorous. That said, there were many things I do today I didn’t see coming. Top of this week’s list is hiring a jig saw to go and dismember a mannequin.

Why, you may well ask?

Well, a while ago we had some flat lay photography done. You will have seen it on our online store, on this very blog and in other such places. In case you can’t remember what it looks like though, here’s a refresher:

I’m going to be honest; I quite like this style of photo – I think it’s a little disheveled and doesn’t try to be too perfect. There are lots of magazines however, that don’t use it. They use something called ‘deep etch’ or ‘ghost mannequin’ which looks like this:

See how this shot looks like someone – a ghost even – is actually wearing it? You can see where the chest is and where the knit is scrunched at the arms. Logic says that this shot is just taken on a model and then she is photoshopped out. The real kicker however is that if you think about that for a moment and look at the shot, you’ll see that you can see the BACK of the knit through the front. That is, you can see the area where the brand tag is. Bummer, right?

A way to achieve this effect could be to put the knit on a mannequin or model, take the photo and then put the item flat on the ground to get a shot of the inside and then photoshop the whole lot together. I’m not sure about you, but that sounded overly complicated to me. Although you can definitely pay people to do this for you, we’re talking a few thousand dollars for half a day by the time you account for a stylist (this sort of styling is a skill on its own), the photographer, the studio and then the photographer needs to do the retouching.

My dad was visiting last week and as a former structural engineer and hobby photographer I thought he’d be in a good position to help me solve this problem.

After much flicking through fashion magazines and discussion we decided that what we needed was a modified body form. Either something made out of mesh to suit or papier mache or… a cut up mannequin. (*insert evil laughter here*)

With a bit of research I found a mannequin shop that sold me a victim an old, beaten up body form mannequin for $110.00.

The guy that ran the shop specialises in repairs and has been working with these things for over 25 years. We told him our plan and he said the best tool for our project was a variable speed jig saw. I’m not sure about you, but this isn’t something I keep in the house. You can buy cheap jig saws at hardware stores for about $20.00. The issue with this is that they’re not as delicate as the more high-end saws (and I hate buying things I’m only going to use once).

We headed to Kennards hire where we scored a fabulous (is that a word you can use for power tools? Dad said “ripper”) jig saw and a couple of very fine blades.

With the addition of a pencil, an eraser, two tape measures and a vacuum cleaner we had our tools.

Here’s our girl:

Her arms and hands detach individually. This is a huge help when dressing her!

We then tried a few different items on her from the Bento stable to work out what was likely to be the lowest-cut item in the range. It’s worth noting that we were told to be wary about cutting too deep or too far out as it’s possible for the mannequin to collapse in on itself.

We found that the lowest-cut item was the Louis V.

Then, dad got handy with a pencil and marked small dots along the mannequin just inside where the neckline and shoulder point touched. He then joined the dots using a flexible ruler (okay, so it was his belt).

 

Things got a lot harder when we realised that because of her breasts, it wasn’t as easy as simply turning the knit around to draw the matching “V” shape on her back. Dad did some tricky things involving arcs and measurements and centre points to basically replicate the V on the back with a slight rounding in the bottom half. Then, we were ready to go!

As you can see in this shot, she’s lying on some upside-down carpet; we were working in the garage and didn’t want her to get scratched up more than necessary on the concrete floor.

Dad then started the first cut at the shoulder point with a hand saw. Apparently it’s a bad idea to start with the jig saw; it’s not neat enough.

He then used the jig saw to make the larger cuts. It’s a very neat result – as you’ll see later, the portion that we cut out can be reattached at any time if required.

As I mentioned, we were working in the garage. When the above shot was taken, I was standing with one foot on her bottom to keep her still. A few moments later when we turned her over, dad asked me to hold her torso up so he could cut into her shoulder to start the front. He was worried about the stability given we’d now cut her back out which meant I had to take the weight off her back. This involved me straddling the mannequin whilst kneeling and holding her waist. As dad started cutting away with the hand saw, some people drove past quite slowly (looking at house numbers, I believe). I wish I’d been holding the camera because the look of horror as they did a double-take and what we were doing was just priceless.

Anyway.

A problem (well, a problem other than alarmed neighbours) that we found along the way was that the acrylic coating on mannequins isn’t really made to withstand a saw. As you can see in the shot below, there is some chipping that has occurred. The other issue is that we were concerned with half of a chunk of mannequin being cut and the other half still attached, it was becoming more flimsy than desired.

To combat both these issues we used masking tape – both before and after sawing – before to help keep the coating stuck down and after to give the piece some stability.

Once we were finished cutting, it was just a matter of un taping and then…

 

As mannequins are made from fibreglass there were a few sharpish bits around some of the edges. I didn’t want these getting caught on silk and so forth, so we visited the hardware store again for some enamel spray paint and a very fine sheet of sandpaper. Dad then sandpapered the edges and gave the raw edge plus the inside a good couple of coats of paint.

We then took our leading lady (who has been named Venus, after Venus De Milo) to a room in the house that has a LOT of natural light, grabbed a cheapy tripod from the local discount store and started taking snaps.

Here’s the result:

I suspect I have a bit of work to do on the styling, lighting, photography and well, pretty much every element… but I think this is a fairly good start in the right direction, don’t you?

For under $200.00, dad and I have managed to virtually  solve this problem. I imagine the lighting and photography can be improved with practice and perhaps some borrowed equipment and I’m sure the styling is a matter of experience too.

So what do you think – was Venus worth our time?