Not being a prude about it or anything, but it seems rather superfluous to have them. I mean, arms, legs, head, torso, etc etc are all going to have a bearing on how clothes fit on the body, but nipples? I don’t know about that. And furthermore, how many female mannequins that are wearing bouses/shirts have a bra underneath? Probably none.
Don’t you think newborn mannequins need to eat?
So you can judge the thickness of the fabric?
It attracts attention to the mannequins, I believe.
“Oh my god, look at how realistic those mannquins are… they even have nipples!”
or
<Gasp> “What is this world coming to? Look at those naughty mannequins!”
Because they were created by Joel Schumacher?
I’d like to see mannequins with camel toes. 
It’s ALWAYS cold in JC Penny’s!
To hold my key ring?
Now dudes- remember the rule here- FIRST someone gives the right answer, THEN you can give the smartass answer, OK?
Alessan is correct, but left out a part of it- some clothes are supposed to be sexy, and thus the nipples show you how sexy (or thin/tight/revealing) those clothes are. Not all mannequins have nipples- many male ones don’t, nor do the ones for the more “mature” women. Those catering to high fashion, dance/party clothes and “5/7/9” however, usually do.
And nipples first appeared on mannequins fairly recently, say 1990 at the earliest. They certainly didn’t have them back in the 50’s and 60’s. I’ve gotta say they’re real eye-catching.
I’ve also noticed a trend for many stores to leave one completely undressed, as if they’re still rearranging the window display. But a week later she’s still standing there shivering. But it worked: I did look at their display.
Sorry I jumped the gun. You say the word “nipples” around here and I think we’re in almost any other place than “GQ.”
If you are ordering a mannequin from a distributor, the terminology for one with nipples is “sexy.”
So all the previous info about material thickness and target audience is correct.
You know, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a mannequin with nipples. I don’t know if that’s because I shop in the fat women’s department, or because I don’t go around staring at the mannequins’ boobs.
It’s not like they’re anatomically correct.
I remember reading the obit of some classic sleazeball garmento/fashion figure, whose very proud claim to fame was that he was the man who – against great opposition – introduced nipples on mannequins. You were meant to think, by his boasts and by the article, that the (supposed) opposition was silly and wasting their time. It occurred to me that perhaps living 70 years only to have your tombstone refer to your heroic efforts to insist on mannequin nipples also partook of such time wastage, but it also occurred to me that involvement in the fashion industry, at all, fell in this category.
On a related point, tight trendy clothes may from time to time lead to such revelations, but it is not my impression that most women affirmatively seek out such exposure or would view it as a positive factor, sufficient to have them buy the clothes on a mannequin thus aroused (esp. given the substantial efforts aimed by real women at covering up such anatomical and underclothing-based embarrassments/revelations).
Several years ago one of Saklt Lake City’s great but underappreciated editorial cartoonists (either Calvin Grondahl or Ed Begley) did a cartoonentitled “Night of the Living Mannequins”. It showed a store employee attempting to file the nipples off a store mannequin in response to a directive hun on the wall (“Remove Nipples! That’s an Order!”). The mannequins, not wanting to be filed there (who would?) were resisting. I strongly suspect the cartoon was a response to some local flap over mannequins with nipples – maybe some irate ZCMI customer demanding that the provocative things be removed.
Longer than that. According to this mannequin history page, nipples first appeared in 1972. That seems about right, as I remember them being tied into the women’s lib, bra burning phenomena; as an indicator that America was headed straight to the hot place.
Are you sure?
check this out
Seems like some people are interested in how transparent their garment is!
The mannequins look natural that way.