conserve textiles, leather, fur, fibers, and so on. The mannequins were tall, fabricated of wire. Some 60 Paris couturiers amongst them Nina Ricci, Balenciaga, Germaine Lecomte, Mad Carpentier, Martial & Armand, Hermès, Philippe & Gaston, Madeleine Vramant, Jeanne Lanvin, Marie-Louise Bruyère and Pierre Balmain joined and volunteered their scrap materials and labour to create miniature clothes in new styles for the exhibit. Milliners created miniature hats, hairstylists gave the mannequins individual coiffures, and jewellers such as Van Cleef and Arpels and Cartier contributed small necklaces and accessories. Some seamstresses even crafted miniature undergarments to go under the couture designs. Seamstresses carried their sewing machines around with them to complete work on the Théâtre de la Mode during Paris's post-War electricity shortages. Historian Lorraine McConaghy points out the level of detail in the clothing: Once work was completed on the Théâtre de la Mode, it became a touring exhibition of 237 doll-size figurines in 15 elaborate artist-created sets. It opened at the Louvre in Paris on 28 March 1945, and was enormously popular, drawing 100,000 visitors and raising a million francs for war relief. With the success of the exhibit in Paris, the Théâtre de la Mode went on a tour of Europe, with shows in London, Leeds, Barcelona, Stockholm, Copenhagen and Vienna. To promote the exhibit abroad, a French government official wrote to the Ambassador of France in Britain: "France has little, alas to export, but she has her appreciation of beautiful things and the skill of her couture houses". After touring Europe in 1945, the mannequins were outfitted with new clothes designed for the 1946 season and the exhibition traveled to the United States, where it was displayed in New York City and San Francisco in 1946. After the final show, the mannequins were left behind in San Francisco, while the jewellery was returned to Paris. Restoration and later tours The Maryhill Museum of Art in the United States acquired the mannequins in 1952 through a donation by art patron Alma de Bretteville Spreckels. The original sets accompanying the dolls, which had been crafted by such artists as Christian Bérard, Jean Saint-Martin, Georges Wakhevitch and Jean Cocteau, were lost before the Maryhill acquired the exhibit. In 1988, Paris's Musée de la Mode et du Textile undertook an extensive restoration of the mannequins and painstakingly recreated the sets. The Théâtre de la Mode still exhibits at the Maryhill Museum of