Meet the legend, the mannequin, the most kissed of all time. I was the kind of child who, had I known the whole story, would have thought myself fully capable of resuscitating the long dead L’Inconnue de la Seine. The story traces back to the turn of the 20th century, when sociologist Émile Durkheim, and subsequently the French Surrealists, pondered suicide as a fin de siècle phenomenon and an important philosophical question. Ever more curious about such deaths, the public was particularly entranced by a young woman drowned in the River Seine, convinced her demise was a lovesick suicide.

Bodies pulled out from the river were not so uncommon, but the lady’s beauty, it is said, was just that. A Parisian morgue worker, captivated by her delicate, Mona Lisa-like smile or simply hoping to identify her, cast a death mask later copied and circulated about the city.

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