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What's Up With the Mannequin in Solana Tattoo's Lobby?
- Aimee Heckel
- Sep 9, 2025
- 4 min read
The mannequin standing in the lobby at Solana Tattoo looms with lore.
First, her name is Tilly. We didn’t name her. She was named after my best friend’s grandma, although I did not name her myself. Or ever know her grandma. Or know she was named after my best friend’s grandma when I bought Tilly for $20 at an antique store in Berthoud.
I’ve always loved odd things. Things that make me laugh. These are also often the things that creep me out. There’s a wire crossed in my brain that connects funny with scary, and both of those with beautiful, which explains a lot about me as a person.
This wire-crossing is why I have always loved mannequins and all of their body parts. Also, because I have worked at home alone for most of my adult life, and that can get lonely. I like to come down the stairs and see someone standing there and jump in fear/laughter, only to realize I pranked myself (again) with my own mannequin (for the 38th time today) (for years).
This context is necessary to explain the absolute sheer euphoria I felt when I walked into the antique shop and saw Her. Pale, bald, handless, one arm dangling and detached, but smiling. And with real eyelashes. She was clearly old (I mean, obviously. She was in an antique shop). And I clearly needed to add her to my mannequin collection.
I had three matching torsos my husband had painted gold. (Two of those now also live in the shop behind the counter.) I had an extra ultra super creepy child mannequin. I had transformed a nice pair of legs into a standing planter, and a stray arm adorned another plant pot. But all of these fiberglass forms weren’t enough to mediumly traumatize my daughter Betty enough to assure she would be an incredible, creative artist in her future (isn’t that how artists are formed?). This eyelashed beaut would complete my set.
As if intuitively reading my loud shrieks of delight (my emotions have always been a subtle enigma), the owner of the shop appeared nearby.
“That’s Tilly,” said the owner, a charming woman of Mother Age.
She explained to me that many years ago, she had stumbled upon the mannequin at an estate sale on the East Coast and loved her so much that she drove across the country with it. But it was so old she couldn’t disassemble it, so she drove the entire way with the mannequin’s head and torso sticking out the passenger-side window. Like a bald dog made of saw dust, plaster, glue, and resin – because apparently that’s how they built mannequins in the 1920s. Tilly was old. And adventurous. I mean, she’d already done a cross-country road trip.
The owner explained that while she enjoyed this mannequin, she felt it was time to share its glory with a new family. Tilly had made her mark, and now it was time for a new adventure.
I took Tilly home and placed her prominently in my living room, as one does with an antique mannequin. I changed her outfits frequently, like how normal moms decorate their homes for different seasons and holidays. On Halloween, she terrified small children on my porch. On Christmas, she terrified my small child next to the tree. I moved Tilly around constantly, just to keep her looming presence unpredictable and ever startling.
About five years later, I invited my new best friend Jess over for dinner. I’d met her in the gym and we immediately bonded over our shared love of bones and birds. When Jess saw Tilly, she stopped.
“Wait, how? How do you have Tilly?” she asked, her gasts flabbered.
My gasts were also flabbered. “How do you know Tilly?”
We flabbered our gasts back and forth a few more times before I told her I’d bought Tilly off the kind lady at the antique store.
Jess’s mom.
Turned out, the owner of the store was my bestie’s mom, and Jess had grown up with the same creepy mannequin that was now living with my family. And as we all know, Jess had grown up to love bones and birds, a dream every mother wishes for their own child. Jess was a true artist, an interior designer, and one of the greatest and most interesting humans I’d ever met.
About a decade later, we opened Solana Tattoo Company. I was at home and came down the stairs for my hourly startle at the fake body standing in the corner; a few screams a day is good for the soul. But this time – nothing. No surprise, no startle, no spook.
That’s when I knew Tilly had run her course in my household.
I packed her up for a road trip – not quite cross-country. Actually, just to the next town over. But oh how her eyelashes flapped in the wind as her head stuck out the passenger window. As I placed her in the lobby of our new tattoo shop and tried for the eight billionth time to re-attach her busted arm (impossible), I smiled, knowing it was time to share her glory with my new (extended) family.
My daughter Betty followed closely behind me. This time, I pulled a Solana sweatshirt over Tilly’s head, instead of a Christmas sweater and horns. Betty – now a teenager and sufficiently traumatized into artisthood – whipped out her camera to snap one final picture of this weird chapter of her childhood, marking Betty’s first day as the staff photographer of her family shop. Tilly had made her mark again.
And now it was time to make more.
