For generations, Spanish colonial religious processionals have featured the carrying and display of a favorite Saint or Madonna figure through the streets of cities and villages on religious feast days.  They would have been elaborately robed and decorated.  Underneath the garments were wooden mannequins, or forms, which supported the heavy textiles and decorations.  The mannequins also wore wigs and jewelry.  

Today, original antique mannequins sell for many thousand of dollars where available.

The Filipino artisans today make a limited number of contemporary wooden mannequins exactly reproducing the old style, complete with hand painted glass eyes, antique finishes, and movable, articulated hands and arms.  The female mannequins are always colored in blue, and the male ones in pink with a beard, to represent St. Joseph or other male Saints.