In this season of window wonderlands adorned with sparkly ornaments, shiny mannequins and promises of the good life, one Downtown display takes a satirical shot at retail seduction.

In the first window at the Chase building parking garage, a mannequin wears an evening gown made of caution tape, her shoulders draped in an explosion of orange construction fencing. Flanking her are blue ladders displaying glittery Cinderella-like shoes, poised to dispense happily-ever-after hope and validation at any moment.

In another window, Barbies in the same dress stare hypnotically out of their “Under Construction”-stamped boxes with rhinestone eyes. Despite their ethnicity or hair color, they look exactly the same in their up-dos and jarring, bright blue eye shadow.

Artist Jodie Hardy did the hair, makeup — and eyes — for each of the 114 dolls as part of her “Silent Sellers” for the 3-year-old “Picture Windows: Urban Interpretations Project.” Hardy is the first artist awarded three windows by the Arts Council of Indianapolis.

Hardy — whom a friend once called a “retail anthropologist” — said she has long been interested in the way the fashion industry uses powerful visuals to attract and pressure women. The identical appearance of the Barbies, for example, represents the must-have “look” that fashion magazines peddle each season. The dolls wear the same dress as the mannequin (the conformist “ideal,” or modern celebrity) “to satirize how beauty is sold to even the youngest of consumers,” Hardy said.

Hardy’s idea for the exhibit came earlier this year, when she participated in the runway show “ReCouture” at the Harrison Center for the Arts.

“I was inspired by the snarky comments being made during the primary elections regarding Hillary Clinton’s pantsuits and began to wonder, What should a woman seeking a position of authority wear? The piece then took a life of its own as a pantsuit made of caution tape,” she said.

A former tomboy who grew up in Osceola, in Northern Indiana, Hardy, 53, said she’s always felt a “strange push and pull with clothing.” Puberty meant getting kicked out of the boys’ club — and abandoning the rough-and-tumble clothes, too.

“I hated it,” she said. “Yet, there was a time when a great set of stilettos on a night out made me feel very powerful, while at the same time I was wearing a tool belt during the day as a carpenter’s apprentice.”

Today, she’s happiest in jeans, jackets and black shoes — a candidly comfortable outfit for a cultural observer.

“I just like to witness how desire is designed and brought to the marketplace,” she said. “What fascinates me most is the ambiguity that exists in our complicity or resistance to marketing strategies. Several women have told me they want that caution-tape dress, and it would be interesting to find out from them just why.”

##Silent Sellers

See “Silent Sellers” through May at the Chase building parking garage on North Pennsylvania Street.

• By Amanda Kingsbury*