Live Shop Mannequins Spark Controversy in Italy

Live mannequins modeling this season's bikinis in the windows of the Coin department store in Milan -- much to the disapproval of Italy's labor unions -- are a harmless business ploy, the shop said Monday.

"We have been accused of commercializing the human body," Stefano Beraldo, the head of Coin, told journalists.

"But we've not invented anything, it's done all over the world. It's just business," he added.

Italy's main trade union, the left-wing CGIL, had complained about the use of live models in shop windows, stepping in to "protect workers' decorum and customers' intelligence."

But the models, posing in their swimming costumes on a fake beach, defended their right to be there and held up signs saying: "Even being a model is work."

"I don't see anything scandalous about it. We're doing our job and lots of other shops do the same thing. Our job is to advertise objects and clothes," one of the models, 19-year old Matteo Cupelli, told Agence France Presse.

"Some passersby are amused, others less so. But lots of young people support us," he said.