This is going to sound sexist, or youthist... but... dep't stores used to hire young people for many of the display cases, either gals or guys --of course they had the "patronly" guy for serious things, like suits and so on, but for many things they had something not quite over the top like the buxom and ripped "kids" A&F had, but the guys and gals were not frumpy... these days it's different.

For the displays? Rarely. But as salespeople, well, that too. There's probably a whole lot to unpack in the why of that, but there just aren't as many young people, more of them are fat, and on the whole people don't dress as carefully.

As an aside, I've lived away from urban areas for a while now, so maybe I am not the best judge, but I would be dumbstruck today by a first-rate window display in a downtown retail store.

Having a job, any job, as a teenager is now looked upon as something that makes you look poor, and in many states the minimum wage is barely worth the effort. Wealthy parents would rather their children spend their time doing more studying or extracurriculars, since both of those have a better return when applying for colleges than any retail job.

It's also just a hassle that neither employers nor the prospective employees want to deal with. Tons of rules and regulations for the boss, very limited working hours, and the risk of an immature kid suddenly quitting without notice or throwing a tantrum. The kids have to get a work permit from their school, have to find someone willing to hire them (for probably less than the adult minimum wage), and then do the type of menial and unrewarding drudgery that drives working adults to despair. The days boomers talk about - when a kid could start work at 14 and make money worth spending and get useful experience - are long gone.

There was something to be said for being able to get jobs fast because the relationship and obligations between employees and employers was so minimal, when you could "give the boss a firm handshake" and start working that day, then find a new job just as fast if your boss turned out to be an abusive prick.

These days if an adult wants to get even a basic unskilled labor job it takes weeks or months to get through the application and review process and the temp-to-hire run-around that follows it. The result is mostly the same for employers, they ultimately only hire people they feel they can count on and the extra overhead just represents a few more people in HR for them. But for employees, the lengthy process makes switching jobs a stressful ordeal of getting tangled in inhuman bureaucracy while your need to pay rent looms.

Sorry not the window displays, but display cases: the sales help.

"Captain Peacock, are you free?" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Are_You_Being_Served%3F

You beat me to it. :)

The practice of preferentially hiring conventionally-attractive women for sales is still rampant even if people don't admit to it. In parts of Asia it's unfortunuately often explicit; job postings often specify the race, age, weight of what they are looking for.

Same in US for actual sales roles, it’s unspoken though. But the retail experience is mostly not actually sales. It’s entirely self service, walk into a warehouse, find what I need, use a kiosk to pay. The humans typically only get spoken to for orientation (they point you in right direction, sometimes) or if doing a return or having some issue with the intended frictionless self serve shopping experience (like a barcode won’t scan). So what you find from a human physique perspective is looks don’t matter at all. They’ll intentionally hire ugly people if they will take less pay, which statistically is the case since data shows good looking people make more.

It's not considered "sales" nor "commission" but I would imagine that hiring attractive people as servers (restaurant waitstaff) who rely on tips is a similar concept.