A bell rang as a man came through the door, hands deep in his pockets. Steve Hecht looked up.

It was a clean-out guy he knows. He stops in when he finds something Mr. Hecht might like to buy. This time it was a dress form , a big one.

“You want a size 20?” the man asked. It was nearby, he said.

“Nope,” said Mr. Hecht, crossing thick arms over a suede apron. “It’s a little too much woman for me.”

As the man left, Mr. Hecht said, “I have three or four 20s. You have to have your limits.”

Mr. Hecht has a lot of old dress forms in his meticulously crammed storefront on West 38th Street in what is rapidly becoming the former garment district.

He also has nude photos and ticket stubs from Show World, the shuttered Times Square sex emporium, even an old type cutter from the days when The New York Times printed its papers on 43rd Street.