Passers-by did a double-take when the window exhibit in a city centre shop stood up and started walking around.

Dressed in a kimono and caked in ghost-white make-up, the model of a geisha was actually not a mannequin at all.

Jess Alexander, a set designer from Brighton, spent a week posing in the shop window at home design shop Vanilla as part of a Brighton Festival competition.

Some shoppers tried to turn the tables and make Jess jump out of her kimono by sneaking up and surprising her.

But she remained perfectly composed in her guise despite all the distractions and just bowed to the crowds who gathered at the window.

Jess helped Paul Slijper, owner of the trendy Ship Street shop, scoop the title of best dressed window in the annual competition.

Manager Karen Ulph said: "It was so exciting when we found out we had won, I squealed."

The shop will win a hand-crafted piece of art commemorating its first-prize status.

Karen said: "All the kids loved it. We had a school trip walking past yesterday and they were standing three deep craning their necks to get a better view."

Jess, 27, said she had loved posing in the window and found the experience great fun.

For true authenticity, she ate Japanese sweets, fanned herself with an oriental fan and read a book with Japanese calligraphy emblazoned on the front.

A less alluring but equally iconic image of Japan helped Gardner Street restaurant and bar Curve scoop the second prize.

Like oversized flying ducks, three rotund sumo wrestlers were suspended above the restaurant floor.

Competition organiser Lisa Wolfe said: "The sumo wrestlers are very sweet and beautifully painted."

Curve's Salvo Vetro was one of the group who came up with the sumo wrestler idea. He said: "Two of the waitresses, Debbie McKenzie and Rachel Dodd, said they could make the sumo wrestlers out of papier mache and paint them.

"I think they have done a really good job. We have even had inquiries from customers who want to buy them."

In third place was Colporteurs, a Queen's Road gift and craft shop, which won for its bright colours and hand-made exhibits.

Pam Page, who runs the shop with her daughter Karina, said she was delighted because it was the first time she had attempted anything like it.

She painted a white mask to look like a geisha - a traditional Japanese hostess, trained in entertaining - then knotted hair into it, made a head dress and pinned up swathes of material to create a kimono.

Pam said: "I deliberately tried to use the bright colours from the festival programme because I didn't want to do anything minimalist. There's nothing minimalist about the shop so it wouldn't have looked right."

She also made water lilies for the glass-tiled floor and laid garlands of paper blossoms over the exhibits.

Lisa Wolfe said this year's exhibits were imaginative and clever. She said: "The windows ranged from funky, contemporary Japan in Rockit to beautiful, traditional calligraphy in Pen to Paper on Sydney Street."

But it was the live geisha who really caught the attention of the judges. Lisa said: "It was such a wonderfully imaginative entry - and very unexpected. We didn't expect to be judging a window where the main exhibit was a real person."