This past weekend, while I was spending time with friends and family, I went into the city to see the newly displayed Christmas decorations. Although the tree was up and not lit yet, it was still nice to take a walk down 5th Avenue to see all of the window displays. Saks Fifth Avenue’s display is always my favorite as they do a stand-up job year after year, and they seem to get more intricate as each year passes. This year their theme was in celebration of the 80th anniversary of Snow White. Each window depicted a different scene, with amazing artistic ability. They called this year’s display Once Upon a Holiday.
Every year these windows take months of planning, I have heard that they start planning the next years immediately after putting the current years displays up. It can take anywhere from nine to eleven months to plan these elaborate window displays and they take a team of hundreds of people to create, just to be taken down after about six weeks. But these six weeks are crucial in the retail business, so eye-catching window displays brings in new customers daily in hopes of beating out their competitors.
Here are images from this years planning period:
This is what the final window displays looked like:
The secret is to not let competitors find out what your display theme is before the windows are unveiled. Maybe one day I’ll be able to collaborate on a secret mission style window display project that reaches millions of viewers every day. But for now, I’ll stick to being a member of the Visuals Team at my local Banana Republic.
Sketch images provided by: https://style.disney.com/fashion/2017/11/03/saks-fifth-avenue-snow-white-window-display/