Paris Windows Du Jour

Galeries Lafayette above and Chloé below, see more here

Holiday Windows of the World

Love this feature of Vanity Fair showcasing the art of store windows around the world. Above Bergdorf and below Liberty of London.

More London Windows

Dolce & Gabbana

Chanel 

Ralph Lauren 

 Louis Vuitton

Louis Vuitton 

Alexander McQueen 

Prada

Christian Louboutin

London Windows by Night

Vivienne Westwood

 Belstaff

Nicole Fahri

Windows, Place Vendôme

Louis Vuitton, watch & jewelry window

Vs. 

Van Cleef & Arpels window

In Review: Louis Vuitton Store Windows

May 2012

 April 2012

November 2011

 

July 2009

September 2008

Paris Holiday Windows

Above and below Printemps

Le Bon Marché

More at Le Journal des Vitrines

Window Frames

Bergdorf Goodman Sep 2011

I have a personal fascination for the art of store windows. See my shots of Madison Avenue here and visit two of my favorite sites, above and below from the NYC window blogger, Another Normal, and at bottom from the Paris version at Le Journal des Vitrines.

Hermès, June 2011

Bon Marché Oct 11

The window design project, Paris & Création at Galeries Lafeyette

Spring in Paris!

Still in love with the warm Paris weather and the spring windows have started!

Above the Chanel windows. In my last posting on Chanel windows, I described the contemporary practice of commodity display. From another perspective, the window is a performance space, a place for the play of fashion codes. I love this site that follows Paris windows, below her recent Dior shot. See my photos of NYC windows.

Chanel Windows

I LOVE Chanel News. I was going to take photos of the fall storefronts on rue Cambon but they already posted them here.

The storefront is the territory of display, where fashion becomes untouchable and enters the realm of appreciation or art. While so much of advertising has been transformed by the internet and new media, windows remain an almost conventional art. We still employ artificial looking mannequins, in completely awkward looking arrangements. The purpose is commodity promotion but the practice also increases mystical value of the commodity and sustains the theater of fashion. The displays are essentially sculptural entertainment.

While Greco-Roman culture exalted the human form to worship, we exalt the human form adorned. This is part of the naturalization of augmented survival.

The Three Graces, Roman copy of Greek Original, 200 AD

More on fashion & display here

More store windows here

Windows

Missoni, W 2006

Last year, I posted on the issues of display & fashion and display & art. More than visual merchandising, display is the opportunity for a designer to extend his or her vision. In art, it also about creating a space in which to regard the work. Store windows create a dream world that positions design in a utopian context. During 2005-2006, I chronicled the windows of Madison Avenue in New York. You can see the complete series here and more about display and fashion here.

Prada, F 2005

J. Mendel, F 2005

Ralph Lauren, W 2006

Fashion & Display

Display is an essential aspect to both fashion and art. For fashion, display is not considered the initial unveiling of design on a runway. Rather, display is understood as the planned presentation of design in a showroom to buyers, through a store window or sales floor to customers. Display can be a creative extension of a designer’s values, vision, form and brand. It is an opportunity to advance the seasonal or brand image. Display is also a prime interest for retail and department stores that aim to create seasonal harmony among different labels. Because display advances fashion for consumption however, it is also a site of critique.

Jean Baudrillard wrote Fashion, or the Enchanting Spectacle of the Code, in 1993. He wrote about the system of fashion and its grand presentation and promotions. Baudrillard is also interested in the signs of fashion as free floating signs of “intense pleasure.” He writes, “fundamentally, fashion imposes upon us the rupture of an imaginary order…we are able to enjoy the dismantling or stripping of reason.” Fashion, he explains operates in the “sphere of commodities” and is itself a “sphere of fashion,” known as the fashion world.

Courreges, 1967

Fashion exists only in the framework of modernity, dominated by a myth of “progress and innovation,” specifically the “myth of change.” He describes fashion as “the core of modernity” infecting other realms with a need for change. Fashion is our spectacle and “spectacle is our fashion.” The grand promotion of fashion is an ongoing event of display.

The acceleration in production and turnover of style has resulted in an excessive market

In fashion, all signs are exchanged. The result is what Baudrillard calls a contamination, meaning that the original value is altered. He is equally critical of the system of fashion as an “aesthetic of manipulation,” and “passion for the artificial.” He continues by explaining that fashion “aims for a theatrical sociality.” He also suggests that advertising “wants a feast of consumption.” The result is excess, excess of clothes, excess of signs, excess of meaning.

Baudrillard quotes Vogue's defense of fashion: “‘Why haute couture?’ a few detractors may think. ‘Why champagne?’ Again: ‘Neither practice nor logic can justify the extravagant adventure of clothes"

Galliano Couture, German Vogue

Baudrillard concludes by emphasizing the relationship between fashion and sexuality and the connection to the body. He finishes: “We cannot escape fashion (since fashion itself makes the refusal of fashion into a fashion – blue jeans are an example of this.)”

Baudrillard was living and writing in Paris, home to the department store. Aristide Boucicaut founded the first department store, Le Bon Marche, in 1838. The other main Parisian shopping stores of Printemps, Galeries Lafayette, and Samaritaine all began business in the late 1800’s and continued to be expanded through the 1920’s establishing what we know as the main display spaces of fashion.

Les Grands Magasins from top, Bon Marché, Samaritaine and Galeries LaFayette

Louise Lague, “The Ultimate Marketplace: It’s Not Just Window Dressing,” 1989

This older article emphasizes the role of visual merchandizing as an art form. She focuses on Simon Doonan but also discusses Gene Moore of Tiffany fame, Candy Pratts Price, Bob Curie and others. Artists such as Salvador Dali, Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg and Tom Sachs have also worked on windows . Doonan is quoted for saying “Display and merchandising are a marriage.” Barneys gives half of its display budget to the windows. Barneys can have thematic windows, while designers need brand integrity with everyone window supporting the larger vision. See a site devoted to store windows here and my own photos of windows from Madison Avenue here.

Gene Moore, Windows for Tiffany's

Above Barneys, Summer 2009, lower image from June removed due to controversial content

The dense lux display of Bergdorff Goodman, above September 2009 and below Holiday 2008

Above Printemps, Holiday 2008 and 2009

Collaborative Window, Moschino, The Whitney Museum & Vogue, Fall 2009

Dior in New York, October 2009

See more windows from Madison Avenue here.

Read about Art & Display here.