Holiday Windows in Paris

A few weeks ago we went to Paris on a trending trip for one of our clients. Along the way, we shot imagery, left and right, as everything caught our eye! Few places are more inspirational during holiday season and we wanted to share a few of our favorite and most relevant window shots with you.

Creative Sleighs

The idea of the sleigh will never go away and Printemps has reinvented the idea this season with a few clever solutions. Lucky cats double as carousels, blending eastern and western themes with the use of color and costume. Contrasting the slick porcelain sleigh, needle point horse and chariots sit a few windows away, giving the concept of decoupage new meaning.

Pretty in Pink

Be it evil chucky babies or over sized matryoshka dolls, Parisians are pulling at feminine strings, combing pink palettes with textured backdrops. The babies and their necklaces can be found in the Marais, while the Russian dolls are part of a Chanel series at Printemps.

Paper Graphics

H&M is a little different in Europe. The merchandise is slightly less chaotic and the attention to detail is more on target. The overarching theme this season embraces the doll house, incorporating a multitude of printed box tops to achieve this effect. Taping less vivid palettes on the interior retail displays, 3D/2D illustrations cover the back walls, reminding us what Audrey Hepburn’s closet would look like if she chose to collaborate with H&M.

White Wonderland

Be it an orbiting headdress from Chanel or a glistening crown from Printemps, white is the safest and most glamorous color choice for the holiday season, particularly when paired with gold. Be it paper, branches, toule or pearl, both of these windows seem to have taken a page out of Ralph Lauren’s playbook.

Figurine Storytelling

Tugging at the customer’s inner child. these two windows remind us of Toy Story, from both the masculine and feminine perspective. Warrior play sets battle through mens merchandise while pink doll sets tumble though pink ribbon obstacle courses.

December 22, 2009 | By: Shayna Kulik

Trend: Mexican Masks

Whether you’re a fan of Santogold, Santigold or La Lucha Libre, knowing who any of these characters are means you’re clued into the Mexican wrestling scene (or you’re just a fan of good music). Variety acts such as these are joining the nightlife ranks, proving America’s fascination with Mexican culture is moving well beyond the menu. Hola Mexico, a Mexican film festival, made the rounds this past summer, gaining support from corporate sponsors such as American Airlines, Chipotle, Dos Equis and Taco Bell. Proving this trend is beginning to penetrate more traditional female markets, home good stores, such as Propeller Modern in San Francisco, are filling their shelves with Mexican inspired knickknacks. This glitter-lined tiger-striped piggy bank is just one creative take on this trend, proving the commercial fascination is just getting started.

December 1, 2009 | By: Shayna Kulik

Color: Rustic Grids

If you’re living in America, Thanksgiving’s a pretty big deal. Everyone’s got a to-do list that’s got eating, traveling and a bit of cooking on it. These snapshots encompass all of the above, intersecting at color, layout and theory. This farmers market spread showcases autumn’s rustic spectrum and is sorted by food and color. Following a similar path, this Scion xB advertisement taps autumn’s palette revealing a basic grid for display. The tag line for this youth-oriented Toyota reads, Same Shape. Different Boxes, reminding us how we live our lives, sorting information as we go. Whether you’re a passenger or a driver this holiday season, you’ll undoubtedly find yourself scanning and sorting, be it food, family or football.

November 23, 2009 | By: Shayna Kulik

Trend: Masked Voyeurism

hidden-visibility

Masks have been around since the dawn of time. While their recent presence in pop culture once appeared to be nothing more than a passing phase, global conversations encompassing human behavior in the digital realm continue to keep this trend in the limelight. Living with hyperconnectivity, the average person can aim for fame and obscurity all from the comfort of their own home.

Privacy operates like a two-way mirror and these carefully constructed masks allow regular personalities to hide behind artful obscurity. Be it Peter Pilotto’s punk masterpiece for Dazed and Confused, this paper collection found on Cool Hunter, the bobble and animal heads from Theme Magazine, Mike Mill’s textile models, this old Hair’em or Scare’em book cover covering hair-centric conversations, Stella McCartney’s budget-minded retail windows or this devilish McQueen mask made from childrens toys, all of these examples allow the user to be seen behind a veil of mystery.

Hidden visibility poses the public vs. private dilemma and as digital voyeurism continues to grow, we anticipate more masks and more debate.

By: Kelsey-Lee LeGassick

November 19, 2009 | By: Shayna Kulik

Fashion: Luxurious Loot

luxury-loot3 copy

Everyone’s aware that the fashion industry’s taken a bit of a beating over the past year. As brands struggle to stay afloat, artists continue to incorporate economic themes into their design work. Beyond creating money inspired products, we’re beginning to see marketing dollars move in the same tactile direction. Both Bond St. no 9 and Vince are provocatively challenging street audiences to embrace this ominous topic by putting dollar signs and bank robbers in their windows. Taking a similarly playful approach, Alexandra Cassaniti has recently released this money bag into her product line-up, proclaiming, “it’s funny to carry a bag with a dollar sign down the street. People are always like, ‘did you rob a bank?’ or ‘do you have money in there?'”

November 18, 2009 | By: Shayna Kulik

Artful Antfarms and Social Media

What do ants, art, fashion and social media have in common? We’ve been asking that very question ever since reading Noah Brier’s fascinating take on the power of colonization and it’s relation to the internet. The idea that “ants don’t really ever exist on their own, all their power comes from their ability to organize themselves in groups,” directly parallels social media’s impact online, particularly in relation to traffic, viral marketing and cross pollination.

The use of ant farms to contextualize larger societal microcosms have been popping up in every media form, from literal depictions in Mad Men to more abstract print parallels, such as this Hermès map of Paris. Toying with the idea of national identity and cross pollination, Japanese artist, Yukinori Yanagi brilliantly displays the world through the eyes of the ant in his 1990 installation entitled, The World Flag Ant Farm. Using a series of interconnected boxes, each filled with colored sand in the pattern of a national flag, Yanagi releases a colony of ants into the system, allowing them to travel freely. “The border crossings” result in an intermingling of color throughout the system, a stunning visualization of our cross-cultural networks. Bringing this concept to the masses on a more playful scale, Stine Gam and Enrico Fratesi merge ant farm living with brocade wallpaper patterns, proving mass mobilization can create tangible and beautiful results.

By: Shayna Kulik

November 14, 2009 | By: Shayna Kulik