Scanning New York’s Holiday Windows: Notes on Tiffany, Saks, Lady Gaga, Tasteful Scaffolding, and More

I love the crazy luxe of the BG windows, overseen forever by fashion director Linda Fargo and her team. They are like beautiful fantasies you want to crawl into and live in forever. They are all so brilliant and zanily detailed, I could spend hours just on them. But I’m sticking to highlights. One small window in the front has a sequined Oscar de la Renta dress that must cost a zillion dollars. (My editor told me there was no time for fact-checking, sorry!) The sequins follow an absurdly ornate print in dark reds, exotic purples and blues, really every color under the sun, and the whole window is dark and moody and vaguely Oriental, and I know it is not cool to say Oriental, but that is the word that comes to mind.

Across the street at the men’s store is a gentleman’s club meets taxidermist, with different animal heads topping the various suited mannequins. It isn’t outrageous, just clubby and cool.

Tiffany has built garish carousel awnings over its jewel box windows. O.K., we’re doing a circus theme, I assume. But when you get up close, there’s an amazing, miniature replica of the window and the street behind you. You step back and look for some details, then stick your head back up against the glass, and there it is. Uncanny. Only out on the street, there is no enormous, emerald cut stone ring (maybe amethyst or a colored diamond? Kind of loving this no-fact-checking thing) but what appears to be a delicate gift bow also made from diamonds. I could have stood there for hours, so I forgive the dum-dum carousel drag.

I’m a fan, so it is hard for me to be objective. At 10 in the morning on a Saturday, just minutes after the store has opened, it is packed. The giant entry into a dragon mouth is the big street visual, but it is the little things that I like. At the elevator banks, there are schoolkid renderings of milady’s face. I wanted to buy all of them. Upstairs reminded me more of FAO Schwartz than Barneys. Colorful candy balls in a big jar are $35, and I kick myself two blocks later that I didn’t buy them. I should disclose that I consult for Graphic Image, which was commissioned to do all the leather goods, bracelets, tote bags, and a complete set of Roald Dahl titles in limited-edition leather-bound versions.

The pink-and-orange patterns are visible from across the street, which makes me realize that some people go for the big visual and some expect you to get close to admire, and I decide I like both kinds. Here is another circus theme (hmm, wonder how Tiffany, which is right next door, feels?), but this one is in hot orange and pink and ivory fabrics. There’s a tower of elephants, some harlequin, some stripey. I have no idea what this has to do with anything they are selling (though I looked in the store), but I don’t care.

Gucci has a gold infinity window—you know, where you look in and see smaller and smaller versions of the same thing. There are stars. Dizzy. WOW. Love this. The men’s side is not quite as exciting.

Uh oh, somebody seems to have gone off the deep end here. The main windows depict the plot of a holiday book, Who Makes the Snow?, sold exclusively at Saks. The tale is about a girl named Holly who discovers some magical bubble factory where the bubbles fly up into the air and turn into stars. So that’s how stars are made. I was an English major in college, and I read the text in every window. So I did learn that the dresses shown were all one of a kind or something, and they were being auctioned off somehow to benefit St. Jude’s Hospital. There is a magnificent purple ensemble that has feathers and fur and lace, and a whole lot more that appears to have been donated by the archives of Alexander McQueen. And a Monique Lhulier gold tulle and sequin number holds its own, so I get that this is an “important” fashion window.

What I don’t get is this bubble factory story and the cheap-looking white factory “machines” that spit out bubbles that turn into stars, and what this has at all to do with Christmas. “It probably looks nice at night,” an attractive woman comments charitably when she overhears me muttering my opinions. Maybe so. But making this unknown children’s book the star of the show strikes me as A.W.—all wrong. Shame. Inside the store, it is magnificent with all white branches climbing the walls and forming a twinkling arbor. I just hope the confusing and irrelevant windows don’t prevent folks from venturing inside.

Here’s the winner, hands down, for the ugliest windows. There are others that are tackier, or more vulgar, but none come close to the mud-gray velour curtains that reveal some yellow-and-black brocade eveningwear. I wonder, “Is it winter or resort?” I decide that no season is the right one to wear any of these hideous fabrics.

I find Juicy Couture’s branding equally appealing and vulgar. Sometimes that high bordello thing goes a little too Kardashian for me, and going Kardashian is not a good thing. But these windows have scale. There's a two-story pyramid of Juicy pink boxes mixed with mannequins wearing who knows what, but who cares! It’s big. It’s colorful. It’s Juicy!

I’m torn about this one. It’s a giant male head constructed of gold paillettes, which rustle attractively in the wind. Is it an Indian? (That’s what the cop stationed on the sidewalk thinks. Apparently he reads Details or something, because he knows there's an Indian in a recent ad campaign. To me it looks more like a young Abraham Lincoln. Is it tied in with that movie?) In the window are over-size holiday balls and ornaments covered in fabric and more of the paillettes, but here they are not shimmering. After a few minutes, I give up, and now, with no factchecking allowed, we’ll never know what the hell is going on here.

Seems like the Italian fur queens went low budget this year. They have tons of those icicle lights that everyone has now (including me), and while great at night, they are unsightly as all get-out by day. Here it is no different.

This is the season, and there’s the red door, cast open on an unusually warm afternoon. So in I go where giant signs tell me, “Red is the color of the season.” There’s red on all the walls, and all of a sudden, red just seems stupid to me.

Up until now, I have been convinced that Bottega Venetta can do no wrong. Beautiful products, tasteful branding and advertising. Its windows are color-driven by pink and orange ready-to-wear and accessories. It is pretty enough. But there are these weird white things on the floors of all the windows. Is it snow? On closer inspection, I see that these are replicas of their bags and totes carved out of what looks like soap. Finally, I see one has a little white thing sticking out of the top. Oh, they’re candles. So I go in and ask where the candles are. They are display only, not for sale, which makes me want one even more. So I ask, what time do you light them each night? Oh, we don’t light them. So then what is the point? I leave kind of relieved that they have such a small and fruitless concept.

O.K., why is there a giant Coca-Cola sign? Is some giant branding store coming? These four-color images, printed razor sharp, show a bottle of Coke smashing through a fountain of Coke, and all I can think of is how messy and sticky the shoot must have been.

Now for two image boards for stores being constructed. At Ted Baker, a beautiful wall of green grass fits the season, while communicating that spring is when you should return.

The Lindt boards are huge, and since I’ve just passed its little chocolate store on the other side of Fifth Avenue, I wonder what the hell is going to be sold in here? I mean, at some point, isn’t too much chocolate kind of gross? And why do these image boards look so tatty? They prominently announce December 2011 as the launch date. It is December 13 when I visit. Shouldn’t they hurry?

So many important exhibitors chose scaffolding this year as their decor concept. Abercrombie & Fitch went butch with gray cube scaffolding and a sign that helpfully points out that Spring Scaffolding was responsible for this installation. The Plaza Hotel chose a nice green. Louis Vuitton has some sort of scaffolding up right next to its perfect store; is it theirs? It’s expensive looking, so maybe. But the biggest scaffolding of them all is, rightly so, reserved for St. Patrick’s Cathedral (pictured), where a tasteful sign explains that a restoration project is under way.

I love it when stores send up their own brands. Here, they’ve taken the cubist shape of their store (probably by some famous architect, but remember, no facts allowed in this story!) and created a plaid lighting grid. Get it? Tartan? I’m a sucker for this sort of thing.

Looks like they went to the Hallmark store and bought the Ye Olde Christmas decor package. Inexpensive foam-core cutouts of cutesy Christmas critters (think bunny rabbits with Santa’s list) are completely free from the burden of charm. Somebody needs to be fired.